Blog
Archive for February, 2008
Action Plan: Reputation
Friday, February 29th, 2008
So you have found someone complaining about you, your company or your product (hopefully using Attenalert when it launches!), what do you do next? In the book “Radically Transparent” by Andy Beal and Judy Strauss, a 7 step action plan is set out which explains the best way to handle such a situation and it has been published on the book’s accompanying website:
1. Check the facts
2. Determine the impact
3. Bring together trusted counsel
4. Understand your detractor
5. Decide on the appropriate response
6. Host the conversation
7. After the dust has settled
Whilst it is certainly a good plan, a lot of the steps seem to be common sense. The crucial factor of course is not rushing into responding, which really applies to any situtation, and thinking carefully about the ramifications of your reply. This is much more likely to be of use to larger companies which have set PR policies than smaller businesses or individually but that said, attacks on reputation can happen to anyone and it is important to have an idea of what to do next even if there is no formal plan.
The book, Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online (to give it its full title), is not out in the UK until 13 March but is available in the US right now. Once our (UK) Amazon order arrives, you can be sure of a full review.
Sunday Times: Reputation
Sunday, February 24th, 2008
The Sunday Times has an interesting article on reputation management and mentions a couple of companies that offer services to help recover when someone has hijacked your name in search engines.
Although not an in-depth “howto”, it does have a few tips about how to be proactive in protecting your name including registering as many domain names as possible that contain your name including variations containing swearing. It is interesting to note that the companies mentioned charge a huge amount to help you, the figures quoted mention a fee of £900 GBP (~$1750 USD)!
No Take Downs
Friday, February 22nd, 2008
One of the potential uses Attenalert has is to monitor trademark usage. Indeed, it is particularly suited to that because trademarks tend to be single words or short phrases and Attenalert can discover where they are being referenced online.
Once you own a trademark, it is important to enforce your rights under it otherwise you could lose them. This is particularly the case if your trademark becomes a commonly used word. Companies such as Google and Xerox have this problem because of the popularity of their brand names.
One possible solution is going down the legal route of sending take down notices, also known as cease and desist. Unsurprisingly, this will often scare the recipient into complying but it is not always the best option for that very reason, as the Church of Scientology has recently found out with regards to the leaked video.
A better solution could be to try and work with the site that is (mis)using your trademark to come to some kind of arrangement whereby you can receive a link back from their site but at the same time enforce your trademark usage guidelines. Attributor have posted a useful set of 10 reasons why you should avoid the legal route where possible. It is in relation to copied content but the same ideas no doubt apply for trademarks too.
Getting Ready
Saturday, February 16th, 2008
We’re getting ready to publicly launch Attenalert - servers are configured, the application is written and references are being discovered. All we need to do is complete testing and hook up to our payment processing systems! Everything should be ready by the end of this month so stay tuned…