Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
More and more consumers are making decisions based on reviews from online sites like Angie’s List and Yelp. In a perfect world, every customer would be a happy customer. Unfortunately, it is usually the disgruntled customer who chooses to leave a nasty review that can leave a brand feeling tarnished. In fact, eight out of ten consumers change their mind after seeing a bad review. So how should you respond to these reviews, both positive and negative? Here are some best practices to managing your reputation when it comes to online reviews.
1. Monitor: This is the first step. In order to respond and manage, you have to understand what is being said about your brand online. Google recently launched a free tool, “Me on the Web” that can help small businesses monitor online sentiment more easily. Similarly, Google Alerts is another free tool that will bring attention to any newly added reviews. Don’t forget to check sites like Facebook and Twitter; users are increasingly turning to social media to share their consumer experiences.
2. Participate: It’s important to respond to negative reviews. Whether it’s through a private message (Direct Message on Twitter) or a short apology and possible explanation, other consumers will see that you stand behind your brand. Feel free to respond to glowing reviews too, but whatever you decide to write, make sure it is thoughtful and appropriate for an open, online community.
3. Generate and Promote Reviews: Invite your consumers to share their experience online, and make it easy for them! Increasingly, brands have links from their website to review sites to facilitate sharing. While it may draw initial attention to any bad reviews you have, encouraging consumers to visit your website and leave their opinion will start to pay off. Transparency is key.
4. Engage with Influencers: Influencers tend to have a large following and their opinion holds weight online. By reaching out to them, or sending them your product and encouraging them to review it, you can reach a broader audience. While you can’t guarantee a glowing review, at the very least, influencers can garner attention and start an online conversation about your brand.
5. Report: If someone is leaving unwarranted and malicious reviews, you can reach out to the review site and request the review be taken down.
Feeling overwhelmed trying to sift through all the reviews? Be careful of companies offering to manage your reputation for you. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported that small and mid-size businesses will spend $700 million on online brand management this year alone. Be wary of companies that promise to take down any nasty reviews, as they can cost a fortune and often rely on black-hat tactics. By employing these best practices and taking the time to engage with your consumers, your brand can enjoy a genuine, and authentic, positive sentiment online.
Personally, I find great value in reviews, both positive and negative. Aside from using them to decide where to eat on a Friday night, I am increasingly relying on review sites to help me find a new doctor or dentist. While there are many reviews sites, I could never find one site that showed an overall rating that had been aggregated from the top review sites. This is why I decided to publish a website that uses an algorithm to compile the best user-reviewed dentists across the country. That way, potential patients don’t have to sift through the review sites and can rely on our site to find the top dentists in the country. I am hoping that these types of sites will be the future of consumer-generated reviews to help consumers make the most educated decisions.
About the author: Alexis Goodrich is the brand manager at Best Dentist Guide, a free guide that helps in selecting the best professional for your dental needs. Find and compare top-rated dentists, based on ratings, patient reviews, specialized training and degrees, years of practice, convenience and several other factors. Follow her on Twitter, @alexisgoody and @bestdent1st, for more dental related topics.
As a faithful Seattle Seahawks fan, a win is a win in my book. However, after Monday night’s football game against the Green Bay Packers, others may not share my sentiment. For those who didn’t catch the game or for those who may have been living under a rock the past week and avoided every existing news outlet or social media channel, let me quickly recap.
Among football fans, it’s fairly common knowledge that the NFL referees union has been on strike (or locked out by the league) since before the official season started. For the past three weeks, replacement referees have officiated games and from the start, have been met with an onslaught of criticism for their series of blunders and ridiculously inaccurate calls. However, when Monday night’s replacement refs signaled a game-winning Seattle touchdown, while replays demonstrated the refs may have made the wrong call (again, as a Seahawks fan, I’ll refrain from commenting on the legitimacy of the ruling), it was enough to send angry football fans into overdrive.
Almost immediately, social media channels and media outlets lit up criticizing the NFL and sending the league into a PR crisis management firestorm. Even President Obama spoke out saying, “we’ve got to get our refs back” and top-tier sports media outlets such as Sports Illustrated claimed that the replacement refs have, “significantly impacted the NFL’s product on the field.” According to The Wall Street Journal, the NFL demonstrated that they’re willing to put an inferior product on the field all over a $3 million fight with the NFL Referees Association—pocket change for the $10 billion industry.
So how does the NFL recover from a debacle that opened them up to public scrutiny and damaged its reputation? Well, for starters, it likely pressured them to finally reach a deal with the referees union, with official refs making their season debut in last night’s game. However, while the NFL clearly took a hit to its image, many claim that if there’s a brand that can stand the test of poor PR decisions, it’s the NFL. Although football fans nationwide began questioning the integrity of the game, is it enough for them to take action and stop watching? Likely not.
While the NFL will undoubtedly come out on top of this fiasco, no organization is immune to a potential crisis and it is how you handle the situation that really counts. For tips on how to help prepare for a crisis and protect your brand, check out our blogs on What Not To Do in Crisis Communication and Key Elements of a Crisis Communication Plan.
When a company has news, the most common request we hear from clients is to distribute a press release announcing the newest product, customer or award win. But prepare yourself for a radical idea: A press release isn’t always the best way to communicate your company’s news.
My colleague, Holly, recently wrote about using targeted pitches to share news beyond using a press release. But there are other options as well, including using a news blog. A blog can save your company money when compared to costs distributing a news release over a wire service. Additionally, getting reporters to pay attention to your press release is challenging – most aren’t newsworthy, the market is inundated with them, and some can be overly technical and uninteresting. If you develop a blog, consistently write compelling content and amplify its existence, you’ll eventually build a solid audience of customers, influencers and employees.
In his post, “Are Blog Posts Better Than Press Releases?” Jeremy Porter provides guidance for companies exploring the option.
Below are some of the tips:
- Make It Official: Whether your company already sends press releases or is a startup and hasn’t established that method yet, it’s important to inform your contacts about the plan to communicate news via the blog and recommending they subscribe to the RSS feed. Jeremy also suggests offering different types of RSS subscriptions if the blog’s content will be varied.
- Plan Your News Calendar: A press release may be distributed for your company only a handful of times a year, but that’s not an effective cadence for a blog. It’s necessary to publish blogs more often and an editorial calendar is the best way to plan the posts. Your posts can cover many topics and formats including employee profiles, Q&A, trends and major industry news. A blog also offers more options for dynamic content like graphics, video and other multimedia.
- Build An Archive: Jeremy recommends publishing all of your company’s press releases from the past year on the blog, post-dated to coincide with the press releases’ distribution dates. This will function as the news archive and provide search engine optimization for post rankings.
- Solicit Reader Feedback: Blog posts offer engagement opportunities that press releases can’t match. Readers can leave comments to spark a discussion, provide feedback on your news and add perspective. Invite their commentary with your posts and eventually you’ll garner input.
- Track the Results: Once the blog is underway, you can begin gaining analytics about the reach, audience and interest in your posts. You can also see which organizations covered the post and linked back to it. This information allows you to share insights with your organization’s leaders and can help your PR team in prioritizing which outlets to follow up with on your company’s news.
Many organizations are pursuing this communications avenue, including the FBI, Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood and Google. Is this an idea your company explored in the past? Why kinds of success are you seeing or what might be holding you back?
At Communiqué PR we are always trying to stay current on the latest social media and PR trends, and how they can benefit our clients.
I recently came across an article on Ragan.com titled, “How Pinterest can boost your press release results” (by Carrie Morgan, September 21, 2012.) The article presented interesting ways that Pinterest can be used to increase the reach of your press release. I found the tips intriguing and thought it would be worth sharing.
Consider the following:
1. Add an infographic to your release and pin it. Images are a great way to boost a media pitch or blog post. The same is true for a press release. By adding a relevant infographic to your press release, you help news outlets by providing a visual element. The next step is to upload the infographic to Pinterest and hyperlink to the full press release with a short summary and hashtags.
For example, if you are distributing a press release about a new shoe store, you could include an infographic that illustrates shoe trends.
Morgan suggests searching “infographic” on newswire services like Marketwire, BusinessWire or PRNewswire for inspiration.
2. Create a Pinterest newsroom. Many corporate websites have newsrooms or pressrooms that highlight media coverage and press releases. Now companies can replicate this on Pinterest.
Your newsroom can include infographics, news clips, blog posts, videos and team leadership photos. You can link headshots of the CEO to a biography, bylined article or other relevant content. Once you do this, Morgan suggests linking their name directly to their pinboard, if they have one, when you quote them in a press release.
3. Create a pinboard that fits your infographic or news topic. By creating a pinboard that relates to your press release, you are likely to increase search traffic. For example, if your press release is about a new shoe store opening, you could create a pinboard that would be relevant to fashionistas. Many shoe connoisseurs might search for inspiration with keywords like “boots for winter,” making this a perfect title for a pinboard. This type of a pinboard could target your audience and complement the infographic you select for a press release. You can also link back to your press release.
4. Optimize the pin using the same keywords optimized in your press release. Pinterest holds a lot of power for SEO, according to Morgan. You can do this by using the keywords from your press release in the title and summary of the pin.
Additionally, include the keywords as hashtags. Morgan writes, “I’ve had boards rank highly in Google within 48 hours, even for keywords that have been difficult to rank using traditional methods.”
Using the shoe store example, you could use keywords like “#boots”, “#heels”, “#footwear,” etc.
5. Use Pinterest for free market research. Pinterest can be a great tool to identify different trends based on pinning. We wrote previously about how Nordstrom used Pinterest to identify which fashion trends resonated with consumers based on items being repinned.
You can leverage Pinterest to spark ideas for bylined article topics or other trend pieces by paying attention to what is being repinned and liked.
Using the shoe store example, if consumers are repinning a particular knee-high boot, you could develop a blog post about how knee-high boots are hot this fall and provide ideas for creating an entire look.
We love learning about how organizations are leveraging social media platforms in new and creative ways. The most effective social media strategy will be different for each company; we work with our clients individually to identify what makes the most sense to help them accomplish their business and communications objectives. While this Pinterest approach might not be right for every organization, it is definitely worth exploring!
How is your brand leveraging Pinterest?
Here at Communique, we love working with start-ups and small businesses. We are familiar with the creative and collaborative mindsets of both work environments, which make phenomenal settings for innovation and professional development. However, it can be daunting for both start-ups and small businesses to expand, especially into foreign markets—even if there is an ideal market abroad. Being a small business ourselves, we understand the need to constantly search for ways to improve and streamline our business and costs. This includes a careful approach to expansion, something of which any small business should be mindful.
This past summer, I was lucky to have the opportunity to intern with the U.S. State Department at the U.S. Embassy, Port Louis, Mauritius. Along with meeting some of the impressive, inspiring, and hardworking staff of the U.S. State Department, I was also able to gain some insight into the various resources the U.S. government provides for businesses.
During my time with the State Department, I was pleased to learn how many government programs exist to help American small businesses in particular. Although a potentially intimidating task for any business, the U.S. government offers a collection of services to assist small businesses in expanding into foreign markets.
- SBA.gov.The U.S. Small Business Administration has a wide selection of guides on starting and managing a business, a variety of loans and grants, information on government contracting, and counseling and training resources. See one extremely helpful guide: Financing Your Small Business Exports, Foreign Investments, or Projects.
- Export-Import Bank of the United States. “Ex-Im” is the official export credit agency of the United States. They provide loan programs to facilitate export opportunities for both large and small businesses. Ex-Im Bank’s services include working capital guarantees, export credit insurance, and loan guarantees. Roughly 85% of their transactions are associated with U.S. small businesses.
- OPIC.OPIC is the federal government’s development finance institution. OPIC provides financial products (loans and guarantees), political risk insurance, and support for investment funds to help American businesses expand into emerging markets. OPIC’s overarching goal is to mobilize private capital to solve critical development challenges, advancing U.S. foreign policy, and generating revenue, jobs, and growth both domestically and abroad.
- Office of Investment Affairs. This office’s primary goal is to advance international investment interests of the United States domestically and abroad. Online, the OIA offers information on trade agreements and treaties. Additionally, OIA generates “Investment Climate Statements,” a guide of other nations’ economies that utilizes layman’s terms to describe different areas of foreign economies essential to investment.
If you’re considering expanding your small business into a foreign market, make sure to look at the resources the U.S. Government can offer you. After all, you’re already paying for them.
For more from CPR on small businesses, check out:
- Building (and Maintaining) a Sense of Passion in Small Business Settings, 7/5/2012
- Four Ways Instagram Can Lead a Small Business to Success, 6/15/2012
- Our Favorite Business Blogs, 6/30/2010
Are you considering expanding your small business into a foreign market? What resources have you found helpful?
As PR professionals, we are tasked with selling our client’s story to target media and influentials. We must convince them our client has something interesting to say that their readers would be interested in knowing. As such, one of the most critical skills in PR is the ability to write well. Not just the mechanics of writing, but the creative art of storytelling.
Anyone who has spent time writing for a living knows that sometimes the ideas seem to fall from the sky and the words flow freely from pen to page. Creative flow just happens. But there are days when the flow freezes over. No ideas come to mind and writing becomes an arduous task – classic writer’s block.
After experiencing a recent bout with writer’s block, I thought it would be helpful to share some of my own tips and strategies, as well as what I’ve learned from others, for melting the ice and returning the flow.
- Start writing. Something. Anything! Sometimes the best way to get started is simply to get started, even if you don’t have any idea what you are going to say or in which direction your writing is headed. The act of putting something down on paper or tapping away at the keyboard (even on an unrelated topic), often triggers the formulation of new ideas and loosens up the creative flow.
- Write first, research later. Once you’ve settled on a topic, flesh out early ideas with some non-stop-writing. Professional writing instructor and founder of the National Writers Workshop, Roy Peter Clark, suggests writing for 10 minutes without stopping even before you’ve completed your research. Clark says, “Your early writing – call it a ‘zero draft’ – will teach you what you know and what you still need to learn.” He also suggests you lower your standards at the beginning of the process and raise them later, so your desire for perfection doesn’t inhibit you from getting started. Clark’s tips were published on the popular online writing resource Grammar Girl.
- Do your homework. Information junkies may do better with the opposite approach – research first. In his article on overcoming writer’s block, published on the Psychology Today blog, author and journalist Steven Kotler says, “If I have nothing to say, then maybe it’s because I literally have nothing to say. I haven’t done my homework. So the first thing I do when stuck is more research. I read everything. I dream up questions and then I call people a lot smarter than myself and ask.”
- Make it personal. If you have any leeway with the direction of a topic, try to align it with what you already know or what interests you. Having some familiarity with or interest in a topic makes idea generation much more natural. And chances are if it interests you, it will interest someone else.
- Tune out. Often the best ideas come while taking a shower or weeding the garden. Creativity often takes place in the spaces between forced thought. That’s when our brains are free to process information and make connections from all the input rattling around upstairs.
- Get moving. We’ve all heard it many times, but it’s worth repeating. Exercise, and the subsequent release of endorphins, can clear your mind, rev up your mood and restore brainpower. But be sure to skip the headphones. Exercising without music allows your mind to wander and your thoughts to become clearer (see “Tune out” above.)