Alliance Blog Reviews

While it’s easy for us to predict the decline, and ultimate death of mainstream media, I wonder if we know what we’re letting ourselves in for. Take, for example, the recent incident that involved a Washington D.C. detective and a “tweetup” snowball fight. Mashable alerted me to the story . With a couple of pics and a video, it’s easy to believe that the cop overreacted and should lose his job: Now, I’m certainly not bashing Mashable here–they took the social media angle that appealed to their readers–but let’s look at the “citizen journalism” side of this. Viewing the photographs and cell phone video, you might confidently predict that there’s not much the police officer can say to defend his actions. He pulled a gun on a bunch of kids having a snowball fight! But, if you take the time to read the Washington Post’s lengthy account of the incident, and you learn that this was, at worse, a misunderstanding and, at best, the correct reaction for a cop being pummeled with snowballs. Personally, I still believe the cop overreacted–and should face some kind of discipline–but that’s part of my point. I’m a citizen journalist–aka blogger–and I make my living by imparting my subjective views on you, our readers. The Washington Post however, while not able to shake completely the latent bias of its journalists, does a much better job of presenting the facts–and leaving the reader to form their own opinion. In Radically Transparent , we talk about “professional detractors”–those that are paid to report on your misfortune, yet without any apparent modus operandi –such as journalists. While we may not like what they write about us, we know that we can somewhat trust their structured gathering of information and procedures for correcting any erroneous reporting. As citizen journalism continues to take the place of professional journalism, I wonder how this will affect reputation management. Are we ready for a world of biased reporting? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Cop Draws Gun at Tweetup Snowball Fight; Is It So Clear-Cut?

There are few email newsletters that I can recommend marketers subscribe to–we live in an RSS world these days–but Dr. Ralph Wilson’s Web Marketing Today is on the list! If you’re not familiar with Dr. Wilson, then I suspect you’ve entered your marketing career in just past the few years– Dr. Wilson is the grandfather of internet marketing advice. Hopefully, he’ll take that as a compliment Anyway, when Dr. Wilson asked me to jump on a video interview with him at SES Chicago, I made time for him in my busy schedule. The result? The video below will take less than 7 minutes of your time and hopefully give you a few tips for your own online reputation management efforts .

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Talking Online Reputation Management with Dr. Ralph Wilson

When we first launched Trackur , my target audience was the person that had outgrown Google Alerts, but didn’t have the budget for the existing–expensive–online reputation monitoring tools. Well, fast forward 18 months–and almost 13,000 registered accounts–and it turns out that Trackur is extremely popular among PR and marketing firms. You see, if they want to manage dozens of client accounts, they don’t want to have to blow their budget in the process. That’s why we built the Trackur Agency plan . We’ve been quietly adding all kinds of great features: Unlimited client profiles Unlimited saved searches Direct client logins No contracts White-labeling The white-labeling is the one that we’ve worked hard on and now we make it even easier to put your brand in front of Trackur–instead of ours. When you sign-up for an Agency plan , we’ll register a domain name on your behalf, upload your logo, and give you your very own social media monitoring solution! You can keep close control over your client’s monitoring, or give each client their own unique monitoring dashboard. All for around $300 a month! Actually, $297 a month is the pricing we’re offering until the end of the year. So, if you want to offer monitoring of any kind of news media to your clients, now’s the time to get your Trackur Agency plan.

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Hey Agencies! Want Your Own Online Reputation Monitoring Service?

In Radically Transparent , we talk about the importance of finding your “centers of influence.” This is particularly true when it comes to online review sites. Those that are unhappy with your products or services will find their way to an influential review site, without much difficulty. Those that love your service, tend to just accept that you met their expectations and move on–they rarely take the time to leave a review. So, if you’re facing a poor score on a review site, what should you do? Well, you should follow the lead of photography accessories company Steve Kaeser . I recently ordered some equipment from them and used Amazon.com, because I knew that if I had any problems, there would be a resolution system in place, that I trust. Not only did the order arrive on time and meet my expectations, but as a reputation management consultant, I was impressed by the two notes that accompanied the order: Neither was too pushy, but both touched on the essentials of building positive reviews: 1. Thank You – the blue card is a simple “Thank You” card. I don’t remember the last time a company took the time to include a specific note of thanks in with the order. 2. Feedback – the white label is very simple. If you love our products, please leave a review on Amazon. If you have any problems, “please contact us immediately so that we can make it right.” Want to improve your online reviews? Try these two simple tactics.

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Two Simple Tactics to Improve Your Online Review Scores

One of the things that’s been consistent about Trackur’s social media monitoring since launch, is that it tracks around 90%+ of online media. You know, news, blogs, tweets, images, videos, etc. But, what about that other 10%? Well, we think we’ve shored that up, with the new option to submit your own RSS feed to Trackur. The new Custom Feeds option lets you upload any valid RSS feed and have Trackur keep a watchful eye on it, for mention of any of the keywords you are tracking. Here are some example uses: You want to monitor a message board for any mention of your brand? Simply submit its RSS feed to Trackur. Want to keep track of any known issues at TripAdvisor? Monitor the keyword "bedbugs" or "mold" and Trackur will alert you if someone posts a review to your profile using those words. Are there particular language specific sites you’d like Trackur to monitor? Upload the RSS feed, et voila! We believe this new feature is going to make Trackur even more awesomer! Right now, the new feature is limited to Enterprise and Agency plans , will max out at 100 custom feeds per plan, and only supports RSS (we’re working on Atom support). As we test it, we may add the option to other plans in the future and remove the cap. Whether you use the new feature alongside your existing Trackur monitoring, or set-up Custom Feeds as some kind of RSS reader on steroids, we think this new feature gets us closer to 100% monitoring of the things that are important to you! Disc: Andy Beal is the founder & CEO of Trackur. But, if you didn’t already know that, he’d be surprised.

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Trackur Now Monitors Virtually Everything Important to Your Brand

A lot of people are considering online affiliate programs as one way of getting passive income.  Affiliate marketing entail selling a particular service or product on commission.  As an affiliate marketer, you will be paid for encouraging customers to purchase a given product that is offered to them. Finding a good affiliate program will be a sure way of getting passive income.  The most prudent thing to do is to ensure that you carry out a research to check the terms of the affiliate programs as choosing the one with poor terms will definitely give you frustrations after the much effort of encouraging customers to transact. The following are some of the tips necessary for you to bear in mind when choosing the affiliate programs:

Duration of cookies tracing There are affiliate programs that will give you life-time cookies and others for a shorter time.  When you are choosing the affiliate marketing to engage in, it will be prudent to consider the amount of time the cookies will last. Some customers may take a while before purchasing a product, and when they do when your time is expired, you will be unlikely to earn from them. Minimum payment for processing It will be important to ensure that you are signed to an affiliate program that will not have a very high minimum requirement to attain to be paid.  It should also not take ages to process your cash. Training and support A good affiliate marketing program will be the kind that will guarantee support to the marketers. You should be provided with the right tools such as the banners and other promotional materials for you to succeed. The customer support should also be efficient not only to the buyers that you will be directing but also to you as a marketer check the sales pages The sales page must be the kind that will be able to win customers. You should check on it keenly because if it is unlikely to impress you as an affiliate marketer, it will also not be impressive to the buyers. There should be high level off professionalism in the creation of the sales page. Check the terms and conditions Before promoting a given program, be sure that the terms and conditions are favorable to you. There are those programs that will have frustrating terms, or may appear to be so good but get different whenever you are making a claim Check the reputation of the program It will be prudent to conduct research that will enable you learn about a program and its products before you promote.  There are affiliate programs that are illegal. There are others that have had a bad reputation.  How would you feel promoting a beauty or weight loss product that has been reputed to have serious side effects on the users? It will be morally wrong to join some affiliate programs.  You should never receive commissions to scam people. [1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/10086019@N08/3231349911

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Tips to Choosing the Right Affiliate Program

What is it with airlines? If they’re not breaking guitars , their pilots are missing airports , or they’re berating people that are trying to help them. Well, we have one more reputation disaster to add to the list, courtesy of American Airlines. You may recall the open letter web designer Dusting Curtis wrote to the airline. In it, Curtis suggested that AA was losing millions because of its poorly designed web site. He even went as far as suggesting a new design for the site. Shortly after, one of AA’s designers took it upon himself to reply and explain the complexities of AA web site design decisions. His reply was open, honest…radically transparent. American Airlines has allegedly fired him for it! This may have happened back in May, but it’s only just come to light that the AA designer was apparently fired an hour after he wrote his reply. AA searched their exchange database for the text I posted, found the guy, and fired Mr. X on the spot. From what I have learned, they also threatened him with legal action if he spoke to me again. Apparently he broke his non-disclosure agreement by discussing the design process at AA. OK, so maybe he shouldn’t have broken his NDA with the airline. But, maybe AA shouldn’t have been so near-sighted and pedantic about its employee policies. Surely the airline is aware that it’s industry hardly has the best reputation for caring about its customers. Heck, even Jet Blue–the poster child of airline awesomeness–has screwed-up royally in the past. In some ways, you can’t blame American Airlines. It is completely ignorant of how customers want to interact with the airline. We don’t want to hand flight attendants slips of paper that say “well done”–something AA encourages me to do as a frequent flier–we want to engage with the airline. We want it to do better, and we have ideas. Ideas about clean blankets, baggage fees, and yes, web site design. How does AA marry its apparent openness on Twitter , with this crackdown on a real employee that wants to help? Yes, you should have guidelines in place, but those guidelines should be designed to encourage thoughtful customer interaction, not prevent it! If we hear that you’re firing employees because of their transparency, how are we supposed to take your official social networking efforts seriously? What, do we now assume that everything that is shared on Twitter or Facebook is nothing more than sterile, PR sanctioned, sound bites? The airline industry may well be the very last to “get” the concept of Radically Transparent . When they do finally have that “aha!” moment, we’ll know that we’ve finally entered the age of open, honest, dialogs. Andy Beal – AA Platinum Card Holder; Million Mile Flier. ( via )

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American Airlines Fires Employee for Being Transparent