Am I alone in my believe that aggressive reputation management as a professional practice is right up there with personal injury lawyers! Every day there are numerous blogs and articles that highlight BP’s efforts to manage, preserve and protect their reputation in light of their creating the biggest man made disaster in history to soil our waters and shores.

Call me crazy, but when you distort the truth it is called deception. The dictionary defines deception as 1: the act of deceiving 2: the fact or condition of being deceived 3: FRAUD, TRICK.

I don’t like being deceived and I think most people feel the same way. So I find it rather disingenuous when reputation management professionals are offended by BP’s efforts to manually prop up their reputation. Aside from scale, BP’s reputation management efforts are no more despicable than when social media is manipulated and corrupted using generally accepted reputation management practices to influence local purchase decisions that might not otherwise be made.

Social media is totally open and prone to abuse and I get that. But I also feel that social media has an awesome opportunity to empower people with information to make better purchase decisions when buying a product or choosing a local business. Currently, social media has more influence on consumers than traditional advertising because there is a believe that it is more objective. Aggressive reputation management can and does exploit this currently. In doing so it also erodes consumers trust in social media.

I encourage local businesses to invest in their people, products and services to increase their competitiveness. Embrace social media to capture the voice of your customers. Use it as a platform to communicated messages both good and bad. Those who do it early and authentically will create a sustainable competitive advantage over their competitors who adopt a strategy of reputation management to compensate for defects in their service delivery.

Andrew Ward
Chief Trust Officer
Trust FX

As I read Rachel Andersen’s post on BP’s Reputation Management efforts, she raises a common issue regarding the aggressive use of social media and reputation management.

BP’s oil spill is a disaster beyond compare no doubt. Rachel’s distrust and disgust with BP  is very appropriate and shared by most. But aside from the scale of the oil spill problem, how is the aggressive use of reputation management techniques by any company to hide or spin their problems any different?   Basically social media is being manipulated in an attempt to craft an artificial image with the goal of capturing consumer dollars that they might not otherwise be able to do.

One of the key values of social media is that it empowered people based on sharing knowledge and experiences freely. As people learn more about how social media is being gamed in to manage one reputation it will increasingly become as irrelevant as traditional advertising in it’s ability to inform and influence.

Aggressive reputation management sounds kind of shifty to me!

Andrew Ward
Chief Trust Officer
Trust FX

One of the biggest concerns that I hear from business owners about social media, is their fear of negative reviews. They fear that negative feedback will sour potential customers or patients that read it. The proliferation of reputation management services speak to the fear of negative feedback and the desire to present a “managed reputation”.

As a business owner, you know that not every one of your customers has been completely satisfied and for as much as you try, it most likely will happen again. Guess what, your prospects know this too. Everyone has had their share of bad experiences even though testimonials and references that they relied on to make an “informed” decision, painted a perfect picture.

But don’t be afraid of negative reviews. A recent Forrester report found the 50 percent of online shoppers proceeded with a purchase after reading negative reviews on it.

“Forrester evaluated 4,000 reviews in the Electronics and Home & Garden categories on the Amazon.com site and found that more than 80% of the reviews were positive – and the negative reviews were generally considered helpful to consumers. While the data was derived from a retail Web site, Forrester says these findings are applicable to any vertical site from travel to auto, financial services”

The point is that the presence of negative reviews doesn’t prevent sales. I am not suggesting that mediocrity is a marketable advantage, but projecting a competitive reputation that is authentic will increase the ability of your marketing messages to connect with people looking for the services that you provide and will produce better business results. I will also say, that there exists a window of opportunity to create a sustainable competitive advantage for those businesses and practices who adopt the lessons learned from their pioneering online retailers.

Consumers seek out and are more influenced by an accurate representation of your reputation than an air-brushed managed reputation. This is why consumers value ratings-and-reviews so much. People are more likely to believe and be influenced by what your customers and patients say about your business or practice than what you say. This is the power of a Natural Online Reputation.

Negative reviews demonstrate transparency and honesty. A robust and strong Natural Reputation with some negative reviews or constructive feedback will out perform perfect reputations because its perceived authenticity will increase its credibility and power of influence.

Local businesses can learn much from a decade of online purchases and seeing what has been effective at influencing online purchases. A usability survey conducted by PowerReviews showed that consumers don’t believe in perfect “products”, they expect some level of dissatisfaction and often “DISCOUNT” products with perfect reviews. So the money that you are spending to create that perfectly manicured managed reputation could actually be costing you business!

As more people use the Internet to find a local business, they bring with them their experience and expectations from their past online purchases. Smart business owners will be those who shed the old mentality of projecting an artificial image and embrace the power of social media to attract and influence people seeking the services that they provide.

I say invest your money and resources in improving you people, products and services. Focus on understanding your customers’ needs, set proper expectations and consistently meet them. If you do this well, you will be able to attract new customers and patients with greater efficiency and at a lower costs than every before possible using the authentic voice of your customers and patients.

Andrew Ward
Chief Trust Officer
TrustFX

A natural online reputation is the most effective way for a local business or a medical practice to attract new customers or patients. Today’s increasingly skeptical consumers want to make decisions with confidence and nothing builds more trust or instills more confidence than the authentic voice of real customers and patients.

Natural reputations have two defining characteristics that increase their power of influence over all other reputation management services. First, reviews are captured entirely from real customers and patients so they are completely authentic. Second, reviews are not filtered and include both positive and negative reviews. This is very important for consumers. For the first time they have a trusted resource that speaks to the quality of service and the consistency by which it is delivered. This makes natural online reputations the best predictor of future customer satisfaction.

Andrew Ward
Chief Trust Officer
Trust FX
Natural online reviews also increase a businesses visibility in Google as they actively search for consumer ratings for inclusion in their organic search results. But equally important, they increase the credibility of businesses that use them which translates to more leads, increased prospect conversion rates, stronger pricing and better retention. Small gains in each area can have a major impact on the profitability of most small businesses.