We’ve all seen how presumably normal people, combined with an anonymous profile, can become “comment trolls” of the worst type. Discussions over heated topics quickly spiral into name-calling and curse-word-filled rants against the other side, resulting in the equivalent of an online riot where nothing gets accomplished.
It’s amazing how real names attached to real profiles make the discussion civil and polite. When we turned our comments over to Facebook on several sites about a year ago, the quality of debate and discussion improved immensely.
Everyone understands that when your online reputation is at stake, the cursing, screaming and personal attacks drop significantly.
Some will argue that it is in the best interest of the social networks to to have real profiles associated with real people. That’s true, but I think we all get a better online experience when people think twice about what they say online.
Their online reputation depends on it – as it should.
Tuesday, 17 September 2013
The End of the Anonymous Internet is Near
The launch of Google+ has caused an old issue to boil to the surface: should you be required to use your real name when signing up for Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking services? The Big 3 think so and whether you agree or not, you’re witnessing the beginning of the end of the anonymous internet.
We’ve all seen how presumably normal people, combined with an anonymous profile, can become “comment trolls” of the worst type. Discussions over heated topics quickly spiral into name-calling and curse-word-filled rants against the other side, resulting in the equivalent of an online riot where nothing gets accomplished.
It’s amazing how real names attached to real profiles make the discussion civil and polite. When we turned our comments over to Facebook on several sites about a year ago, the quality of debate and discussion improved immensely.
Everyone understands that when your online reputation is at stake, the cursing, screaming and personal attacks drop significantly.
Some will argue that it is in the best interest of the social networks to to have real profiles associated with real people. That’s true, but I think we all get a better online experience when people think twice about what they say online.
Their online reputation depends on it – as it should.
We’ve all seen how presumably normal people, combined with an anonymous profile, can become “comment trolls” of the worst type. Discussions over heated topics quickly spiral into name-calling and curse-word-filled rants against the other side, resulting in the equivalent of an online riot where nothing gets accomplished.
It’s amazing how real names attached to real profiles make the discussion civil and polite. When we turned our comments over to Facebook on several sites about a year ago, the quality of debate and discussion improved immensely.
Everyone understands that when your online reputation is at stake, the cursing, screaming and personal attacks drop significantly.
Some will argue that it is in the best interest of the social networks to to have real profiles associated with real people. That’s true, but I think we all get a better online experience when people think twice about what they say online.
Their online reputation depends on it – as it should.
Google Offers Easy Online Reputation Monitoring
The ability to monitor how your name is used online has been around for some time. By creating an RSS feed with your name as the keyword, you could then be alerted in your feed reader anytime your name (or company name or website) was posted online. The process to set up the feed, while easy for power Internet users, wasn’t “non-techie” ready – until now.
If you have a Gmail account, you can now simply login to your Google Dashboard and set up alerts for your name or email address. Anytime your name or email is posted online, you’ll be notified automatically.
Now that getting notified is easy, the hard part is still managing your reputation online. I recommend everyone monitor their own name as well as the names of their children. As my daughter begins 8th grade, it will be important for me as a father to know when her name is being used on any social networking service or blog.
Google’s new “Me on the Web” service makes it easy.
If you have a Gmail account, you can now simply login to your Google Dashboard and set up alerts for your name or email address. Anytime your name or email is posted online, you’ll be notified automatically.
Now that getting notified is easy, the hard part is still managing your reputation online. I recommend everyone monitor their own name as well as the names of their children. As my daughter begins 8th grade, it will be important for me as a father to know when her name is being used on any social networking service or blog.
Google’s new “Me on the Web” service makes it easy.
How Social Network Friends Can Affect Your Online Reputation
Do you accept “friend” requests from everyone who asks for it through your Facebook and LinkedIn account? I do. Even people I’ve met just once at a conference. But lately I’ve started to think it may not be a good idea. Consider the case of Bernie Madoff, the $50 billion dollar ponzi scheme mastermind. There were probably, dozens, if not hundreds of investment professionals that worked in the industry who now have to work backward to separate themselves from Madoff’s firm. They took photos with him at events and probably sent business his way on more than one occasion. And all thought they knew him as a friend. Certainly they thought they knew his reputation better than a person they met one time at a conference.
Some people may argue that they way they use social networks is to connect with people – regardless of how thin those connections may be. But keep in mind that there is no degree of friend designation on sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. That person I met once at a conference is the same type of “friend” as my college roommate whom I’ve known for 20 years on Facebook. It would be interesting to be able to categorize people as “friends” or “acquaintances” for people we don’t know very well.
I consider “friends” to be people I would trust to babysit my daughter. Yet I have over 600 “friends” on Facebook that I probably wouldn’t even recognize if they walked into my office at this very moment. And yet I “friend” them without a second thought – connecting them, if in just a small way, to my own online reputation. Heaven forbid they should do something awful, I might have some explaining to do when asked why they are my friend on Facebook.
Offline, you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Why should online be any different?
Some people may argue that they way they use social networks is to connect with people – regardless of how thin those connections may be. But keep in mind that there is no degree of friend designation on sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. That person I met once at a conference is the same type of “friend” as my college roommate whom I’ve known for 20 years on Facebook. It would be interesting to be able to categorize people as “friends” or “acquaintances” for people we don’t know very well.
I consider “friends” to be people I would trust to babysit my daughter. Yet I have over 600 “friends” on Facebook that I probably wouldn’t even recognize if they walked into my office at this very moment. And yet I “friend” them without a second thought – connecting them, if in just a small way, to my own online reputation. Heaven forbid they should do something awful, I might have some explaining to do when asked why they are my friend on Facebook.
Offline, you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Why should online be any different?
Should You Have Some Control Over Your Own Online Reputation?
A few years ago, Emile and I briefly worked on the idea of creating a dating reputation site, whereby you’d be able to search our engine for the name of your date and read comments left by people who had previously been on a date with that person. As you can imagine, there were a host of problems right from the start that made the site difficult to execute. The obvious issue of trying to ensure the comments you were viewing were for the right “John Smith” you had a date with that evening was just one of the many, many issues we tried to tackle. Privacy issues were another.
But there were also a number of interesting things we came across that we didn’t expect. When we floated the idea to several people in the digital identity industry as well as several people who study online ethics, one person’s comments struck us as odd. She stated that such a site should include the ability to control every piece of information about the person being commented on. In fact, she truly believed that everyone should have full control of their own reputation online. This made no sense to me. In the offline world, a person does not have control over their reputation. Sure, you can act in a way that improves your reputation, but ultimately your reputation is controlled by everyone who knows you. It’s something that can be tweaked and adjusted based on your own behavior, but full control? I don’t think so.
So why should the online world be any different? Just as a poor reputation can cause you to lose out on a job opportunity (or a date) in the offline world, the online world can have the same affect. With one exception – there is no central database of “reputation” that people in the offline world can go to. Prior to the world wide web, you had to connect to someone who knew a person to get their opinion – and then it was just one person’s opinion. Today, Google, Yahoo!, MSN and more offer a central database of information on people. And it is a database that doesn’t forget, forgive or die. That old friendship that soured five years ago could be forgotten as lives moved in different directions. But the nasty comment you left on your blog and later regretted – Google never forgets that thanks to the magic of caching – even if you delete it.
It would be interesting to have two types of search results that I could view when I was searching a person – what they wanted me to see, and what the search engine thought was the best overall represenation of that person. When I search for John Doe, another button perhaps would be added to Google’s home page under the search box: Google Search, I’m Feeling Lucky, and….”John Doe’s Results”, where I see the results that John wants the world to see when they search on him.
In the end, the online world operates a lot like the offline world when it comes to reputation. Just like an offline jerk can begin to improve his reputation by being kinder to his fellow human beings, you can massage your online reputation by adding connections and content that pushes the past further into the past (and in this case, further down in the search engine results).
You do have control over your online reputation – to a point. A recent article by Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin is a good example of how a person can do just that.
By the way, we never launched the dating reputation site. In the end, we felt that unless we required everyone who left a comment on their date to use their verified real identity, it wouldn’t be of much use. Unless the goal was to ruin your date’s reputation.
The Wall Street Journal asks “Can You Go Overboard Trying to Monitor Your Online Reputation?”
In a Wall Street Journal blog post, Kelly Spors wonders if some of the companies that are monitoring their online reputations are going overboard with the whole thing. The people mentioned in the post think it is very “Big Brother” of companies like Comcast to reach out to individual bloggers when they post negatively about the company. My question to them would be “If you are blogging, are you expecting anyone to read it?”. I think bloggers have gotten into the mindset that their blogs are a place for them to vent, and no one will ever read it.
Fortunately and unfortunately, PR reps know the power blogs have in the search engines, as well as the power of word-of-mouth. As time goes on, this type of contact will become more and more commonplace, and PR agencies will begin getting more work as online reputation managers. It may be perceived as a bit of a stunt now, but I congratulate Comcast for acknowledging the online community, and it’s power in influencing the online reputation of a company.
Fortunately and unfortunately, PR reps know the power blogs have in the search engines, as well as the power of word-of-mouth. As time goes on, this type of contact will become more and more commonplace, and PR agencies will begin getting more work as online reputation managers. It may be perceived as a bit of a stunt now, but I congratulate Comcast for acknowledging the online community, and it’s power in influencing the online reputation of a company.
Pushing for Perfect Forward Secrecy, an Important Web Privacy Protection
When you access a Web site over an encrypted connection, you're using a protocol called HTTPS. But not all HTTPS connections are created equal. In the first few milliseconds after a browser connects securely to a server, an important choice is made: the browser sends a list of preferences for what kind of encryption it's willing to support, and the server replies with a verification certificate and picks a choice for encryption from the browser's list. These different encryption choices are called "cipher suites." Most of the time, users don't have to worry about which suite the browsers and servers are using, but in some cases it can make a big difference.
One important property is called "perfect forward secrecy," but only some servers and only some browsers are configured to support it. Sites that use perfect forward secrecy can provide better security to users in cases where the encrypted data is being monitored and recorded by a third party. That particular threat may have once seemed unlikely, but we now know that the NSA does exactly this kind of long-term storage of at least some encrypted communications as they flow through telecommunications hubs, in a collection effort it calls "upstream."
How can perfect forward secrecy help protect user privacy against that kind of threat? In order to understand that, it's helpful to have a basic idea of how HTTPS works in general. Every Web server that uses HTTPS has its own secret key that it uses to encrypt data that it sends to users. Specifically, it uses that secret key to generate a new "session key" that only the server and the browser know. Without that secret key, the traffic traveling back and forth between the user and the server is incomprehensible, to the NSA and to any other eavesdroppers.
But imagine that some of that incomprehensible data is being recorded anyway—as leaked NSA documents confirm the agency is doing. An eavesdropper who gets the secret key at any time in the future—even years later—can use it to decrypt all of the stored data! That means that the encrypted data, once stored, is only as secure as the secret key, which may be vulnerable to compromised server security or disclosure by the service provider.
That's where perfect forward secrecy comes in. When an encrypted connection uses perfect forward secrecy, that means that the session keys the server generates are truly ephemeral, and even somebody with access to the secret key can't later derive the relevant session key that would allow her to decrypt any particular HTTPS session. So intercepted encrypted data is protected from prying eyes long into the future, even if the website's secret key is later compromised.
It's important to note that no flavor of HTTPS, on its own, will protect the data once it's on the server. Web services should definitely take precautions to protect that data, too. Services should give user data the strongest legal protection possible, and minimize what they collect and store in the first place. But against the known threat of "upstream" data collection, supporting perfect forward secrecy is an essential step.
So who protects long-term privacy by supporting perfect forward secrecy? Unfortunately, it's not a very long list—but it's growing. Google made headlines when it became the first major web player to enable the feature in November of 2011. Facebook announced last month that, as part of security efforts that included turning on HTTPS by default for all users, it would enable perfect forward secrecy soon. And while it doesn't serve the same volume as those other sites, www.eff.org is also configured to use perfect forward secrecy. Outside of the web, emails encrypted using the OpenPGP standard do not have forward secrecy, but instant messages (or text messages) encrypted using the OTR protocol do.
Supporting the right cipher suites—and today, for the Web, that means ones that support perfect forward secrecy—is an important component of doing security correctly. But sites may need encouragement from users because, like HTTPS generally, supporting perfect forward secrecy doesn't come completely without a cost. In particular, it requires more computational resources to calculate the truly ephemeral session keys required.
It may not be as obvious a step as simply enabling HTTPS, but turning on perfect forward secrecy is an important improvement that protects users. More sites should enable it, and more users should demand it of the sites they trust with their private data.
One important property is called "perfect forward secrecy," but only some servers and only some browsers are configured to support it. Sites that use perfect forward secrecy can provide better security to users in cases where the encrypted data is being monitored and recorded by a third party. That particular threat may have once seemed unlikely, but we now know that the NSA does exactly this kind of long-term storage of at least some encrypted communications as they flow through telecommunications hubs, in a collection effort it calls "upstream."
How can perfect forward secrecy help protect user privacy against that kind of threat? In order to understand that, it's helpful to have a basic idea of how HTTPS works in general. Every Web server that uses HTTPS has its own secret key that it uses to encrypt data that it sends to users. Specifically, it uses that secret key to generate a new "session key" that only the server and the browser know. Without that secret key, the traffic traveling back and forth between the user and the server is incomprehensible, to the NSA and to any other eavesdroppers.
But imagine that some of that incomprehensible data is being recorded anyway—as leaked NSA documents confirm the agency is doing. An eavesdropper who gets the secret key at any time in the future—even years later—can use it to decrypt all of the stored data! That means that the encrypted data, once stored, is only as secure as the secret key, which may be vulnerable to compromised server security or disclosure by the service provider.
That's where perfect forward secrecy comes in. When an encrypted connection uses perfect forward secrecy, that means that the session keys the server generates are truly ephemeral, and even somebody with access to the secret key can't later derive the relevant session key that would allow her to decrypt any particular HTTPS session. So intercepted encrypted data is protected from prying eyes long into the future, even if the website's secret key is later compromised.
It's important to note that no flavor of HTTPS, on its own, will protect the data once it's on the server. Web services should definitely take precautions to protect that data, too. Services should give user data the strongest legal protection possible, and minimize what they collect and store in the first place. But against the known threat of "upstream" data collection, supporting perfect forward secrecy is an essential step.
So who protects long-term privacy by supporting perfect forward secrecy? Unfortunately, it's not a very long list—but it's growing. Google made headlines when it became the first major web player to enable the feature in November of 2011. Facebook announced last month that, as part of security efforts that included turning on HTTPS by default for all users, it would enable perfect forward secrecy soon. And while it doesn't serve the same volume as those other sites, www.eff.org is also configured to use perfect forward secrecy. Outside of the web, emails encrypted using the OpenPGP standard do not have forward secrecy, but instant messages (or text messages) encrypted using the OTR protocol do.
Supporting the right cipher suites—and today, for the Web, that means ones that support perfect forward secrecy—is an important component of doing security correctly. But sites may need encouragement from users because, like HTTPS generally, supporting perfect forward secrecy doesn't come completely without a cost. In particular, it requires more computational resources to calculate the truly ephemeral session keys required.
It may not be as obvious a step as simply enabling HTTPS, but turning on perfect forward secrecy is an important improvement that protects users. More sites should enable it, and more users should demand it of the sites they trust with their private data.
How to Improve Your Hotel’s Reputation
If you own or manage a hotel, you know that online reviews and digital presence are one of the best sources of new customers. Having an excellent reputation will help you gain more customers and you need to continually improve it to be the best. Whether you’re starting with no reputation, a bad reputation or a mediocre one, here are some tips to improve or restore it and get more business.
Reviews Influence Hotel Revenue
It is important to acknowledge that online reviews and your Digital Wall have a direct impact on the decisions that your potential customers make. Scholars are already studying the best way to visually represent online hotel reviews. It’s not just a small group of people browsing the internet to get additional information: this is their primary way of assessing the quality of the hotel they want to book and pay for online. Your reputation directly influence your revenue as a hotel.
Ask Customers for Feedback Personally
In order to improve your online reputation, it’s important to involve your clients in your business. Customers want to know that their feedback is read. Have a way for them to leave feedback during their stay, whether it is a feedback box or by talking to a member of staff. Here a list of useful online tools. You can even include a board to show the type of feedback that you have listened to and the changes that you have incorporated. Don’t always expect negative experiences. There may be a mixture, even when it sounds negative. If you are talking to the guests, ask them for more detail. It will help you get to the bottom of the issue and do more about it. It also makes the customer feel more appreciated.
Offer Incentives for Reviews
If a customer is happy, he or she will be less likely to leave some feedback. People are more likely to complain than offer praise! The best way of encouraging them is through incentives. You could offer a discount for their next stay or the chance to be placed into a draw for a free night at the hotel for leaving the feedback. This can be done upon checkout or you can send an email a few days later. The latter is often the best. Customers want to get out of the hotel when checking out as they have transport to get. Telling them the information then is less likely to be remembered.
You should also read: The Ultimate Guide to Avoid and Resolve Negative Reviews
Good reputation = Good Service
One of the biggest issues for customers is bad customer service. Show that you care by offering the best service. This includes all your staff, whether they are in the kitchen, on the front desk or cleaning rooms! Be helpful, no matter the time, and try to direct your guests around the city for their tourist spots. Offering good customer service and encouraging customers to leave feedback is the best way to improve your online reputation. You will soon find that the positives outweigh the negatives and you get more referrals.
The competitors’ threat
One of the most negative types of experiences for a hotel owner is when a competitor tries to put you down via false online reviews or any other types of illegal posting on the internet. In this scenario, there is nothing you can do in terms of service improvement and customer relationship management: your whole online presence has to be carefully analysed and your reputation restored via review removals, online PR strategies and even cyber forensics to take legal action.
Hotel Reputation Management Steps
Hotel reputation management requires 3 definite steps:
Monitoring
Image Control & PR
Negative content removal
You can read more on this here.
Bio
Twitter
Google+
LinkedIn
Latest Posts
Reviews Influence Hotel Revenue
It is important to acknowledge that online reviews and your Digital Wall have a direct impact on the decisions that your potential customers make. Scholars are already studying the best way to visually represent online hotel reviews. It’s not just a small group of people browsing the internet to get additional information: this is their primary way of assessing the quality of the hotel they want to book and pay for online. Your reputation directly influence your revenue as a hotel.
Ask Customers for Feedback Personally
In order to improve your online reputation, it’s important to involve your clients in your business. Customers want to know that their feedback is read. Have a way for them to leave feedback during their stay, whether it is a feedback box or by talking to a member of staff. Here a list of useful online tools. You can even include a board to show the type of feedback that you have listened to and the changes that you have incorporated. Don’t always expect negative experiences. There may be a mixture, even when it sounds negative. If you are talking to the guests, ask them for more detail. It will help you get to the bottom of the issue and do more about it. It also makes the customer feel more appreciated.
Offer Incentives for Reviews
If a customer is happy, he or she will be less likely to leave some feedback. People are more likely to complain than offer praise! The best way of encouraging them is through incentives. You could offer a discount for their next stay or the chance to be placed into a draw for a free night at the hotel for leaving the feedback. This can be done upon checkout or you can send an email a few days later. The latter is often the best. Customers want to get out of the hotel when checking out as they have transport to get. Telling them the information then is less likely to be remembered.
You should also read: The Ultimate Guide to Avoid and Resolve Negative Reviews
Good reputation = Good Service
One of the biggest issues for customers is bad customer service. Show that you care by offering the best service. This includes all your staff, whether they are in the kitchen, on the front desk or cleaning rooms! Be helpful, no matter the time, and try to direct your guests around the city for their tourist spots. Offering good customer service and encouraging customers to leave feedback is the best way to improve your online reputation. You will soon find that the positives outweigh the negatives and you get more referrals.
The competitors’ threat
One of the most negative types of experiences for a hotel owner is when a competitor tries to put you down via false online reviews or any other types of illegal posting on the internet. In this scenario, there is nothing you can do in terms of service improvement and customer relationship management: your whole online presence has to be carefully analysed and your reputation restored via review removals, online PR strategies and even cyber forensics to take legal action.
Hotel Reputation Management Steps
Hotel reputation management requires 3 definite steps:
Monitoring
Image Control & PR
Negative content removal
You can read more on this here.
Bio
Twitter
Google+
LinkedIn
Latest Posts
Bad Boy Report
Remove Bad Boy Report Reviews
A post on a site like Bad Boy Report can literally destroy your life and ruin your reputation forever. You can decide to take care of the problem and clean your name. We can help you with that.
Bad Boy Report is a website where users can write reports on individuals who are unfaithful. Some people, however, use it to hurt other people’s reputation and post fake reports on people they do not like, or as a form of revenge. Until recently, there has been no easy way to remove a Bad Boy report. Here at RepSaviors.com we offer a fast, simple solution to delete your Bad Boy page or thread and restore your reputation.
Don’t waste your time and money with long resources and expensive legal fees (unless you want to pursue damages). If you give the project package from our services to us we can resolve it and delete the report in 10 days or less.
The Price of Your (Bad) Reputation
Back when I first started at RepSaviors the one thing which struck me the most was the naive blindness by which people trusted Google. Google had become the new “truth”. Essentially, if Google shows it, then it has some truth to it – at least in the consumer’s eyes.
When a potential customer shops around online and finds you, your name or a product you offer, there is a 77% chance they will look into you a bit more. If this search is met with one or more negative results, you then have a 5% chance of converting that customer. That’s pretty low, and a terrible way to lose business especially when negative content can be conjured up by anyone these days.
Bad online reputation damages companies. What most don’t look at is the lost value of a bad online reputation; How much money are you really losing? Is it really possible to put a number on it?
Why You Need to Know the Value?
Before looking into the value of online reputation management, it is important to determine the value in cost for these services. This helps you determine the amount of business that you may lose due to a bad reputation. As an example, in a recent lawsuit on defamation, Dietz Development sued a reviewer for $750,000 for lost business due to reviews that were placed on sites like Angie’s List and Yelp.
As reported by Entrepreneur,
According to the Washington Post, on December 5th a judge granted a preliminary injunction, ordering Perez to refrain from making statements alleging property theft by Dietz or referring to a previous lawsuit between the parties. On recent visit to Dietz’s Yelp page, the Perez post was no longer displaying.
The sum of $750,000 was determined by quantifying the lost business from the bad review. Quantifying before-hand also helps determine the investment of paying to fix your online reputation. Legal is long and expensive but may get you considerable payment in damages. There are many companies available offering to help with this area of business for different prices. By knowing the loss value, you know whether they are worth your money.
The Amount of Clients You Could Lose Out On
One way of determining your financial value is considering the amount of clients you gained last year. This could be compared to the previous year if your online reputation stayed the same. Considering most businesses increase increase their reputation through PR or marketing, the number of clients (and the financial gain) should then increase.
To determine your maximum budget for reputation management, you would need to consider the number of clients you have likely lost. This would give you the financial value on an average. As you can see, it really does depend on the size of your business.
Defamation costs graph
This is a graph of one of RepSaviors.com’s clients showing “Paid Conversions” before and after defamation. As you can see, the online defamation resulted in over 50% revenue loss.
According to MyStrategicPlan, here’s a good way to assess the lifetime value of your customers:
What is your average sale or average amount of money a customer spends per month? (Simply add up your total dollar sales for a year and divide that by the total number of sales transactions you completed.)
How many times a year does an average customer buy from you? (Take your total number of sales transactions for a year and divide it by the total number of customers.)
What is the expected number of years a customer will use your services or buy your products?
How many people per year does your average customer tell about your company? (You may have to guess at this one. It’s probably between 3 and 12. Generally, the better your customer service, the higher this number will be.)
What percentage of these people actually become customers? (Usually between 20% and 70%.)
Service and reputation
It is vital to work out the value of your customers. Not only will this help you work out how much you could potentially lose from customers being turned away, it will also help you determine the loss due to bad customer service, organisational problems or web-flow flaws.
Customers will often look elsewhere if they have not been treated very well by your employees or find your online services difficult or full of errors. Not only do you lose their value but also the value of anyone they could have referred—past and future.
While it is difficult to put a financial figure on bad online reputation damage as there are many causes for a drop in numbers, you can get a general idea the value of your customers and the amount you lose from negative reviews or internet defamation. So your best strategy is to react quickly to a reputation crisis to avoid considerable losses.
When a potential customer shops around online and finds you, your name or a product you offer, there is a 77% chance they will look into you a bit more. If this search is met with one or more negative results, you then have a 5% chance of converting that customer. That’s pretty low, and a terrible way to lose business especially when negative content can be conjured up by anyone these days.
Bad online reputation damages companies. What most don’t look at is the lost value of a bad online reputation; How much money are you really losing? Is it really possible to put a number on it?
Why You Need to Know the Value?
Before looking into the value of online reputation management, it is important to determine the value in cost for these services. This helps you determine the amount of business that you may lose due to a bad reputation. As an example, in a recent lawsuit on defamation, Dietz Development sued a reviewer for $750,000 for lost business due to reviews that were placed on sites like Angie’s List and Yelp.
As reported by Entrepreneur,
According to the Washington Post, on December 5th a judge granted a preliminary injunction, ordering Perez to refrain from making statements alleging property theft by Dietz or referring to a previous lawsuit between the parties. On recent visit to Dietz’s Yelp page, the Perez post was no longer displaying.
The sum of $750,000 was determined by quantifying the lost business from the bad review. Quantifying before-hand also helps determine the investment of paying to fix your online reputation. Legal is long and expensive but may get you considerable payment in damages. There are many companies available offering to help with this area of business for different prices. By knowing the loss value, you know whether they are worth your money.
The Amount of Clients You Could Lose Out On
One way of determining your financial value is considering the amount of clients you gained last year. This could be compared to the previous year if your online reputation stayed the same. Considering most businesses increase increase their reputation through PR or marketing, the number of clients (and the financial gain) should then increase.
To determine your maximum budget for reputation management, you would need to consider the number of clients you have likely lost. This would give you the financial value on an average. As you can see, it really does depend on the size of your business.
Defamation costs graph
This is a graph of one of RepSaviors.com’s clients showing “Paid Conversions” before and after defamation. As you can see, the online defamation resulted in over 50% revenue loss.
According to MyStrategicPlan, here’s a good way to assess the lifetime value of your customers:
What is your average sale or average amount of money a customer spends per month? (Simply add up your total dollar sales for a year and divide that by the total number of sales transactions you completed.)
How many times a year does an average customer buy from you? (Take your total number of sales transactions for a year and divide it by the total number of customers.)
What is the expected number of years a customer will use your services or buy your products?
How many people per year does your average customer tell about your company? (You may have to guess at this one. It’s probably between 3 and 12. Generally, the better your customer service, the higher this number will be.)
What percentage of these people actually become customers? (Usually between 20% and 70%.)
Service and reputation
It is vital to work out the value of your customers. Not only will this help you work out how much you could potentially lose from customers being turned away, it will also help you determine the loss due to bad customer service, organisational problems or web-flow flaws.
Customers will often look elsewhere if they have not been treated very well by your employees or find your online services difficult or full of errors. Not only do you lose their value but also the value of anyone they could have referred—past and future.
While it is difficult to put a financial figure on bad online reputation damage as there are many causes for a drop in numbers, you can get a general idea the value of your customers and the amount you lose from negative reviews or internet defamation. So your best strategy is to react quickly to a reputation crisis to avoid considerable losses.
Proactive Reputation Management for Doctors and Medical Practices
Online reputation management is becoming very important in the healthcare sector. Doctor reviews in sites like ZocDoc.com or RateMDs.com will help patients choose the best practice to register with. It is important for them to determine who has the most qualified staff, the best service from receptionist and the least waiting times. Bad reviews lead to people to check for a different practice in the area. Here are some tips to avoid those negative reviews and get more patients.
Here are some proactive reputation management solutions which can be implemented now within your medical practice. These have also been found to be the primary source of negative reviews or articles on doctors.
Have a Good Bedside Manner
Patients don’t want to have a doctor who is going to argue with them about everything. They want a doctor who understands their thoughts, their feelings and even their fears. For some, visiting a doctor is a scary experience. For others, just being ill is difficult, especially if they have a life-threatening condition or have had one in the past.
Patients don’t want to have a doctor who is going to argue with them about everything. They want a doctor who understands their thoughts, their feelings and even their fears. For some, visiting a doctor is a scary experience. For others, just being ill is difficult, especially if they have a life-threatening condition or have had one in the past.
Having a dismissive attitude is another reason for negative feedback. It is important to be polite to your patients, no matter what they say to you. Some will come up with irrelevant information while others may withhold information not really thinking it to be relevant. If you’re understanding and caring, patients will refer you to others.
Show Your Knowledge or Experience
Patients expect the best care when visiting the doctor. They want a doctor who knows his subject without having to google for information. A lack of experience or knowledge are common issues so prove that you have them. However, watch out! There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance.
Patients expect the best care when visiting the doctor. They want a doctor who knows his subject without having to google for information. A lack of experience or knowledge are common issues so prove that you have them. However, watch out! There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance.
Reputation is a result of service
It is not just the doctors who need to offer good care and attention. The whole practice needs to be suitable, especially the receptionists, nurses and other members of staff. Incompetent or rude receptionists are among the most common problems for patients—not the doctors! Make sure all your staff are trained to the best ability and will be able to help patients.
It is not just the doctors who need to offer good care and attention. The whole practice needs to be suitable, especially the receptionists, nurses and other members of staff. Incompetent or rude receptionists are among the most common problems for patients—not the doctors! Make sure all your staff are trained to the best ability and will be able to help patients.
Errors can happen, whether they are technical, billing or something else. It is important to take accountability for the errors and get them solved as quickly as possible. Most patients really do understand as long as you are willing to admit that you are in the wrong, apologise and then get to work fixing them.
You can limit the number of bad reviews by making your patients happy. Remember that they must always come first. Spend the time with them and listen to their problems. At the same time, make sure all your staff offer the best experience.
Reputation threats
Sometimes, offering a top notch service and providing the best care to patients is not enough to avoid negative doctor reviews: illegal postings, false claims on the professional behaviour of doctors are quite common. In these cases, a targeted reputation management service might be needed to eliminate unwanted search results (nowadays they are your business card) and restore one’s online professional image.
Sometimes, offering a top notch service and providing the best care to patients is not enough to avoid negative doctor reviews: illegal postings, false claims on the professional behaviour of doctors are quite common. In these cases, a targeted reputation management service might be needed to eliminate unwanted search results (nowadays they are your business card) and restore one’s online professional image.
Burying Negative Google Results: Saving a Brand
PROJECT SUMMARY
It appeared to be a simple case of competitors trying to knock out the new start-up which was effectively treading on their turf. This software company was undergoing a heavy hit from local competitors, where every business directory listing or review page would be hit by anonymous and fake 1-2 star reviews from clients they had never heard of.
Despite heavy work on SEO and building on their web presence, they could not shake the review pages from Google Page 1. RepSaviors.com was contracted to bury the negative Google results.
WHAT WAS DONE
The question should be, what wasn’t done?
- 8 network blogs setup with new content going in every day
- Internal company blog setup which enhanced brand PR
- 40,000 legitimate external links build
- 90 Press articles from reputable online media outlets
- 400 social networks with custom profiles
- Management integration for all social accounts
- Optimization of the company website
- 3 review sites removed fake reviews after our forensic report was submitted
- Consumer review program activated, getting all current and past clients to feed review sites with real reviews.
THE RESULT
After 10 weeks the first page for every possible variation of the Brand name was covered with great content and a pure brand message. All 10 search listings on the 1st page were under the clients control. Though competitors did not stop, their voices became a faint whimper behind the roar of our online reputation avalanche. We buried all instances of negative results on Google.
“Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Investigations into Corporate & Industrial Espionage
Corporate or Industrial Espionage may require more than an internet forensics and investigations team to get full results. There are many other proven ways to detect espionage inside a company. Though our staff are not likely to come to your firm to investigate, we have successfully located the perpetrator and gathered the evidence needed to legally stop any illegal activities.
Our staff will assist through remote access to your servers, networks and other tools we have at hand to find out:
- What information is being leaked.
- Who is responsible for the theft, damage or security breach.
- Who is behind the perpetrator within your company.
- All evidence which can be gathered and used in a court of law.
case study on online privacy
There once was an app called “Girls Around Me.” After a sudden outburst of media coverage, it got pulled off the market. Read the summary of the controversy (below), as well as the articles to which it links; what questions do they raise for you?
In late March 2012, a flurry of blog entries and articles focused on an app called “Girls Around Me.” The app, which was produced by a Russian developer and available through the iTunes App Store, presented itself as “a revolutionary new city scanner app that turns your town into a dating paradise!” The app’s website asked, “In the mood for love, or just after a one-night stand? Girls Around Me puts you in control! Reveal the hottest nightspots, who’s in them, and how to reach them… Browse photos of lovely local ladies and tap their thumbnail to find out more about them.”
The “lovely local ladies” were not people who had signed up to be associated with this app. They had either chosen to make their Facebook and Foursquare profiles public, or had simply not reset the default privacy settings on their Facebook and Foursquare accounts. By its own description, “Girls Around Me” mashed the publicly available data from Facebook and Foursquare and plotted it onto a map. Users of the app would see a map of their surroundings, with thumbnail photos from publicly available profiles of women who had recently “checked into” particular locations in the neighborhood. Some of those thumbnails might be clustered in busy locations (restaurants, bars, etc.). By clicking on a thumbnail, the app user would get access to the Facebook account of the woman in the picture, and be able to access all the information available there; the user would also be able to send a message to that woman.
After “Cult of Mac”blogger John Brownlee wrote about “Girls Around Me” as well as about the reactions of his women friends when he showed them the app, Foursquare revoked the app’s access to Foursquare data—alleging that it violated Foursquare’s terms of use. The move rendered the app unusable.
In response to the outcry over the “creepiness” of “Girls Around Me,” the app’s developer, i-Free Innovations, provided a statement to the Wall Street Journal. In it, the company argued that it had been made a “scapegoat” in regard to privacy concerns, when “many other mobile apps provide the same or more extended functionality…” It stressed that “Girls Around Me” does not “search for extra information apart from the information that users share with others. … The Facebook accounts shown as available to send a message are the accounts that Foursquare users make public in their profiles.” It also added that the app had been available “for several months already and … was downloaded more than 70,000 times. … We were planning to continue developing the app and limit it to showing only public places and venues. … [W]e intended to bring our best effort to … develop filters to limit user access only to public venues shared by other users.” The company vowed to try to enable current users to keep using the app, and stated that it had received “numerous positive comments from users who claimed that the app helped them to discover ‘hot spots’—venues that are popular among girls and boys.”
Although many commentators continued to describe “Girls Around Me” as a “creepy girl-stalking app,” some others argued that the fault, if any, lay with the people who allowed their profiles to be public, taking no measures to protect their own privacy. Yet others, like blogger Kashmir Hill, wrote that the women who showed up on “Girls Around Me” may have made a conscious choice to make their information public: “Many of us,” she wrote, “have become comfortable putting ourselves out there publicly in the hopes of making connections with friends and strangers … It’s only natural that this digital openness will transfer over to the ‘real world,’ and that we will start proactively projecting our digital selves to facilitate in-person interactions.”
Irina Raicu
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