I’ve recently encountered an ecommerce client with a severe brand and reputation management issue. Their situation is hardly unique, so in the interest of moz-like information sharing, I’d like to cover their scenario in case it can help some of you who manage ecommerce companies/clients.

For the sake of client privacy, we’ll call this client, “Flamingo Crossing.” Flamingo Crossing sells a high-end product to the posh VPs and real estate agent types who relish living in the lap of luxury. Flamingo Crossing not only sells their product through an ecommerce store, it also sells through a list of approved vendors. Now comes the problem(s). Continue Reading

B. L. Ochman brought up an interesting point this morning: who is monitoring your company’s online reputation over the weekend? Plenty of executives and PR professionals have returned to work on Monday to find a snowballing issue covered in blogs and forums all over the Web. With two and a half days of unhindered momentum, it’s a daunting task to respond and diffuse a problematic situation on Monday morning.

Ochman mentions that as long as someone is monitoring over the weekend, a simple phone call can be made to those in charge of responding to negative press. Sure, that means that your online PR person would essentially be “on call”, but working out on call pay rates and compensation shouldn’t be too difficult as long as you maintain the mentality of rewarding your people for protecting the company.

You may also find that you’d rather not have an employee on call (or perhaps such an employee does not exist). In that case, hiring an agency or consultant to handle all or some of your reputation management is a necessary move. When your company responds immediately to a crisis and diffuses the potential nightmare, you’ll know how valuable the service is. Millions of dollars of made and lost because of the press. Don’t be caught unaware.

As a professional reptuation manager, I cannot stress the importance of monitoring your reputation seven days a week, weekends included. Whether you do it in-house or through a consultant, you’ll be hard pressed to find a wiser spend. Whether it’s for an entire corporation or an individual, the results are invaluable.

Most of the “professionals” would scoff if they heard a potential client say that they used Google Alerts to monitor their online reputation. They would be full of it, however. Most monitoring tools I’ve seen advertised on the Web offer nothing more than Google Alerts with a custom face. You can pay the fee if you want, but all your getting is someone else arranging the Google Alerts info for you.

The truth is, more than 40% of the English speaking world uses Google’s search engine to find information online. In some industries, that number is actually more like 80%. Will Google Alerts catch everything on the Web? No, but it will catch anything on the Web that is indexed in Google, which means it’s results are relevant and comprehensive enough.

The first step in a viable reputation management business is to monitor the space and find what is being said that affects perception of your brand. This step is both easier than you might think and more detailed than most people think. If you are Wal-Mart, for example, you might think that all you have to track is the term “Wal-Mart” spelled a dozen different ways, the names of a few executives, and you’re done. This will probably inform you of 60-70% of what you need to be monitoring. What about popular slang, or product names that don’t require “Wal-Mart” to be recognized as Wal-Mart products?

The larger the corporation, the more likely you are to have earned a few nicknames from the consumer. You need to track everything.

There are several more steps to Reputation Management, so make sure this step is handled thoroughly, as it affects everything that follows.