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Social Media: The Instant Brand Killer
By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007

With the increasing uptake of social media
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media) sites such as Digg,
Technorati, Slashdot, YouTube and MySpace, together with
community bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit and
Ma.gnolia, companies the world over can reach their target
markets via a whole new channel.

Social networking is like viral marketing on steroids. Companies
can release a new product in the morning and have it talked
about by millions of users on thousands of sites by the
afternoon.

The good news is that social media is user driven. The bad news
is that social media is user driven. Yes, there's the rub. Users
are fickle creatures - they can love a product one minute and
then drop it like a lead balloon the next, depending on their
experience with the product, a rumor, or whether they have had
their morning coffee yet. And if their experience is bad, the
noise is generally louder. To protect their reputations it's not
just journalists that companies have to impress these days. It's
anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Love it or
hate it, the user community now has enormous power over the
online reputation of a company or brand.

Not surprisingly, businesses and individuals alike clamor for
the attention and mostly enjoy the limelight that social media
can bring. Others hate the intense scrutiny that often
accompanies the popularity. An example is usability blogger Kim
Krause Berg's unpleasant first experience of Digg - I Don't Digg
Being Dugg (http://cre8pc.com/blog/archives/198).

Online communities can even bring a site to its knees. Marketers
are calling it the "Digg Effect" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The_Digg_Effect) or the "Slashdot Effect". Buzz for a site can
cause more than good or bad publicity. As Kim found out, the
effect can cause traffic overload sometimes resulting in site
downtime and lost business.

Social media can also kill the reputation of a brand instantly.
Take the Microsoft Windows Vista Laptop Scandal
(http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061227/microsoft-free-ferrari/)
for instance. No stranger to the benefits of social media,
Microsoft had allegedly tried to exploit the power of the
blogosphere at the end of last year, by sending a number of
A-list bloggers a free Acer Ferrari laptop loaded with the
yet-to-be-released Windows Vista and Office 2007.

The pitch was a request for the bloggers to "review" the new
Windows software in their influential blogs. Many bloggers did
write a review, but some did not disclose their free gift. When
this fact was discovered later, the bloggers were hammered by
large portions of the blogosphere for what they saw as a clear
conflict of interest. Microsoft were tagged both literally
(http://slashdot.org/articles/06/12/27/1423234.shtml) and
figuratively (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/28.html)
as bribers and Windows Vista was widely panned with parody tag
lines such as "Vista: So Bad We Had to Give it Away". Not a great
start to an online product release.

Another example of the damage that social networking can do to a
company's online reputation is the National Pork Board of
America's recent battle with breastfeeding advocate and
well-known blogger Jennifer Laycock
(http://thelactivist.blogspot.com/). Jennifer was sent a harshly
worded letter from the Pork Board's representing counsel,
threatening her with legal action
(http://thelactivist.blogspot.com/2007/02/
overzealous-big-pork-stomps-on.html) for allegedly stealing
their pro-pork slogan "Pork: The Other White Meat" in a
pro-breastfeeding t-shirt she had designed that read "The Other
White Milk".

The letter suggested that their case for trademark infringement
was probably solid. Unfortunately for the Pork Board, the
poorly-worded letter also suggested that they were insensitive
to breastfeeding mothers and the plight of starving infants. The
Pork Board didn't count on Jennifer's influence in the
blogosphere and the power of social networking to carry her
defiant response to the world. The Pork Board ended up receiving
bags of hate mail and thousands of flame emails via their online
contact form, forcing them to issue a public apology
(http://thelactivist.blogspot.com/2007/02/well-done-pork.html)
to Jennifer from the Board's CEO and a generous donation to the
Mother's Milk Bank of Ohio in order to save face.

To their credit, the Pork Board did the right thing. They also
made sure that all persons who complained about their approach
to Jennifer received a polite, measured email response from the
CEO. As a former PR consultant myself, I tip my hat at them.
Having the apology come from the very top is smart. It
demonstrates how seriously they took the complaints. The wording
of the complainant response is polite and restrained. Addressing
each and every complainer personally is impressive. It would've
been tempting to ignore all the flames and issue some stock
standard release.

Their choice of legal team may have been questionable, but the
Pork Board's public relations team mobilized quickly, upgraded
to full damage control mode and did a great job of mopping up
the PR mess before it spread too far. Social media might have
damaged them, but the Pork Board's reputation was ultimately
salvaged by quick thinking and a swift online response.

Such situations underscore the growing importance of online
reputation management (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Online_reputation_management) (ORM) in our Web 2.0, social
media-driven world. Companies should be tracking their online
reputation on a daily basis to check for negative commentary via
social media in order to avert potential PR disasters. Major
search marketing players such as Andy Beal recognized the
potential growth in ORM (http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/03/
online-reputation-monitoring-beginners.html) a long time ago. But
I wonder how many PR/Search Marketing agencies currently offer
this service?

With brand reputation increasingly at risk, you can be sure the
smart agencies will be adding ORM to their service offerings
faster than you can say "Can you Digg it?"
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Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine
optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and
respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as
running a daily Search Engine Advice Column
(http://www.searchenginecollege.com/blog.htm), Kalena manages
Search Engine College (http://www.searchenginecollege.com/) - an
online training institution offering instructor-led short courses
and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization
and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
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