David PR Group | Public Relations, Reputation Management and Attorney Marketing
David PR Group | Miami, Florida
Since writing my book How to Protect (Or Destroy) Your Reputation Online, I have met many interesting authors and interviewed a number of them for my blog. Here are nine books I can wholeheartedly recommend as last-minute gifts. All are available on Amazon.com and can be shipped in time for the holidays if you, as they say, act now.
In alphabetical order:Read More
Fake news just got real.
Last weekend, a North Carolina man named Edgar Welch drove to Washington, D.C., with the belief that an area pizzeria was the center of a “Hillary Clinton-sponsored child sex ring.” If you think it sounds crazy and fantastical that the former Secretary of State would be involved in such a thing, then you are like most people who have figured out the difference between real and fake news. Unfortunately, Welch read the fake story online, thought the tale was true and then decided to “go superhero” and try to bust-up the ring himself. Armed with an assault rifle, he entered the pizza joint and even fired his weapon. Scary stuff.
Fake news is nothing new. Most of us can quickly tell the difference between bona fide news coverage and information that is blatantly false. We also understand the concept of tabloid journalism and how some publications like the Weekly World News and the National Enquirer offer sensational stories with the hopes of drawing readers who will patronize their advertisers.
In recent years, fake news has gained a toehold on the internet, and most of us either ignore it or view it as annoying or maybe even amusing. Fake news was amplified during the presidential campaign, and some even believe that such stories impacted how people voted and even turned the presidential election.Read More
As an old-school public relations consultant, I remember the days when “reputation management” was strictly a PR term. We learned about it in our college courses and included it on our websites as a practice area. But then sometime in the past few years, reputation management was stolen from us by the search engine optimization world. Today, when you mention reputation management, most people equate it with “online” reputation management and the act of trying to manipulate search results by pushing down, burying or suppressing negative content and links.
If you don’t believe me, ask Wikipedia (cue groans.) I know that our profession has an “it’s complicated” relationship with Wikipedia, but millions of people use it each day, and here’s what it says about reputation management:
Reputation management refers to influencing and controlling an individual’s or business’s reputation. Originally a public relations term, the expansion of the internet and social media, along with reputation management companies, have made it primarily an issue of search results.
Ouch, right?Read More
A week removed from the craziest presidential election in modern times, and we continue to feel the aftermath, particularly on social media sites where the avalanche of memes, gifs and rants continues to raise hackles on both sides of the political aisle. Two days ago, I resisted the urge to perform my first “un-friending” on Facebook after receiving an inane reply to one of my posts. Because I strive to be politically tolerant, I have moved past it.
Regardless of who you voted for, and I have close friends on both sides, I think we can agree that many of the election reactions were unfortunate. An official in a West Virginia town was fired for a post-election racist tweet. A Maryland school superintendent was criticized for an allegedly “anti-white” Twitter post. And even Oprah Winfrey caught heat for her online reaction to the first meeting between President Obama and President-Elect Trump.
While the typical person’s online reaction to the election may not be vitriolic, we should all be aware that posts made online can remain forever. Sure, your morning-after musings may now be deep in your Facebook, Twitter or Instagram feeds, but they are still there nonetheless – and they can be found via search engines or just a small level of sleuthing. Many of these posts will stay online forever, and I think that many of the things being said by folks on both sides will be regretted in the days, weeks and months ahead.Read More
Many marketing pros have no interest in technology, and when I bring up subjects like the deep web and the dark web, their eyes glaze over and they quickly reach for their phones. But after researching online reputation issues for my new book How to Protect (Or Destroy) Your Reputation Online, I can say with absolute certainty that marketing professionals who ignore the deep web and the dark web do so at their organization’s or their client’s peril.
We begin most of our online interactions through a search engine like Google or Bing, or we access information directly through mobile apps associated with Facebook, CNN, the Weather Channel or another organization that makes its offerings easily reachable. This part of the internet, which everyone can see and is indexed by search engines, is known as the “surface web” and sometimes called the clear web or visible web.
However, vast amounts of information and data are exchanged out of the sight of search engines. Known as the “deep web,” this includes dynamic web pages, blocked sites, unlinked sites, private sites (like those that require login credentials), non-HTML content and private networks. Some estimates suggest the amount of information on the deep web (also known as the deep net, invisible web or hidden web) is 500 times greater than the surface web.
We read about social media slip-ups that impact businesses all the time. An executive inadvertently posts a tweet with confidential information, employees offer-up opinions on controversial subjects and find themselves in hot water, and social media departments inadvertently publish offensive images. Often, the lack of a social media policy is to blame.
On July 4, 2014, American Apparel posted an image on its Tumblr account that someone thought was fireworks but was in reality a stylized image of the space shuttle Challenger explosion from 1986. It was a huge and offensive embarrassment. Aside from a better senses of history, how do you protect your business from social media mishaps? A solid social media policy is a good start, so here are the main elements of a social media policy.
Most companies have an employment agreement or handbook which offers guidance on employee conduct. A social media policy should include a reminder that the guidelines in the employee handbook apply not only to traditional offline activities but online conduct as well.Read More
Despite incredible advances in technology, the development of messaging during a crisis still feels like it is done on the fly. We look at our key audiences (such as customers, employees or the general public) and then try to put ourselves in their shoes. What do they want to hear from our company during this crisis? What do we surmise they are thinking about us? We put on our mind-reading helmets to attempt to sympathize and empathize because that’s how we were trained. Researchers at the University of Missouri just completed a study which suggests that there might be a better mousetrap. And, yes, it has to do with social media and how your reputation is determined online.
Doctoral students Doug Wilbur and Dani Myers analyzed Twitter responses to a crisis and found that seemingly unorganized or semi-organized groups may actually develop organized positions toward a company in crisis. I know that sounds a bit odd and far-too-academic for my usual blog post, but here comes the example that tells the tale.
Wilbur and Myers looked at the NFL’s concussion issue, and then gauged the impact of last year’s movie “Concussion” starring Will Smith. They knew the movie would generate reactions from multiple audiences, and they decided to measure and analyze those reactions on Twitter.Read More
Founded in 2004, the online review site, Yelp, often confounds business owners. It is, without question, one of the dominant review sites and one that often outperforms company websites on search results. What that means is that a search for a particular restaurant on a search engine, for example, could pull up a Yelp listing ahead of the restaurant’s actual site. Now, if the reviews on Yelp are positive, this may increase the chance of a customer booking. However, if reviews are largely negative, the opposite could be true.
A 2011 Harvard Business School study found that each “star” in a Yelp rating impacted sales by between 5-9 percent. Another study suggested that increasing a star rating from 3.5 to 4 on Yelp would increase a restaurant’s chances of being booked during peak hours by 19 percent.
Some businesses have seen dramatic marketing results from actively working with Yelp and engaging the community.
If handled correctly, Yelp has the potential to help generate business for companies with listings, but the site has some idiosyncrasies that need to be addressed and managed.Read More
We all have emotional connections to brands, whether we care to admit it or not. If you always buy a certain brand of toothpaste, religiously order a call brand at a bar or ritualistically check the same app every day to get your sports scores, then you have an emotional connection of some depth. And some brands are more intimate than others.
Think of folks who go to Starbucks every morning, only use Apple devices, drink Coke products exclusively, only drive Hondas, or who can’t imagine their lives without Amazon. These represent some of the most intimate brands in America. If you discuss this with Mario Natarelli of brand agency MBLM (“emblem,” get it?), he will tell you that such relationships are measurable, achievable, and produce quantifiable benefits for companies.
For the past five years, his company has been researching brand intimacy and sharing some of the results, typically with an annual listing of the most intimate brands. I spoke with him about the most recent study and why this is important for marketers, business owners, and reputation managers alike.Read More