Sounds like you've had a negative impression of the Rip Off Report people, Tony.

I haven't had any positive or negative dealings with them so far. I'm curious to hear your story(ies) if you feel like sharing.

Daniel,

Why is there so much focus on “measurement” and “ROI” and not nearly enough on formalizing a standard for sourcing social media? What I'm referring to here is the depth of sourcing (i.e. blogs, message boards, social networks, video, images, etc.) required to manage ones online reputation right?

Follow-up question: have reputation monitoring strategies been too heavily influenced by the probability of social media incidents actually appearing in top 10 search, and forced us to focus our attention strictly on “Blogs” or “Twitter” as SM source types of interest because they rank better and are more likely to bruise ones Google resume?

Joseph
@RepuTrack

To respond to your Question #2:

People do tend to focus where the most traffic is, because those heavily trafficked areas are where things go viral. When one brand was caught artificially increasing their positive reviews on Amazon, it was the blogosphere and Twitter that blew up the incident within a matter of hours.

That being said, brands that skip over (either intentionally or in ignorance) smaller channels lose significant opportunities to win over customers. A tiny forum, message board, or Viddler channel might not draw more than 50 visits in a month, but those smaller micro-niche, underground, or local channels often have stronger relationships with their audience. The information and opinions shared on a Yahoo organic co-op message board, for instance, deeply influence the members decision making. Brands that are written of with disdain will be avoided by fellow members. Brands that are excitedly and positively shared will be tested by others.

You never know where your customers live and share until you search them all out. This is foundational and should be fairly obvious. That it's not obvious to all just strengthens my amazement at corporate blind spots.

The question of sourcing and depth of sourcing is an excellent one, Joseph. One that is overlooked far too often by companies who end up doing a half-hearted job of monitoring and protecting their own brands.

My guess is that the reason for the seeming imbalance is that executives aren't willing to push the “Go” button on social media monitoring until they can line item it in their budget and profits. If there's no measurable ROI, they believe the expense isn't justifiable. When reporting to a board or even just a business owner, the person gets a raise and commendation for proving return on investment. The dollars that go unanswered for are a black mark on their record.

I should add to Question #1 the following:

Based on my previous answer, the person in charge executes a very half-hearted approach due to the desire to keep costs as close to zero as possible, because he/she knows they'll catch hell for expenditures that don't increase profit.

They lack the reasoning or interpersonal communication necessary to present their case to the board or owner of the business. With a little of the right education, these decision makers could embark on full-fledged reputation management. There is no less justifiable expense for ORM than for traditional marketing that yields no measurable results except for a very faulty estimation of audience number.

In the end, it's laziness or ignorance or both. Either way, it's ultimately inexcusable to leave one's brand and business vulnerable to loss. You can be sure that if one negative issue goes viral, that brand will be paying better attention going forward.

Has anybody has any dealings with pissedoffconsumer.com They create a URL for each report with the trademarked term in the URL. I know there are little or no protections for trademarks online but before I tell my client to pay an IP attorney I would be interested to hear if anybody has had any experience with this.

@fiondownhill – are you referring to the way the url embeds within it the title/subject of the post? If so, this happens through what is referred to as an “SEO slug” – a plugin/feature that many blogs use these days for reasons relating to search engine optimization.

As in the case of this post, the title is “What Are Your Biggest Reputation Management Questions?”, and Daniel could certainly confirm this, but the SEO plug for WordPress would “automatically” remove the question mark used in the post's title (and other characters which could choke up search engines and syndication platforms that distribute content around the Web) as part of the technical process used by the blog software to publish/syndicate the post.

I've personally only ever seen examples of trademark infringing cases on on the subject of domains and in some unique cases of brand identities on popular social network platforms. I am not a legal expert nor should the information I'm sharing be construed as advice on IP law matters, however my opinion would be that because SEO slugs are a relatively accepted syndication standard in the social Web, and are really a reiteration of the post's title/subject, I am not sure it will be treated or regarded in the same way infringing on trademark through the act of domain registration, the inclusion of a logo in the post, or the registration of an account/profile on the social Web.

Like Daniel, I haven't seen any examples of content being removed from thepissedoffconsumer.com, notwithstanding the trademark implication. If you do however seek legal advise on the matter, and are told differently, please do post whatever findings you are able to disclose as this is a topic that I (and others who may stumble on this post) may be following with great interest.

Joseph
@RepuTrack

Joseph, It is a regular site not wordpress. It is a deliberate SEO tactic to rank for the brand to drive traffic to their ads. I am meeting with an attorney to prepare for a presentation we are giving in the next week or two and I will definitely post what he says.