The Internet forgets almost nothing. Once pronounced, information spreads there in wind ropes and are then neither to be stopped nor deleted.
The influence of ratings
For this reason, not only owners of shops, products or brands should worry about their reputation. In the end, it can hit everyone.
Certainly the interest is only small when images of a bachelor party are shown on the Internet, in which the participants are running through the city. However, if they are mentioned on a public Facebook page, the names of the racers, and one of them is just looking for a new job, then this may well lead to direct disadvantages.
Observe and Options
The damage caused by a bad online reputation ranges from personal reputation damage to enormous financial losses if unsatisfied customers omit a faulty product.
Reviews on the track
This has already happened to many larger companies, even Apple was not spared it and had to suffer on the iPhone 4 a wave of complaints about itself. Some users complained about receiving problems when the device is touched at the same time while in the phone.
The information spread rapidly on the Internet and could finally be eliminated only by an offensive communication of Steve Jobs and a free shock absorber from Apple. In this case, it becomes clear how important it is to monitor the Internet and how quickly you need to react in order to maintain your reputation.
Of course, "Online Reputation Management" is particularly important for those who sell products or represent a company. In a search engine journal article by Murray Newlands, a number of interesting key figures have been identified that highlight the importance of Internet assessments. Most of the statistics mentioned here are already somewhat older, but have gained in importance in the last few years rather than lost.
It is not surprising, for example, that Opinion Research Corporation is aware of the impact of ratings from other customers: 83% of potential buyers can be influenced by recommendations from the Internet.
You have certainly observed this behavior in yourself: when you buy individual products, you are most likely to be the first to be evaluated by Google or various online merchants.
Articles, which get at Amazon less than three stars, are often not further respected. In April 2010, consultant McKinsey also assessed the importance of oral propaganda on the purchase of products with 20 to 50 percent. A similar result was obtained from a study from Harvard Business in 2011, which evaluates the meaning of the stars based on the American appraisal portal Yelp.com
Per star, which is gained or lost, the interest of potential customers increases or decreases by 5 to 9 per cent. Based on these statistics it becomes clear that a company - no matter what size - can not afford negative ratings if it wants to be successful in the online as well as in the offline world.
For this reason, it is essential to always have a keen eye on the reviews on the Internet and the comments of the customers. These observations do not necessarily require professional support.
On the following pages, we will show you how to use free tools to monitor the Internet and the most important social networks, and to actively use critical voices.
View of Tweets
In most cases it is possible to comment negative reviews at least. You should also make use of this possibility, take the critical comments aside and attack the critics.
Often they also provide helpful suggestions for improving a service or product. Of course you do not have to accept anything.
Almost every evaluation portal, as well as platforms such as Amazon, have clear rules on how a rating should look and under which constellations a provider can get the comment.
You should read these rules carefully and, if you are negative, make sure that they are true to the rules of the platform.
The entry into the Online Reputation Management (ORM) can be very simple. Nobody has more information about a product or person than a search engine.
Search in blogs
Search with special focus
Autocomplete simulate
Monitoring feeds
Image search
There is no special recommendation on which search engine you should use. Before starting such an analysis, you should log out of all the entries, which allow the search engine to assign to a user account. Otherwise, the corresponding service provides pre-filtered results based on the data available to the user.
For example, if you're using Google as a search engine and logged in through your Google Account on Google+ or Gmail. After this initial analysis, you get a first rough overview of how the brand or the product gets to the Internet community.
For a search for "Singapore Airlines" and "Rating", Google provides links to the websites of airline reviews, Flightcheckers, So-warmeme-Flug.de or Dooyoo as a hit on the first page.
Of the first ten hits, there were nine websites, on which customers of the airline can express their opinion. Of course, this approach is not very convenient and efficient because you need to perform a variety of queries manually for each analysis and evaluate the results appropriately.
A certain level of automation is achieved with the Google service Alerts. This requires a Google account and sends a notification via e-mail to a specific search string for each update.
The service also allows the configuration of several search queries, which are managed via the web interface. You will be automatically notified when Google has found new sites to the search.
If you are particularly interested in the analysis of tweets, then look at the service TweetBeep. The service describes itself as "Google Alerts for Twitter". You can use TweetBeep to set different search terms, as well as exclusion criteria that should not occur within the tweet.
TweetBeep offers several types of searches: "KeywordSearch" for searching the terms within the complete tweets, "hash tag" for the indexing analysis, and "mentions Twitter usernames" for analyzing the reference to the given user name
There are several payment models of the service. These differ in the number of search queries as well as the response times. They cost between $ 5 and $ 20 per month, with the most expensive version offering 15 minutes as the shortest update interval.
No less important is an analysis in blogs. However, this is not quite as simple, since, in addition to the large installations in the cloud like WordPress.com or Blogger.com, there are also many decentrally installed blogs.
At this point, however, the Google search engine again performs well and restricts the search results with these special hits. In a similar direction goes the search engine SocialMention, which searched various blogs, microblogs but also mainly offerers such as Youtube or Google News. You can filter the possible result sets either from the start or from the beginning.
Depending on the environment in which you are moving or talking about your products, there are different services that offer an overarching search in this market environment.
With these, you are often quicker to the desired insights than with a classic search engine such as Google. An example would be Technorati, a real-time search engine for English-language blogs.
The range of websites analyzed is reflected in the top 100 most important blogs. These are available in a comprehensive overview of all topics as well as in a theme-specific version.
The search engine is oriented in its analysis to the keywords, which the blogger has assigned for an article, and takes up accordingly. However, there is no automatic notification for new contributions to your supervised topics or a daily list of all current blogs. You only have the option to start the analysis manually.
Almost everyone knows the Autocomplete feature of Google and other search engines. Although it does not appear to be at first glance, there is a link between the issue of reputation and the search engine suggestion.
This may be quite significant, as the search for the keyword "Bettina Wulff" shows: This had announced in May this year to go against Google, since after the input of her name as suggested values terms like "escort service" or "prostitutes Artemis ".
This is still happening today, but you only have to enter one or two letters. The service "Übersuggest" takes this task away from you and shows you the most frequently requested combinations after entering a term
The language and the type of documents are also available as additional parameters. In the top 10 results of this service, after entering "Bettina Wulff", there is nothing more to say about the alleged escort service - but it still appears in many places.
Of the 292 frequently asked combinations, about 20 of them still revolve around the theme. Even with a complaint against the search engines, the topic is unfortunately no longer manageable.
The IFTTT tool ("if this than that") provides another interesting approach. This will set a condition that triggers a follow-up action when it occurs.
Identity theft
Combined Search
Commercial Service Provider
The right reaction
When setting a condition, the service provides a link between some 500 different web services and social networks. For example, it is possible to receive an email when someone has tagged your face on a photo within Facebook
Another option is to monitor RSS feeds: If an update is detected in a previously defined feed, it can also trigger an event.
If you are already working with feeds to monitor specific topics, you have a free workflow that automatically provides you with the latest changes.
Of course there are not only texts and statements that can damage your personal reputation or that of your company or your product. Images may also be the basis for negative actions, depending on the context in which they occur.
A possible example of such an action was provided by the British Prince Harry last year when he was on the road in the United States and played billiards at some point. Private photos of this game found their way to the Internet.
An early warning system would have brought little Harry Prince, because his degree of recognition is simply too high. However, for normal mortals, it is also worthwhile to analyze images and track the results.
A service that takes care of you is Image Raider: you upload an image or give one or more image sources. Based on the search for pictures by Google, the service analyzes the Internet and as a result results all the results for this image.
The basis for the billing is the number of analysis runs - a "credit" is payable for each run, which is worth about 0.5 cents. The first 300 credits are available free of charge when creating the account.
On the Internet there are very few possibilities to prove their own identity. For most services - except for the registration of domains - almost no prerequisites are necessary and no authenticity check takes place.
As a rule, a valid e-mail address that is created in a few seconds is enough. For this reason, it can be very helpful to check if someone is on your way. If this is a product or brand name, this may even be illegal.
Since there are currently too many services that should be checked, you can either limit yourself to the most important ones, or leave this work to a commercial solution such as knowem, a short form of the English "know them"
You enter a name or string as a search criterion, and the service scans numerous offers and determines whether the name has already been assigned. If so, a more detailed analysis is worth looking at here to see who publishes content on your behalf.
This could, for example, be just a fan of products that has created a well-made information base for others.
The above searches are very specific and either represent only a few specific hits or at least group them accordingly. It is different if you want to search for different information sources and group the results by relevance.
Also at this point there are some very interesting projects and search engines, which have developed their own results or at least optimized the access to existing data accordingly. One of them is the search engine Topsy, which provides both free and paid services.
Within the free variant, you can search for different sources and filter the results according to your wishes. There are various link networks in the sources, as well as Twitter or various video providers such as Youtube.
In addition to the sources, the service provides filters, such as for the time constraint or relevance. This gives you a good first overview. It is also interesting to compare up to three search terms. The number of hits is graphically displayed on a time axis and you can see at a glance which topics were discussed at the appropriate time and frequency
Another search engine that targets the services of Facebook, Google+ and Twitter is "Social Searcher". You enter a search term for the website and then get the best results from the three social networks.
In doing so, it is possible to limit the various searches not only by means of the terms, but also by means of further criteria. For example, at the top level, you determine whether the language or the country from which the post comes originates.
In the case of the Twitter contributions, it is possible to use the site as the top filter. In advanced settings, you can specify your search more precisely and set different filters to the search location.
An important criterion at this point is also the parameters for the popularity of a post: if it does not receive a certain amount of Likes at Facebook, it is not displayed in the hit list.
Most services that offer combined searches and a reasonable hit analysis can be found in the commercial area. As a rule, you do not need to consider one or two data sources, as you have seen in the large number of the above analysis options.
Another reason is the different views on the topics: depending on your analysis, for example, official news services may be more important than private blogs. However, all of this should be automatically taken into account when performing a comprehensive analysis.
This is quite costly and represents the business base of numerous providers. The services in this environment are essentially divided into two areas: Firstly, there are offers that provide comprehensive analysis and evaluation on specific topics or points of interest using online analysis platforms.
A corresponding search for such a service by search engine provides a variety of results. The query "online reputation management service" brought about 36 million hits, "online reputation management tools" still 15 million hits.
Among them are numerous German-language offers in different price and performance categories. Most platforms, however, offer a free test account. With this, you can check which service provider offers you the best analysis and analysis.
The second component is the active consultancy service in which agencies provide different services based on the analysis results. Existing deficits and potentials are analyzed and appropriate counter-measures are formulated.
Therefore, you should consider exactly what services you need: Do you want to proactively do something for your good reputation and keep it at the desired level in the online world? Do you currently have problems with your online reputation or feedback on specific products or services?
Reasons for online reputation management are very different, and for this reason, it is important to have the right partner on board.
Of course, not only the knowledge about the prevailing opinion on the Internet is important, but above all the corresponding response. Depending on the nature of the problem, different approaches are appropriate.
After the first hassle about a supposedly unjustified criticism, you should look at the analysis of the facts. Especially if you are selling products or services, you should get to the bottom of the matter. In the first step, you should deal with the trigger of the bad rating or the critical comment.
What were the circumstances? Is it the critic himself, or has he heard of it? In the second case, you should try to find out more about the problem and find the person who was the first person to be dissatisfied with the product. "
In the next step, you should be a little more specific to the critic: Is he from the community and is an active product user? What is his position within the community and what does he hope for by his behavior? Is there more than one complaint with personal experiences or is it a single event?
In any case, try to get in touch with the critic, to understand the problem more closely, and to work together to achieve a mutually satisfactory solution. This is certainly not possible in all cases, but a well documented and customer-friendly solution can lead to a positive feedback within the community and beyond.
Of course, the environment in which you are moving is also significant for your response. If you already have a lot of complaints about your product, then you should officially respond with your marketing department or the sales team and, together with your customers, decide on a meaningful solution that goes beyond a single case solution
This can, for example, be a product recall, a credit note or a product add-on which significantly reduces or eliminates the problem. If someone has apparently officially communicated on the Internet under your name and tries to compromise your reputation, depending on the nature and severity of the case, however, it is only a matter of helping the lawyer and clarifying the law.
This closes the circle again: information on the Internet can not be controlled. As a person concerned, one can observe the situation closely and act as early as possible.
The appropriate measures depend, of course, on the event that has occurred. For commercial products or brands, you may also need a PR specialist, in addition to the company's internal departments, to help you deal with the problems and appropriate follow-up.
However, there will never be any deletion by mouse click - the Internet does not forget anything. Many people and companies have already felt this on their own.
