“Americas premier global airline.”

With the announcement of the confirmed Delta/Northwest merger the competition needs to surpass them online in order to maintain market share when this giant comes to life. No longer will an airline endure the costs of major hiccups without addressing issues immediately and creatively for the masses. Most importantly they need to amplify their online reputation now so when that fateful day comes and they are facing down “DeltaWest” their online branding and public image will have a solid transparent reputation that can stand-up to a fight.

We all remember the JetBlue nightmare. Stuck in a plane for hours on end as it sits on the tarmac with a pilot who refuses to take you back to the terminal and a stewardess who won’t even give you fresh water? The backlash of the negative online press this nugget of fresh hell produced was second only to the American Airlines debacle.

However, how would this have gone down if now former Chairman David Neelman was one of us, a reputation manager? Of course this is a little back to forward of typical reputation management as the disaster as already occurred but now he needs to turn this negative into a positive and let the world know about it. Well here’s my take. First Mr. Neelman would have realized that the people in charge of each of his planes are his pilots. Think for a minute about the psychology of a pilot. If they weren’t trained in the military chances are they still hold true to that mentality. If the tower tells them to “hold on tarmac for ten hours…” that is exactly what they are going to do, without falter. Many of them waited hours before they alerted the passengers as to what was happening. So I would have directed each and every pilot to immediately announce the delay and assure them that even though we have no control of Mother Nature every employee, including the CEO, is aware of the situation and are working like mad to make it right. We also confirm that JetBlue employees will arrange free cars and hotels and offer to alert family members.

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We have a presidential candidate that better understands the importance of reputation management. We all know the backlash Obama is facing over his small town “bitter” comments from his April 6^th fundraiser. And of course Clinton has used this to lambast him through a radio campaign her team launched throughout Pennsylvania. But early this morning I watched as FOX News reported that Barack is on the defensive with a web ad (and only a web ad) detailing how Hillary has accepted more money from political lobbyist, both Republican and Democrat, than any other candidate. Now I’m not exactly interested in the content of the messages, what I am happy to see is Barack’s team choose not to place a radio spot or TV commercial but instead went with the web proving once again they can manage his reputation faster and more effectively online than you can by producing a segment for main line entertainment. With so many bloggers and readers out there you can pounce on any negative publicity within minutes. Obviously his team didn’t do this so technically there are in disaster recovery mode but a true reputation manager could have gathered the troops and had that ad developed within hours of the debacle. Nonetheless, once they got it out there they ended up not only with a web ad but also national coverage on TV; more bang for the buck.

Christian R.

Just noticed a special investigation on CNN as I was walking through our building’s lobby and it appears the presidential candidates are finally entering the realm of Reputation Management. Well more like disaster control since I assume they never considered they could actually get negative publicity on their websites. But now it appears someone has gotten in and posted their opinions. Of course each side is claiming the other side conducted a malicious attack and they certainly might be right. Or they’re thinking someone could have hacked the site. It really doesn’t matter because either way this is another perfect example of why reputation management is such a critical component of anyone’s SEO strategy. I have long been a proponent of representing politicians but convincing them of the importance has been a quite a struggle. Fortunately, Max Cleland has long been a family friend (Max was the former Secretary of State for Georgia and a former U.S. Senator) so I have been able to spend a little time with him discussing one’s online reputation. From our discussions it really boils down to that same old adage that politicians are typically older and don’t realize or accept the full power of the internet and the role it can play in building someone up or tearing them down. But after a few conversations and some time taking him through a few of the reputation sites and discussing some case studies I think he is slowly becoming a believer. I’ll keep an eye on the CNN’s special investigation to see how this all plays out…

Christian R.

There was an interesting article on Yahoo! news yesterday about how Starbucks launched a website to get feedback from its customers to improve the overall customer experience. While most people saw this as just another marketing gimmick I see it as an excellent step towards enhancing their reputation and opening a dialog between their customers and them that is hopefully transparent.

The site is MyStarbucksidea.com and its designed to let customers voice their opinion on what they think is great about Starbucks and what they feel should change. For such a large company this can prove to be a very risky move as the site allows for a free form discussion and commenting. What happened though is the exact opposite because Starbucks engaged its customers, admitting that it had drifted from its core business values and asked for help from the very people that made them a success.

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We spend allot of time working with small and medium size business’s and something that comes up quite frequently is the misconception that Online Marketing is only for larger companies with huge budgets. While in the beginning this was somewhat true as it was only the larger companies that really had any kind of web presence this no longer is the case.

We have seen a huge surge in small and medium size business entering the online marketing world, whether it be their first website, their first attempt at online marketing, or simply just wanting to know how the web can benefit their business. The fact is that marketing your business online is more important than ever, and the web is truly the only place that can give you the closest thing to a level playing field with the big boys. In fact, niche online marketing, and local targeting of your business can not only put you on a level playing field but in some cases can actually put you ahead.

More and more people are using the web to search for local business’s from restaurants to plumbers to everything in between. The good old Yellow Pages book that you receive once a year has been relegated to service as a door stop or booster seat in most cases. Last year 54% of local business searches were done online versus the Yellow Pages . Its pretty easy to see where this trend is headed.

More than ever its time for small business to take a look at their marketing budgets and allocate more time to building their web presence than trying to get a bigger ad in the paper or sending out mailers. With such a diverse set of online marketing tools available to them its not only a cost effective option but can be more targeted, return better ROI, and provide better tracking of your marketing dollar.

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