Paul Dunay is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with more than 20 years’ success in generating demand and creating awareness for leading technology, consumer products, financial services and professional services organizations.
Paul is the global vice president of marketing for Maxymiser a leading web optimization firm, and author of four “Dummies” books: Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley 2009), Social Media and the Contact Center for Dummies (Wiley Custom Publishing 2010), Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley 2010) and Facebook Marketing for Dummies 2nd Edition (Wiley 2011).
His unique approach to marketing has led to recognition of Paul as a BtoB Magazine Top 25 B2B Marketer of the Year for 2010 and 2009 and winner of the DemandGen Award for Utilizing Marketing Automation to Fuel Corporate Growth in 2008. He is also a finalist for the last six years in a row in the Marketing Excellence Awards competition of the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), and is a 2010 and 2005 gold award winner in Driving Demand.
Buzz Marketing for Technology, Paul’s blog, has been recognized as a Top 20 Marketing Blog for 2009 and 2008, a Top Blog to Watch for 2009 and 2008, and an Advertising Age Power 150 blog in the “Daily Ranking of Marketing Blogs.”
Paul has shared his marketing thought leadership as a featured speaker for the American Marketing Association, BtoB Magazine, CMO Club, MarketingProfs, Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), and ITSMA. He has appeared on Fox News, and his articles have been featured in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, BtoB Magazine, MarketingProfs and MarketingSherpa.
Paul holds an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Computer Science from Ithaca College.
I don’t disagree with anything that you say, but I’d like to add a few caveats.
Firstly if your business crashes because you screw up, then it probably deserves to.
Successful companies do all of these things, not out of a desire to avoid flak, but a genuine desire to delight their customers. A subtle difference, but nonetheless important.
If you have built a strong brand community you can make mistakes without your business crashing. In fact there are cases where the the right response from an organisation with a strong brand community has enhanced their brand’s standing.
A strong brand community is based on honesty and trustworthiness. Too many organisations talk the talk and even take a few tottering steps in the same direction without genuinely committing. These oranisation are always found out eventually (and because of the media, increasingly quickly) and pay a price that is far greater than most organisations recognise.
If your PR team are called in on damage limitation its iusually a sign that you haven’t done the job right way back.
Excellent points Phil and well stated.
Not everyone has a strong brand community surrounding them, so I guess another important point is to build that community before you need them!
It is true that the Internet has quickly become a complex ecosystem where public opinion can be created and disseminated within seconds. Keeping your eyes and ears on the world of consumer generated media can be a daunting task for any company.
Blogs, forums, wikis and social networks gain popularity every day and without a plan to monitor and manage your company’s online reputation, you could be at risk.
I have actually recently published an article entitled “New Year’s top resolution: Managing your online reputation!”. For further insight on this topic, please visit: http://www.saastream.com/my_weblog/2008/01/new-years-top-r.html
Paul, I agree with most of these basic reputation management issues.
However what do you do when a competitor masquarades as a disgruntled-customer-persona?
Unfortunately, Google’s current algorithms don’t take into account a competitor’s abuse of reputation management for financial gain.
An offline quasi-analogy… when a celebrity like Cameron Diaz gets slandered/libeled in a tabloid, there’s 8-figure litation.
When a small business gets attacked for financial gain by a malicious competitor, the mechanism basically defaults to presumed guilty. And yes, being proactive is crucial to staying in front of these issues. But not always effective.
Dear Computer Consulting Home Study Kit
Great point and example using Cameron Diaz
The reality is there is no mechanism right now to correct those wrongs
Perhaps in the future but right now all we really have is proactive monitoring
As an online business owner, I have done exactly as you suggested by participating in forum groups and answering any negative publicity that is posted by competitors hiding behind screenames. Unfortunately, I am finding that my competitors are now starting forums under aliases for the sole reason, to fill the content with fake messages from users that they created themselves. These users Bash me whenever I enter the forum and comment on Anything.
Because this is not regulated by any government agency, these competitors have managed to build large networks of blogs and forums groups with false screenames for the sole purpose to build their own brand by slandering their competitors. These sites are very high traffic sites so all it takes if one negative comment from one of their employee – phony members to turn the results into the top ten results in google when my name is googled.
Google Janesdeals and you will see what I mean.
The forum I was banned in turns out to be my competitor. I did not know it when I joined since they were using another name. So, they banned me for the sole purpose of it showing a negative in google.
They proceded to file a false rip off report which they later took back but the original results are still in the top ten in google.
This is criminal what has happened. I hope your competitors are not as sleazy as mine.
by the way, any suggestions on what I can do about it??
They even ran a google ad to call me a scam. It is horrible. I have not one single complaint from one customer in 10 years.
We hold funds until delivery and inspection so no one can possibly ever loose their money.
http://www.janesdeals.com
Dear Anonymous
Wow that is a raw deal I am sorry to hear about it but thanks for bringing this to my attention and my readers attention
There is only 3 ways I am aware of to get this fixed
1) ask them to remove it
2) set the record clean with your own statements on the site
3) sweep it under the rug by getting a bunch of good publicity for you that knocks it off the first page of Google
my recommendation would be #3
email me directly for some ideas on how to do that
Thanks for the great reading, catholic podcast . I will pass this on to our Ira clients to read.