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300+ Online Reputation Management Resources

March 17, 2009 | 17 Comments

In a couple hours, at a PRSA Chicago luncheon, I will be discussing online reputation management on a panel that includes:

Sandra Guy, technology columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
David Pelzer, vice president, industry image and relations, Dairy Management, Inc.
Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist, Weber Shandwick

For the luncheon attendees, I compiled a list of resources that serves as a primer on how to manage corporate reputations online. In total, there are about 40 links below that point to more than 300 resources (many of the links contain laundry lists of additional resources themselves). Feel free to suggest additional resources in the comments.

I think Gary Vaynerchuk’s two-minute video below is the essential foreword to embracing social media and managing your reputation online.

Must-read Books

Radically Transparent - By Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss (2008)
The New Rules of Marketing and PR - By David Meerman Scott (2008)
Corporate Reputation: 12 Steps… - By Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross (2008)
Meatball Sundae - By Seth Godin (2008)
Now is Gone - By Geoff Livingston (2007)

Must-read Blog Posts

Sure-fire Strategies to Pounce on Negative Search Engine Results (Marketing Pilgrim)
Online Reputation Management 2.0 and Our Mobile Future (Personal Branding Blog)
34 Online Reputation Management Tools (Duct Tape Marketing)
Basics of Online Reputation Management (Online Marketing Blog)
Google Reputation Management (Marketing Pilgrim)
Using Social Media to Help Manage Online Reputation (SearchRank)
180+ Resources and Tips to Help Manage Your Reputation Online (JobMob)
A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media (Web Strategy by Jeremiah)

Examples of Corporate Social Media Usage

Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples (Being Peter Kim)
The Big List of Big Brand Corporate Blogs (Debbie Weil)
35+ Examples of Corporate Social Media (Mashable)
17 Ways to Use Twitter for Business (Duct Tape Marketing)
Creative Business Uses of Twitter (BusinessWeek)

Presentations and Videos

Online Reputation Monitoring Tools

Again, feel free to suggest other resources in the comments. Thanks.

Filed Under Educational, Links, Management, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Strategies+Tactics, Technology

International Relations 101: Understanding Dubai

October 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment

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International Relations 101: Mastering the American Handshake

October 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment

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Media Firms Realize Slowest Growth Since 2001

September 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Source and photo credit: The Huffington Post
Link to full Ad Age article

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Filed Under Advertising, Educational, Links, Management, Media

2008 Best Global Brands List

September 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment

List: 2008 Best Global Brands
Nod: Comunicadores

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Filed Under Advertising, Design, Management, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Technology

Burning Platform, Anybody?

August 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

A guest column by Jonathan Salem Baskin, author of Branding Only Works on Cattle.

There’s more bad news for marketers in every morning’s newspaper or splatter of news on the Internet: companies large and small are lowering sales forecasts for 2009.

In general, that means marketing budgets are going to get cut. It’s a particularly foreboding outlook for those of us who make our living in the branding racket.

And it’s playing out like a kabuki drama.

Tougher markets mean it’s harder and more costly to win every sale. Job losses, credit pressures, and other factors weigh both directly and indirectly on people (whether they get fired or go bankrupt, or simply worry about such things in the abstract). Company budgets get squeezed, and difficult decisions get made.

But it’s not so difficult to cut stuff that doesn’t address the present circumstances. And, since many branding budgets are based on broad, qualitative assumptions, if not simply benign neglect — “It must do something for us, but I couldn’t tell you what, exactly” — those funds are among the first to evaporate.

What’s our reaction?

We marketers tell one another that everyone else is stupid; that we need to do a better job of educating our fellow execs and clients on the errors of their ways. And we go about doing what we always do, only trying to find ever-more creative ways to do it with ever-less budgets…and valiantly making our case as the marketplace continues to deteriorate around us.

It’s as if the reason that everyone else can’t quite learn to risk their jobs on the vast, long-term benefits of branding isn’t because there’s no immediate evidence that they should, but rather that we’ve just done a bad job of branding branding. If others don’t understand why, it’s simply their failure of vision. Challenge our preconceptions and, well, you just don’t get it.

Only what if we’re the ones who’ve got it wrong?

Why aren’t alarms being sounded? Where’s the soul-searching about the very foundations of how we define brands? How come we keep trying to resurrect in social media, games, and other tools of technology the tenets of brands that were invented in strange, distantly different times (i.e. the Dark Ages of the mid-20th Century)?

For that matter, where’s something like Brandweek’s Manhattan Project on inventing a way to objectively measure brands, once and for all? Why isn’t our trade abuzz with working groups and committees and industry conclaves finally creating metrics that are dependable, and that have real meaning across industry categories, not just as nice color-commentary within them?

Instead, we make sure that there’s no shortage of newfangled ideas, mostly centered on the idea of distracting consumers instead of interrupting them. The Big Idea in branding is even further removed from selling anything.

Most blogs are happy to blather on about some latest gimmick to waste consumers’ time, even though the real problem is that they’re more difficult to find, harder to keep, and nearly impossible to focus on buying anything. We’re happy to talk to one another about our creativity, and the boldness of our commitment to challenging employers and clients to do branding in spite of their almost instinctual, visceral disbelief.

And so it plays out like a kabuki drama.

As it stands now, 2009 will not be a banner year for the branding business. Budgets will be smaller. Patience will be shorter. Trust will become even a rarer commodity. Marketers will spend more time talking — participating in more conversations with consumers — yet reputations, purchases, and loyalty won’t necessarily follow.

We’ll learn little new, other than a few revised ways to excuse brandings’ shortcomings, or explain away its outright failures.

Instead of finding new ways to do the same old stuff, you’d think somebody would be advocating doing something truly new. If there’s never been before today a burning platform for actually changing the branding game, we’ve sure got one now. Don’t we need to do things differently?

I don’t presume to have the answer. But why aren’t more people asking the question?

Jonathan Salem Baskin has 26+ years of experience working with some of the largest brand names in the world. He writes a bi-weekly column on marketing leadership for Advertising Age, and blogs daily on Dim Bulb. His new book, Branding Only Works on Cattle, declares a radical, new way to look at brands, and will be published in the U.S. in mid-September by Business Plus.

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Filed Under Advertising, Authors+Books, Educational, Management, Marketing

Further Evidence That Newspapers Will Someday Only Be Read on Trains and Toilets

August 27, 2008 | 2 Comments

The Tribune and Sun-Times once fought vicious daily readership battles in Chicago. Now, amid declining circulations and ad revenues, they’re just concentrating on turning a profit. Both the Tribune and Sun-Times had major news break today that demonstrates their struggles to stay afloat:

1) To help revitalize the suffering Chicago Tribune, radical redesigns are being considered. One such prototype (pictured left) has been circulating the web and appeared on Editor & Publisher today. This version of the overhaul makes the paper look more tabloidish like the Sun-Times and uses the nickname “Trib.” Just last week, the Tribune named a new managing editor, who most recently served as editor of the Tribune’s youth-oriented, pop culture-heavy RedEye.

2) Only 10 weeks after signing a three-year extension, one of Chicago’s most well-known and controversial columnists has quit. Jay Mariotti, who spent 17 years at the Sun-Times, said he quit because news is entirely a web business and there was no future in newspapers. That simple. Apparently, he came to this conclusion while in China covering the Olympics because most media in attendance were from websites. (Most likely because traditional newspapers couldn’t afford to send journalists to China with the industry struggling so much.)

In the wake of today’s news, CBS 2 Chicago asked viewers if they think Mariotti’s resignation asserts that newspapers are dying? Click here to read the responses.

Sounds like most people agree that printed newspapers will eventually only be read on trains and toilets. More reason to start collecting historic newspapers.

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Filed Under Advertising, Blogging, Design, Management, Marketing, Media, News, Public Relations, Strategies+Tactics

35+ Examples of Corporate Social Media in Action

August 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Aaron Uhrmacher shares 35+ examples of corporate social media in action, including instances from Adobe, Ford, HSBC, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Marriott, New York Times, Sears, Starbucks, Toyota, Wells-Fargo, Zappos and many more.

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Filed Under Advertising, Blogging, Educational, Management, Marketing, Media, Public Relations, Social Media, Strategies+Tactics, Technology

Top 10 “Out of Office” Auto Replies

August 9, 2008 | 4 Comments

1 // I am currently out of the office at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Please be prepared for my mood.

2 // You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all.

3 // Sorry to have missed you, but I’m at the doctor’s having my brain and heart removed so I can be promoted to our management team.

4 // I will be unable to delete all the emails you send me until I return from vacation. Please be patient, and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.

5 // Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first 10 words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.

6 // The email server is unable to verify your server connection. Your message has not been delivered. Please restart your computer and try sending again.

7 // Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.

8 // Hi, I’m thinking about what you’ve just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.

9 // I’ve run away to join a different circus.

10 // I will be out of the office for the next two weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as ‘Kate’ instead of Dave.

Source: Ron Crumbaker

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