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.
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May 28th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
You know what? In many ways you’re right. We tell people to start out using Google Alerts as a first step.
Having said that, the main reason we built our tool wasn’t to pick up things Google Alerts didn’t catch - it was because we needed better filtering (about what is and isn’t about you). That was the thing that was taking up a lot of my time using Google Alerts. I think there is a value in that (hence why we built Reputation Monitor).
May 29th, 2007 at 8:32 am
That’s a valid point, Will.
I know of a local oil and gas company whose name has been used by several companies in different industries. If you were to set a Google Alert for their company name (which I have), you get more results than apply to your company.
There definitely is a weeding out process that must take place. I’d be curious to see how Distilled actually performs this function. Having worked for several interactive marketing firms in the past, I know that it may just be man hours of weeding out the irrelevant results and then arranging the relevant news in an attractive and easy to use interface.
That’s not bad, I just like to discern the difference between the company’s who pass manual labor off as cutting edge software/programs and the real deal. But as long as the results are accurate, it doesn’t really matter how you package it, except when it comes to pricing. I’m going to assume that even though software is easier to use than manual revision, it can be priced higher because it is “specialty software”, whereas man-hours are only worth so much to most people.
I could be wrong, however. Some consultants and marketing “gurus” charge ridiculously high prices for their man hours.
May 29th, 2007 at 8:36 am
By the way, Will, I forgot to ask: do you have a Distilled blog or industry blog somewhere that I can refer people to? Your company is one of only a handful of competitors I would consider recommending to the general public.
It would be great if my readers and I could drop in and see what you’re up to.
May 29th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Thanks for your kind words - hopefully this will be a link to our reputation monitoring blog (we cover a lot of reputation-related stuff as well as some general SEO / web stuff).
Our Reputation Monitor tool is completely automated (and therefore will obviously miss some subtleties that would be caught by human review) - the filtering is done by looking at where in the page the various phrases appear that you say indicate a story is about you along with filtering out negative indicators.
Additionally, we obviously give a story a lot of weight if it links to your website - the uniqueness of URLs means that then *has* to be about you.
Given that our Reputation Monitor pricing starts at $10 / month, it has to be completely automated - we can’t afford to spend time on individual accounts - just have to keep improving the algorithm.
It isn’t perfect yet (can it ever be?) but we are finding it a great help internally and hope that it can help a lot of companies do reputation monitoring more efficiently and perhaps get some people to start, who aren’t currently doing any monitoring…!
May 29th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Good point. Most companies aren’t doing enough in this category and are suffering the loss. I have an example I may share here once I get permission from a client… it will make you look extra hard at future employees before hiring.
So, my question is, does anyone offer a decent white label reputation monitoring system? I’ve been asked to locate one by a friend, and so far I’ve struck out.
Obviously, there’s more money to make in ORM if you provide a service, but there seems to be space for someone to offer a white label product for other agencies to use which could be rebranded for their companies.
Just wondering if you have any thoughts on the matter.
May 29th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Hi Daniel,
Looking forward hopefully to hearing the story one day!
As far as the white labeling is concerned, it depends what exactly you want to achieve - our system isn’t set up to white label at the moment (and I don’t know of one that can be). We do offer ‘agency’ accounts, however, that are designed to let agencies monitor on behalf of multiple clients - with RSS feeds for each one. I don’t know if that might meet the spec. I’d be happy to chat to your friend if you thought I might be able to help.
Sorry I can’t be more help than that.
Thanks
W
June 17th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Will & Daniel, I would love to be able to have a white label system to help our clients monitor their reputation across the net. That would be a very valuable service for a lot of companies and something you should definitely develop. Please let me know if you find/develop a white label system.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Hi Incredible Agent,
We have had a few requests to white label our system so we are definitely interested in looking into it.
At the moment, ours is already set up so that you can monitor multiple clients and then choose either to notify them yourselves when you find something they should know about or you can give each client access to an RSS feed of the information found by reputation monitor. I don’t know if that might meet your needs initially?
Please feel free to drop me a line (will@distilled.co.uk) if you would like to discuss it further.
Thanks
Will
August 8th, 2007 at 8:51 am
Hi,
Was impressed with Will’s Distilled and went thru the site, looked at the screenshots, here is what i have to say:
1. Reputation is different from information and what Distilled is doing is providing generic information.
2. To me Reputation means - good, bad or neutral about me/my service/product/features of me/service/product
3. Unless there is a judgment on the talk on my reputation, its not reputation monitoring service.
While Distilled is giving a value-able service, to weed out junk and keep only Relevant results on you, there is no way i can call it reputation monitoring service,
We have been trying to crack it for the past 2 quarters so I know its not an easy nut to find reputation/sentiment thru software.
Thoughts?
Venkat.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Venkat,
Thanks for your comment. You make a compelling argument. Online reputation is most definitely publicity that is either positive, negative, or somewhat neutral.
I think it would be best if we all admit that, technologically speaking, we are nowhere near the capacity to build a sucessful application that can make accurate value judgments.
Obviously, search engines like Google are responsible for making value judgments and delivering relevant search results.
Creating a reputation monitoring application with value judgment capability is even more complicated. The English language is so complicated, that negative adjectives can be positive based on the context of the sentence. And how would an application understand sarcasm? Accurately judging the positive or negative slant of text is simply too complicated at this point in time.
Applications like Google Alert and Distilled’s reputation monitoring service are providing the best one can expect. They collect references to targeted names and terms.
There’s no denying the fact that human discrimination is still required for successful reputation monitoring.
It’s not just a tough nut to crack. It’s nearly impossible. Millions of dollars, expert linguists, and Google-like algorithm experts would be necessary to even attempt an application of this magnitude. Sure, someone will undoubtedly come out with an application, claiming it can accomplish these tasks.
The truth is that a successful application will be on the verge of sentient artificial intelligence before it can accurately discriminate value judgments from linguistic styles.
For now, the industry requires human experts to make value judgments on each public mention of a company name. Besides, someone still needs to expertly strategize a response to each public mention. Just knowing that a libelous statement has been made is not enough. It’s the content, method, and timing of the response that actually turns the potential crisis into positive publicity.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Hi Venkat,
You are right in the ways that Daniel says. Our product is more about creating something that *enables* reputation monitoring rather than claiming that we do it all (as you and Daniel say, it’s a very hard problem, though one we are interested in).
One enhancement that is going to come soon is more integration with human-determined sentiment analysis.
Will
August 9th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Will,
Thats the way to go. Distill it first, add humans and make it semi-automated, we crack it close to 85% or more.
I think we can talk on this further, we have a team setup and an online interface just doing the same, may be can explore synergies?
August 14th, 2007 at 1:55 am
Sounds interesting Venkat - I’m away on holiday for about 2 weeks - drop me an email (will at distilled.co.uk) and let’s have a chat when I’m back…