Online Reputation Management Blog

New Orleans Saints Tackle Reputation Management Issues

May 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

An investigation into the New Orleans Saints 2009-2011 seasons has tarnished the reputation of one of the most improbable football comeback stories over the past several years, culminating in the Saints Super Bowl victory in 2010.

The fallout stems from revelations about a program whereby some New Orleans Saints football players, in  an informal pool orchestrated by defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, provided money to reward players who took “out” key opposing players during NFL games. As much as $50,000 is said to have been in the pool, with rewards of $1,500 for taking someone out of a game, $1,000 for getting an opposing player carted off the field, and up to $10,000 given to a single player for causing a game-ending injury.

Recently, the National Football League announced the punishments for the four Saints players involved in the bounty scandal.  Along with the punishments for the Saints leadership, this is the toughest punishment ever enacted on a team in the history of the NFL.

Linebacker Jonathan Vilma  received the harshest punishment: a one-year suspension from play for the entire 2012 season. Defensive lineman Anthony Hargrove was suspended for eight games without pay; Will Smith, defensive end, was suspended for four games, and Scott Fujita, linebacker, suspended for three games.

Vilma received the harshest punishment since it was found that he personally offered $10,000 to any player to take out Minnesota quarterback Brett Favre in the 2009 NFC Championship; and $10,000 to any player to injure Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner in the 2009 divisional playoff game.

Hargrove signed a declaration admitting to the program’s existence and his participation as well as acknowledging his efforts to obstruct the NFL’s investigation. Smith and Fujita pledged large amounts of their own money to the bounty pool.

The players involved were not the only ones to receive a punishment for the bounty scandal. Former Saints defensive coordinator Williams has been suspended from the league indefinitely for his role in orchestrating the bounty program. Saints coach Sean Payton has been suspended for one year, and the team faces a fine of $500,000. Additionally, Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis is suspended for eight games, and linebacker coach Joe Vitt is suspended for six games. The Saints also lost second-round draft picks for the next two years.

It’s going to take a while for the Saints to repair the reputational damage caused by the actions of their coaching staff and current and former players. However, there are some encouraging signs that players, staff and management are taking the matter very seriously and working hard to restore the trust of fans and opposing players.

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Online Reputation Management for Psychologists

April 29, 2012 By 3 Comments

Psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists and other mental health professionals may be used to helping others, but when it comes to online reputation management, they often need a little help, too.  If you work with patients who show signs of manipulation, anger, or issues controlling their emotions, you need to worry about the patient (or former patient) spreading negative or untrue things about you online. You also need to be especially protective over your online personal privacy to ensure your patients don’t find out your home address or details about your family life.

Protecting yourself and your practice is a priority for every psychologist and mental health professional. So take a seat on my couch, take a deep cleansing breath and get ready for some tips on reputation management and privacy.

1.       Ensure your online personal life is locked up:  Some psychologists shy away from using social media, like Facebook and Twitter, for fear that their patients will access their personal data. But don’t let that fear keep you from connecting with family and friends. See my recent post on how to how to change your Facebook privacy settings.  Implement a policy on “friending” patients, so that in the event that a patient asks you why you’re declining their friend request, you have a ready-made answer that will not breach that “third wall” critical to the doctor-patient relationship.

2.       Monitor your name online:  Just as your patients take time to meet with you each week, block off some time in your calendar to Google yourself. This way you’ll find out which of your patients is using sites like HealthGrades.com or RateMDs.com, which allow patients to write a review of your services.

3.       Buy your own domain name and blog: Capture your domain before someone else does. There are a number of free downloads such as WordPress or Blogger that you can use to help you build your own website, without having any serious computer knowledge. Create your website to showcase your practice areas and education. It’s another way to gain new patients and referrals. Also, consider starting a blog on your website. You can choose to write about your practice area, new research (by yourself or colleagues), and new therapy techniques. If you’re ever stuck for content, you can write a series of “quick tips” for patients regarding stress reduction, what to do when dealing with a crisis, or how to deal with a break-up. These topics will help generate traffic to your site, and ultimately may lead to new patients boost your online reputation.

4.       Hire the best online reputation management firm:  An online reputation management company will elevate positive content and minimize the impact of any negative reviews, blogs or news articles. Select a U.S.-based online reputation management firm and make sure your services agreement includes strict confidentiality provisions. Since ethics surrounding psychologist marketing and advertising vary from state to state, you will want to make sure any web postings include any required disclosures.

Filed Under: Online Reputation Management, Privacy, reputation management Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to Get a Positive Review Online

March 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Reviews matter.  A 2011 online survey of 1,054 US adults by Cone revealed that 80% of respondents agreed with the statement: “Negative information I’ve read online has made me change my mind about purchasing a product or service recommended to me.” Besides knowing what’s being said about you online and responding, if appropriate, it’s also important to encourage your customers or clients to post positive reviews for you and your business.

Below you’ll find some tips on how to encourage positive reviews to boost your online reputation.

1. Ask happy customers. This might seem like a no-brainer, but it will also require more work on your part to ensure that you’re not broadcasting this information to those who are unhappy with you. Rather than posting a sign at your front desk or passing out fliers asking for online reviews, talk to your patients or customers individually. If you’re a medical professional, ask a patient with whom you’ve developed a great rapport over a series of visits, not someone who is visiting you for the first time. If you’re a business owner, ask a customer or client after they’ve told you what a great job you did. Thank them for the compliment, but tell them the best way to show their appreciation is to post a review.

2. Collect customer email addresses. If you’re still too shy to make the ask face-to-face, begin collecting the email addresses of your customers and clients. Just like in the previous example, keep track of who you’ve had a great experience with and ensure that they receive an email (and likewise, make sure that those who clearly were unhappy do not receive an email). Write a short email within a day or two of the last visit and be appreciative. Don’t send an email blast to your customer list at one time, review sites are skeptical about a sudden uptick in positive reviews and may refuse to publish reviews that look like they are part of a coordinated campaign.  For best results, send a couple of requests a day over a long period of time.

3. No pay to play. Providing incentives for a positive review are a no-no. Sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp.com have been known to delete comments when it’s clear the writer was given a financial incentive. Yelp.com also investigates when too many positive reviews are coming in from new users; this could end up being detrimental to your business since all of those great reviews will be deleted.

4. Show them where to go: Don’t make your customers do all the work. Easily direct them to the websites that you’d like them to use for their online review. This can be on a flier or in the email.

No matter what your business or profession, your clients and customers are familiar with online reviews (they may have even chosen you because of your online reviews) and how they impact your online reputation. If they are a happy customer, they will be more than willing to share their positive experience with others, all you have to do is ask!

Filed Under: online marketing, Online Reputation Management Tagged With: ,

Google Has All the Answers with Semantic Search Technology

March 19, 2012 By 1 Comment

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is in the process of making dramatic changes to its search algorithm — the most significant changes in its history — by providing more direct answers to queries and using semantic technology to improve search accuracy.  According to early reports, Google has been trying for nearly two years to group data into three entities: people, places and things and how various keywords relate to each other.

So what does this mean for the future of search engine optimization and online reputation management?  Are title, tags and keywords out?  Will my linkbuilding fall down?

Not so fast.  The article suggests that Google’s semantic search technology will go beyond keyword-based data to pull expanded information from websites and share with users who are looking for exactly that information.  Smarter queries will yield better answers.  Makes sense to me.  So when you are looking for Steve Jobs, you won’t get an employment site by mistake.

In the process, I hope we don’t lose the spontaneity and flexibility of search for something too narrow, where everything reads like Quora or Wikipedia. Ask Jeeves got boring real fast.  I might be wondering when to set the DVR for the season premiere of Mad Men, but we also use the web to stumble across new music, videos, blogs and whatever Kim Kardashian is wearing.

The Google “announcement” may just be PR bluster.  The Wall Street Journal may be getting ahead of Google and Google may be getting ahead of itself.  There will be a continuing shift to higher quality content, but this is nothing new or groundbreaking.  Google Panda update penalized content farms and duplicate content aggregated on low-quality, ad-heavy sites.  But Google knows there’s still a lot of crap out there and the changes suggested by the article herald further improvements coming very soon to a computer near you.

If Google is able to move past the traditional 10 results on the page for a more targeted web experience, it will be a gamechanger for the reputation management and SEO industry.  But something tells me we’ll still be pretty busy getting our clients to keep their people, places and things straight.

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