I remain deeply skeptical about most reputation defense services. One obvious problem is that many of these services claim to undo negative publicity after the fact. In a world where Google has essentially become an on-demand private detective for the masses, that’s an approach that simply won’t work. It can take months to counteract negative information that turns up on the first page of Google search results. In some cases, it simply won’t be possible to counteract negative search results.

Companies that care about their reputation need to be proactive about creating a positive search profile and strong consumer relations well in advance of any bad news. In a world of blogs and social networks that means participating online and actively engaging consumers in a transparent and authentic manner.

If this sounds time consuming, it can be. Not only that, chances are this new approach will require a skill set that might not fit neatly into existing job descriptions or departmental structures.

However, the payoff is clearly worth the effort. Companies that succeed in building goodwill with consumers and strong organic search results will be well positioned to weather any attack on their reputation in the future.

If you’d like to talk about building an effective social media strategy with an eye towards defending your corporate reputation online, give us a call.

• How To Protect Your Reputation Online
• The Thin Web Line

Not so long ago Twitter seemed like it might be a passing fad. Recently, the service has matured to become a nearly indispensable social media tool. With Twitter’s regular outages (mostly) a thing of the past, usage is skyrocketing. As a result, the service is branching out beyond alpha-geeks and into the general population. More and more regular people are embracing Twitter as a way of communicating with friends and expressing their opinions to the masses. Frequently, those opinions involve complaints of some sort — some of those complaints may even be about your brand.

A few companies are starting to realize the value of monitoring Twitter. When TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington tweeted about his frustration with his Comcast internet service, a company executive contacted him within 20 minutes attempting to resolve the problem. Comcast apparently tracks Twitter as part of a comprehensive effort to monitor the social media space.

A proactive monitoring approach is bound to save a lot of grief in the long run. It doesn’t take much for a Twitter meme to carry into the blogosphere, and once that happens there’s no telling where the story might go next. Just ask Dell.

It’s no surprise that Dell is already on the case with multiple Twitter accounts. The company has been proactive in its approach to social media ever since blogger Jeff Jarvis watched his Dell Hell complaint turn into an internet phenomenon.

As Read/Write web reports, Dell is not alone, being joined on Twitter by Southwest Airlines, among others.

One company that doesn’t seem to be monitoring Twitter is Washington Mutual. A user named WaMuWhooHoo has begun posting regular tweets touting WaMu’s $33 overdraft fee. In one tweet the user compares WaMu’s fees to other banks and notes “we suck less”. I somehow doubt that’s an official WaMu marketing slogan.

If you’re just getting started, here’s your action plan:

• Create a Twitter account: At a minimum you’ll want to create an account using your company name (before someone else does).
• Monitor Twitter for your brand and key terms: I’ve written about monitoring your brand in the past. Twitter should be added to the list of social media outlets that you track regularly. Use Tweetscan to search for all of your key names and phrases, then save the RSS feeds into your aggregator of choice.

  You might also learn a lesson from Comcast. When your search turns up something of substance, respond back via twitter as appropriate.

• Consider using Twitter as an official customer support channel: If your monitoring efforts turn up a substantial amount of commentary, it may be an indication that you need to devote official support resources to Twitter. While Twitter users may only be a small percentage of your customer base, chances are they’re a vocal and influential group. Providing them with support on their platform of choice could generate a substantial amount of good will.

  You may also find Twitter to be an efficient tool for support. What other support system limits a customer’s feedback to a mere 140 characters?

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Reputation, Reputation Management

The best companies will use these tools as an opportunity to engage consumers in a dialog while respecting the social media ecosystem.

However, simply setting up a blog and sending your employees to dive into the deep end of the social media pool isn’t enough. Without a firm understanding of how social media works, the results can be lukewarm, at best, and disastrous, at worst.

Just how bad can a corporate social media campaign be? The following case study analyzes the unfortunate social media campaign of the DuroSport corporation. If you’re involved in planning social media strategy for your company, I hope you’ll take this opportunity to learn from DuroSport’s many mistakes.

The Company:

For over forty years DuroSport has been the leading manufacturer of consumer electronics in Moldova and parts of Eastern Europe. Despite the company’s long history, North American consumers have had almost no exposure to the DuroSport brand. Furthermore, based on the company’s stated mission and promise there is some question whether American consumers will be receptive to the style of products that DuroSport manufactures.

The Goal:

DuroSport’s market research indicated that the company was making minor inroads with an older demographic group than the company desired. Apparently the company’s very large products appeal to older consumers with failing eyesight.

In an effort to reach a younger demographic the DuroSport marketing department decided to use blogs and social media to promote the company’s Prism media player. This decision was arrived at after a series of contentions meetings and the strenuous objections of Prism product manager, Nero Tarlev.

Despite Tarlev’s opposition, he was assigned to be DuroSport’s social media project lead and was asked to move quickly to establish a DuroSport presence on various social networks.

DuroSport Goes Social:

On the surface, DuroSport’s social media marketing strategy makes sense. Consumers are more likely to learn about new products from gadget blogs like Gizmodo and Engadget than through a corporate press releases. They are more likely to seek out the opinions of fellow consumers on social networks than they are to search out the product specifications and marketing material on a corporate website. Clearly, a company like DuroSport could benefit by engaging consumers through the use of social media.

Unfortunately, in practice DuroSport seems to have almost no understanding of how social media works, let alone how to use it to engage consumers in a meaningful way.

Despite these limitations DuroSport proceeded to implement a haphazard social media campaign that included the following:

• The Corporate Blog: For most companies the first attempt at social media will be a corporate blog. Blogs are probably the best way to give your corporation a human voice. Blogs are an essential tool for initiating a meaningful and ongoing dialog with your customers.

  The DuroSport Insider blog was started as a way to give customers a behind the scenes view of the inner workings of this unique electronics company.

  In the beginning, the blog wasn’t so bad. Tarlev, the newly dubbed “social media guru”, made an effort to deal with uncomfortable issues head-on. His post explaining the reason behind the company’s rather embarrassing t-shirt recall was remarkable for it’s candor. Few corporate bloggers would be so transparent about the role of canines in the garment production process.

  Regrettably, later posts saw Tarlev veer off into unfortunate territory as he used the blog to attack his competition, engage in a heated public argument with employees of Best Buy’s Geek Squad, and insult the intelligence of readers who doubted his claim that DuroSport had invented an unbreakable DRM system.

  Worse yet, at some point Tarlev was joined on the DuroSport Insider Blog by Chief Product Engineer Vladimir Concescu. While group blogs can be used quite effectively to give multiple perspectives from inside your organization, that wasn’t the result in DuroSport’s case.

  Concescu’s poor command of the English language, combined with rambling posts about his favorite television program and life in Moldovan prison added nothing to the dialogue DuroSport was attempting to initiate with its customers.

  As corporate blogs go, the DuroSport Insider Blog is a textbook case of what not to do.

• MySpace: At the instruction of his marketing department, Tarlev proceeded to setup a DuroSport profiles on MySpace. It’s fortunate for Tarlev that his blog has so few readers, because it’s likely that most MySpace users would be offended by his claim that they are a bunch illiterate hoodlums.

  Based on Tarlev’s profile and meager collection of friends it’s obvious that he didn’t spend much time on this project. It actually looks like he fulfilled the bare minimum obligation so that he could check this one off on his social media to-do list.

  On the contrary, Concescu embraced MySpace with enthusiasm. Perhaps a little too much enthusiasm. According to Tarlev, Concescu’s growing obsession with MySpace is partially responsible for the company missing key product release deadlines.

  While Concescu’s profile may be fine for a personal account, the fact is that he’s linked his profile to the DuroSport corporate blog and vice versa. Whether he realizes it or not, his profile has become an extension of DuroSport’s larger online presence, and it does not reflect well on the company.

• Facebook: Compared to MySpace, Facebook presents a much more hospitable environment for businesses of all kinds. Facebook Pages, combined with Facebook’s advertising platform and targeted demographics are an almost ideal environment for marketers wishing to reach consumers through social media.

  Surprisingly, DuroSport has no presence on Facebook. This curious omission makes it seem like their social media strategy might be based on a two year-old white paper. MySpace may have been the big story a year and a half ago, but Facebook is the story today. Tomorrow, who knows? The point is that social media is evolving rapidly and your social media strategy can easily go stale if you don’t review and update it on a regular basis.

• Second Life: Just as Concescu embraced MySpace with great vigor, Tarlev seemed to be a little too at home in Second Life. As a result, DuroSport spent an extraordinary amount of time and money building a presence in the virtual world. A presence that Concescu now refers to as “Nero’s Folly”.

  Reviews of the virtual DuroSport store were not kind, and there’s no indication that the project did anything to increase sales or brand awareness in the real world.

  While some have argued that virtual worlds are the future of the internet, the truth is that these environments still reach a very limited niche audience. Never mind the highly misleading numbers thrown around by Linden Lab. Second Life has a very small (and mostly inbred) gene pool.

  There’s no doubt that virtual worlds have a high coolness factor. However, they have an equally low efficiency factor. As a result, they should not be considered a key part of your social marketing strategy. At least not yet.

  As a side note, DuroSport’s Second Life build did have one positive aspect. It allowed the company to make the claim that its virtual media player has outsold the iPod in Second Life.

• Flickr: In a rare moment of social media lucidity, DuroSport’s Flickr photostream actually makes sense. The company used Flickr to post photos taken in and around its Second Life build. Given Second Life’s small user base and high system requirements, these photos actually allow DuroSport customers to experience the virtual store without the hassle of installing special software and learning to fly.

  Flickr’s funny that way. There are lots of interesting ways to use the service and it can be a great resource that supports some of your other social marketing efforts.

• Twitter: Depending on your worldview Twitter is either a revolutionary micro-blogging platform, or a highly overrated time sink.

  Twitter’s reach can’t compare with more mainstream social networking tools. But sometimes quality trumps quantity. That’s certainly the case with Twitter as the user base tends to be extremely high tech and very well connected.

  There are any number of ways a company might make creative use of Twitter as part of a larger social media strategy. However, reporting on physical ailments and insulting Robert Scoble are probably not the best approach. Needless to say, that’s exactly how Tarlev has been using “the Twitter“.

  I do think Tarlev may be on to something when he offered Evan Williams a job. Twitter could be a great recruiting tool for tech companies.

Where DuroSport Went Wrong:

Social media is an opportunity to engage consumers in a way that has never been possible with traditional media. Unfortunately, it’s clear that DuroSport has no real interest in engaging its customers. If anything, DuroSport is hostile towards its customers.

While I suspect this attitude may be prevalent among lots of other companies, it’s an attitude that won’t get you very far on the social web. These days if you hate your customers, they know it, and they’ll hate you right back. Worse yet, they’ll tell all their friends about it.

If DuroSport’s disdain for its own customers wasn’t enough to sink any hope of success in using social media, the top down approach certainly was. The most successful social media strategies will emerge from the most unexpected places. This is not something your marketing department can dictate and force on unwilling employees. Your social media guru has to be, well, sociable.

DuroSport’s Marketing department should have sought out and cultivated the involvement of employees who were already using social media (just not Concescu, obviously). In some ways this is like the early days of the web, when successful early web initiatives emerged from just about everywhere but the IT department.

Whether you’re already engaged in an active social media marketing campaign, or you’re just starting to explore the possibilities, there’s plenty to learn from the mistakes of the DuroSport corporation.

Technorati Tags: Social Media Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, DuroSport

Do you have an online reputation management strategy?

Unfortunately, for many businesses online reputation management is an afterthought. It’s only after something major goes wrong that businesses begin thinking about the issue, and by then it can be too late.

A recent New York Times article (via Pronet Advertising) documents some of the pitfalls that can occur when angry customers take their grievances to the web.

So, what’s a business to do? Here’s a checklist you can use to start developing your own online reputation management program:

1. Monitor your brands and key assets. The first step is the most obvious. If you want to know what people are saying about you, you have to make an effort to monitor the conversations that are taking place around the web.

   There are a number of services that allow you to easily monitor activity on blogs and social web sites. Use Technorati and Google News to setup saved search queries that monitor the web for references to key assets. These searches can be setup to run at regular intervals. Any time a new result is found you’ll be notified by email. Both services also offer RSS feeds for your search results.

   Make sure you setup searches for your company name, all brand or product names, service names, and key employees within your company.

   When a new reference to any of your search phrases turns up in your inbox, be sure to check it out immediately. It’s worth noting that it’s not always bad news. You’ll want to know when you’re getting good publicity as well.

2. Blog and engage in relevant social media sites. The biggest risk is that someone will post something negative about your company that will rise to the top of the search engine results. This is less likely to happen if you’ve spent time developing and cultivating your search profile. The best way to do that is by blogging, acquiring positive links and mentions from around the web, and participating in social networking sites where appropriate.

   Use blogging and social media interaction as an opportunity to tell your story and establish a dialogue with your customers. The relationship you build with your customers now will be a valuable asset if your reputation ever comes under attack.

   The SEO consultant quoted in the NYT article estimated that it could take a year to push a negative reference off the first page of the search engine results (at a cost of $3,000 per month). When your reputation is under attack a year isn’t fast enough. Better to start building those positive links and references to your company now — at a much lower cost. The more positive references there are to your business on the web, the harder it will be for a single negative comment or blog post to rise to the top of the search results.

3. Protect your name. Ideally, you should own the rights to the .com, .net, and .org domain names associated with your company and brand names. The last thing you want is a competitor in control of your identity on the web.

   Also, as The NYT article notes, your brand names should be trademarked. That will prevent unauthorized use of your name, but having control of the domain names to begin with will prevent the need for litigation.

   I’ve heard some experts recommend registering what are commonly referred to as gripe domains. I’m less enthusiastic about this idea. While you might sleep better at night owning the name MyCompanySucks.com, critics can be quite creative in their choice of domain names. Think of all of the variations of gripe domains that can be created based on your company name and you’ll quickly realize that you could spend a substantial amount of time and money acquiring and managing a portfolio of domain names as a paranoid strategy against possible misuse. Better to trademark your name to prevent it from being used in any negative context.

While these initial steps won’t prevent your company from being unfairly attacked online, they will at least minimize the damage. And when someone does make an effort to damage your company’s reputation there’s a good chance you’ll know about the attack right away. How you respond is another matter entirely.

Some negative references will be legitimate complaints about your product or service. If that’s the case, use the opportunity to set things right with the angry customer. Doing so in a timely manner will likely win you a loyal customer for life, and could even generate a positive buzz around your company.

Unfortunately, not all criticisms will be reasonable or rational. As the business owner profiled in the NYT article found out, sometimes the only solution is to resort to taking legal action. Also, it’s worth nothing that when dealing with an irrational critic, sometimes responding directly can actually make the situation worse. Dealing with this type of criticism more of an art than a science, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

Technorati Tags: Online Reputation Management, Reputation

Traditional media outlets have been struggling to adapt their formats in a world where their audience already knows the news. Meanwhile, communications professionals of all varieties are trying new strategies for disseminating their messages to audiences facing information overload.

While media organizations have been focused on competing in a world of increasing competition and decreasing audience attention span, a complex social media ecosystem has emerged to present us with an entirely new type of news cycle — the viral news cycle.

Blogs, social news aggregators, podcasts, and web video have proven to be a highly effective platform for propagating news, in a manner that couldn’t be more different from traditional media. While traditional news cycles offer a top down dissemination of information, viral news cycles have emerged as the result of news audiences sharing and filtering news directly with their peers.

In many respects, the viral news cycle exists in an entirely different dimension from the traditional news cycle. Traditional news cycles are linear, viral news cycles are jagged and unpredictable as stories work their way through a complex mesh of social media nodes.

Social news aggregators like Digg and Reddit have the power to expose even the most obscure news items to incredibly large audiences. As a result, stories that would never be covered by traditional media are reaching a global audience, and stories that are already well documented by mainstream media are receiving a wider range of analysis and interpretation.

There are many well known examples of seemingly minor stories gaining mainstream media coverage after first receiving exposure in the social media realm. One recently example is the story of an airline customer and the bad experience he had flying on Spirit Airlines.

Alex Rudloff’s sad tale of poor customer service, compounded by a personal insult that was inadvertently emailed to him by the company’s CEO, probably wouldn’t have made it into his hometown newspaper in the old days. Thanks to social media and the viral news cycle, Rudloff became something of a minor celebrity and his story is now known far and wide. After making the front page of Reddit the story was picked up by blogs, then eventually mainstream media outlets.

This story is a classic example how social media empowers consumers to become both news creators and news distributors. The Spirit Air CEO told his employees to “let him [Rudloff] tell the world how bad we are”, and that’s exactly what Rudloff did. The CEO didn’t expect the world to listen. Chances are he wasn’t even aware that it was possible for a single consumer to reach such a wide audience with his complaint. That’s the power of the viral news cycle.

In the old days unhappy customers told all of their friends about a bad consumer experience. Increasingly consumers are now using their blogs to tell their friends, and the world, about their bad consumer experiences. The best (as in worst) stories are reaching a huge and receptive audience of networked consumers. If you thought negative word of mouth was bad, it can be catastrophic when it hits the blogosphere.

One interesting aspect of the Spirit Airlines story is that it runs counter to the widely held belief that only A-List bloggers can reach a large audience. There’s a common misconception that a blog has to be in the Technorati Top 100 to have a substantial impact. That couldn’t be further from the truth. While it’s true that the top bloggers tend to break stories more consistently, social news aggregators provide a platform that allows even novice bloggers to reach a huge audience almost instantaneously.

There are a number of lessons here for businesses of all varieties. Executives and business owners would do well to keep the following in mind:

• Your customers are more influential now than they have ever been before. They’re networked and they’re communicating directly with each other. In a world of pervasive social media it is no longer possible to control the flow of information. It’s much easier to treat your customers with respect and do the right thing.
• Social media is a legitimate force that can have a significant impact on your business (for better or worse). It’s time to start taking social media seriously, just as you would more traditional forms of media.
• If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to start learning more about social media. Make sure you, or someone in your organization, really understands the social media ecosystem — not only the blogs in your specific industry, but also social bookmarking sites, social news aggregators, and even more general social networks. When working in the social media realm, there’s no substitute for a deep knowledge of how the various forms of social media work and interact.
• It’s important to add social media outlets to the list of traditional media sources that you monitor for references to your company name, key employees, brand names, and service offerings. While a small mention on a seemingly obscure blog may not seem important, there’s no telling how far that mention might reverberate.

Viral news cycles and tradition news cycles are not mutually exclusive — they feed on each other and interact in unpredictable ways. Neither is going away any time soon, so it’s important to understand and work with both.

Technorati Tags: Social Media, News Cycles, Viral News Cycle

According to a recent LA Times article, more than a few city officials are finally waking up to the fact that large corporations have been aware of for a while now: When your customers/constituents have a problem with your organization they are increasingly inclined to tell the world about it on their blog.

The old rules of public communications are being turned upside down in the new era of conversation-based media. For city officials who haven’t bothered to keep current on the latest trends in the blogosphere, this news comes as a startling wake-up call.

The problem is that many government agencies have Web 1.0 tunnel vision, and are not ready for a Web 2.0 world. From the beginning, government agencies have used the web as a low-cost one-way publishing medium. In some cases they’ve developed eGovernment initiatives to streamline labor intensive processes and provide better constituent service.

Very few agencies have used the web as an opportunity to engage their constituency in an ongoing discussion about the issues of the day. Blogs make this engagement unavoidable. Citizen bloggers are having these conversation whether or not city officials choose to participate. Simply avoiding gadfly bloggers won’t make them go away.

Some advice for city officials who are finally realizing that blogging isn’t just a passing fad:

• Blogs are a communications challenge, not a technology challenge. It has been my first hand experience over the past 15 years that city officials are too quick to look for a technological solution to most problems — especially when the “problem” seems to be related to the Internet. The challenges presented by citizen bloggers can’t be solved by your IT department. In most organizations, blogger-relations is a responsibility that is most appropriately assigned to the Public Information Officer. Your PIO should be a new media savvy individual who is capable and competent to monitor a variety of media sources, and use a range of social media tools to interact with constituents.
• We’re living in an era of conversation-based media. It’s crucial to understand that you no longer have control over any public discussion taking place about your community. Your constituents are talking about issues outside of the regularly scheduled council and commission meetings. You might want to listen to what they’re saying.
• Be proactive about monitoring the blogosphere. You should already be monitoring traditional media sources for mentions of your agency. Blogs should be monitored as part of this ongoing effort. Use tools like Google News, Technorati, and a good RSS reader to setup pre-defined searches for a variety of names and topics, including: the mayor, council members, city manager, key employees, and key project names or issues.
• Participate in the conversation. Blogs have comments for a reason. When a blogger misrepresents your organization make it a point to respond in the blog’s comment section. Surprisingly, only one official mentioned in the LA Times article is making an effort to respond to citizen bloggers. Many public officials simply ignore bloggers, or, at most, openly complain about the inaccuracy of the information on community blogs and the anonymity of the bloggers. A few officials have sought legal remedies — given the fact that there are more bloggers than lawyers, the legal approach is one that won’t scale and should only be used as a last resort, and even then only in the most extreme cases.

In my next post I’ll provide some guidelines for government agencies that are brave enough to consider blogging.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Government, Municipal, Citizen Blogs

Joe suggests to his readers that “It might be a sound marketing move to list you, your product or service on Wikipedia”. While that may be a good idea for some business owners, it may not be right for everyone. It may seem counter-intuitive, but, a listing in Wikipedia isn’t always a good thing.

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind to ensure that your Wikipedia entry is an asset and not a liability:

• Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the rules. There are a few guidelines that determine what sort of content stays in Wikipedia and what gets removed by the army of volunteers who edit the site on a daily basis.

  Before creating an entry for your product or service, be sure the entry meets the notability requirement. Generally speaking, “a topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.” While this isn’t a problem for an internet superstar like Joe, many new products and services may not yet qualify as notable. While it’s true that you can add anything to Wikipedia, chances are an editor will pull your entry if you aren’t notable. Worse yet, you risk offending the Wikipedia community who may consider your entry to be a form of spam. The last thing any of us want is to be accused of spamming.

  If you meet the notability requirement, be sure to write your entry from a Neutral Point of View (NPOV). Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales refers to the NPOV rule as “absolute and non-negotiable.” Be aware that, if your entry isn’t written from a NPOV, someone else will very likely modify it to conform with the rule. Given the opportunity, most of us would prefer to draft our own copy rather than have a stranger redraft the copy on our behalf.

• Prepare to lose control. Once your entry is in Wikipedia anyone can update or modify it. Unlike your own website, you won’t have the final word on how your information is presented.
• You may already be listed. There are millions of entries in Wikipedia, with thousands of new pages being added every day. Joe was surprised to find his entry, and you may be surprised to find that your name, product, or service is already listed without your knowledge. If that’s the case, it raises a few questions — who wrote the article and what did they say about you?

  Whether you plan on creating your own Wikipedia entry or not, ALL businesses should make an effort to monitor Wikipedia for mentions of their company name, key employees, brand names, and service offerings. Depending on the nature of your business monitoring Wikipedia could be as important as monitoring references to your business in the mainstream media and the blogosphere (you do monitor blogs, don’t you?).

  The fact that anyone can create or modify a Wikipedia entry means that your entry could be modified by an unhappy customer, or worse, an unethical competitor. As a result you’ll want to monitor your entries for any misleading or inaccurate information, and promptly make corrections when justified. This is an area where the NPOV rule can really work to your advantage — you can use the rule to ensure that your Wikipedia entry is a fair and balanced account of your business.

• Consider how your listing will affect your Google ranking. Are you currently number one for the name, word, or phrase that would also be the title of your Wikipedia entry? If so, are you prepared to lose your top ranking to Wikipedia? It could happen. It’s well known that Google favors sites that it considers to be authoritative. Few sites are as authoritative as Wikipedia. Wikipedia ranks number one on Google for many popular search phrases.

  As I’ve noted, you don’t have the same level of control over your Wikipedia entry that you have over your own website. With that in mind, consider the possible issues that may arise if your Wikipedia entry were to outrank you on Google.

• Sometimes a link is better than an dedicated entry. In the past, search engine experts have encouraged website owners to find relevant Wikipedia entries where they can insert links to their websites. Links from Wikipedia were believed to pass page rank and authority to the site being linked to. The problem is, lots of people had the same idea, and many unscrupulous SEO practitioners began indiscriminately spamming Wikipedia with off-topic links. As a result, Wikipedia has begun adding the “no follow” attribute to all outgoing links. This means that Google and other search engines won’t follow the link, and links of this sort will no longer improve your search engine ranking. However, it may still be a good idea to add links to information about your product or service where appropriate. I can’t stress enough how important it is to make the links appropriate and on topic — again, link spamming is never a good idea. Besides, a link of this sort is only useful if your website is relevant to the content of the Wikipedia page you’ve added the link to. Remember, the goal is to add relevant content that actually enhances the Wikipedia entry.

As you can see, there’s quite a bit more to Wikipedia than just adding an entry to promote your business. Even if you have no desire to be listed in Wikipedia, you may already be there. Be sure to add Wikipedia to the list of media sources you monitor on a regular basis.

Wikipedia is a great resource and I think it’s safe to say that we’d all like to see it stay that way. The best way to ensure the ongoing quality of Wikipedia is to understand how it works and to play by the rules.

Technorati Tags: Wikipedia, Wiki, Wikis, Marketing

The Oxford Media Works team was fortunate enough to attend the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference in San Jose last week. The event was designed to immerse publishers in the future. This was the inaugural TOC conference, and we have every reason to believe that it has already established itself as the premier conference for publishing industry technology (never mind the fact that it may very well be the only conference in that category, it was still a fine event nonetheless).

Our coverage the TOC conference can be found on both Medialoper and Booksquare:

• Book Publishers Meet The Future — An overview of the conference and some of the challenges currently facing publishers.
• DRM for Books: Will Publishers Learn Anything from the Music Industry’s Mistakes? — A look at Digital Rights Management as it applies to the publishing industry.
• Connecting Books With Readers: A Failure — Despite the promise of Print On Demand and streamlined inventory management systems, publishers still have challenges getting books into the hands of avid readers.
• Hansel and Gretel Were Right: Number 99 in Our Series on Search — If publishers need to learn one thing it should probably be that Google is not the enemy. Better to work with all search engines than to try to build your own.

The problem is so prevalent that a company named Vocus has developed a software solution designed to help PR professionals communicate more effectively with bloggers. To promote their new product, Vocus has released a white paper titled “Five Golden Rules For Blogger Relations”. We learned about the white paper earlier this week when the Vocus marketing department sent out an impersonal form letter to their entire mailing list — including a number of high profile bloggers.

Brian Clarke at Copyblogger was clearly amused, and a little insulted. He quoted most of the email message in a post, including the bit about the worst case scenario where bloggers might quote your email in an attempt to ridicule your company.

It was only a matter of time before other blogs started picking up on the story — many because the blogger had received the same email message. Word spread rapidly and everyone had a good laugh at Vocus’s expense.

Talk about the wrong kind of viral marketing.

Vocus managed to recreate the exact scenario that they are allegedly trying to help their customers avoid. As blogging PR screw-ups go, this one was a classic.

So how did things go so horribly wrong for Vocus? They broke their own rules — all five of them.

Worse yet, they apparently didn’t use their own software. The company claims to have spent thousands of hours building an extensive database of the most influential bloggers. Next time they might want to compare that list against the list of addresses they’re sending their marketing email to.

To be fair, the company owned up to its mistake and even offered a fairly reasonable explanation for what had occurred. As it turns out Vocus acquired PRWeb last year. The email in question was sent to all PRWeb customers. One of the problems, though, is that none of this was explained in the email. Instead, the message came across as pure spam from a company the recipients had no previous relationship with.

My guess is that everyone at Vocus learned a valuable lesson from this experience. If nothing else they learned that the scenario portrayed in their marketing email is a very real phenomenon.

There’s quite a bit of effort involved in building and maintaining effective relationships with bloggers. It isn’t a process that can be automated. While a database of blogger contact information might be a useful starting point, it’s not a replacement for personal contact with individual bloggers.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Blogging, Marketing, PR

Unfortunately, it sometimes appears that the publishing world at large is oblivious to these new opportunities. If publishers are taking advantage of new media and the social web, we aren’t hearing much about their efforts. And yet, something tells me that there must be innovators out there who are blazing the trail that the rest of the industry will soon follow.

Over on our Booksquare blog we’ve just put out a call for examples of innovative uses of new media in the publishing industry. If you’re a publisher, author, agent, or publicist, and you’re doing something interesting and unique online we’d like to hear more about it.

We hope to use our findings in a series of posts that will highlight new opportunities for those in the publishing industry. Depending on what we uncover we may also include examples in our upcoming report “New Media Best Practices for Publishing Industry Professionals”.

Technorati Tags: Publishing, New Media