how to survive an online community reputation horror story: the guidespot.com experience
DESCRIPTION
Using Twitter, RSS feeds, Blogs, or even searching Google have become an easy way to manage your product’s online reputation. But what about the reputation management stories that we don’t hear about from growing social communities? What are some unusual reputation management experiences that are unique to an individual website community, and how were these situations managed both internally, externally, and socially? In this entertaining presentation, you will learn: * What are some unusual reputation management stories from a growing social community that I don’t normally hear about? * How should I manage or not manage my product’s reputation when I encounter an out of the ordinary challenging situation? * How can I apply what I learn from these unusual online product reputation experiences moving forward?TRANSCRIPT
How to Survive an Online Community Horror Story
The Guidespot.com Experience
Alexandra Friedman - @alexfriedman
Facebook.com/Guidespot - @Guidespot
Agenda
• Online Reputation Management (ORM) Basics
• Unique ORM Case Study: Guidespot.com
• The Bob Muntz Experience & Management Lessons
• Did You Mean: Guideposts & Management Lessons
• The Flickr Photo Tsunami & Management Lessons
• Layout Sucks A**: Social Media Comments & Management Lessons
• Guidespotter Gone Social Subbing Crazy & Management Lessons
• Online reputation management is needed because of user generated media
• Monitor what is being said about your brand or product, asses the risk, and then react or ignore
• Well-known tools for basic ORM: Google Alerts, Twitter, Social Mention, Technorati, Feeds, and Google Search
Online Reputation Management
A free content platform for a community publishing user generated content, where you can build a guide on anything. Combine local listings, maps, text, links, photos, & videos all in one place, and share with your friends or family.
- Built with Ruby on Rails
- Maturing and supported social community
- Over 12,700 guides
- Significant online social presence
- Substantial incoming social traffic and sharing
- Effective & natural SEO, and no SEM campaigns
What is Guidespot.com?
• Troll: Disruptive, left uncomfortable comments, and spammed users demanding votes and comments
• Received most complaints
• New Muntz-related trolls developed
• High Google rankings for Muntz and Guidespot
• IP address of Muntz & similar trolls tracked to internal employee
The Bob Muntz Experience
• Reputation was challenged within our own community
• Manage complaints and acknowledge concern• Be transparent in communication• If I knew then, what I know now:
- Moving forward: Trust intuition, act fast
- Community guidelines in place at launch
- Develop ghost user feature for trolls
- User activity bread crumbs & warnings
- Internal mandatory social media policies
The Bob Muntz Management Lessons
The First Six Months• Google’s search results recommend Guideposts, the
largest circulated religious-based magazine
• ORM challenges:
- Search misspellings
- High bounce rate and wrong target reach
- Lacks optimization, fresh content & activity
- Organic optimizing is not immediate
Did You Mean: Guideposts?
• Identity issues within the largest reputation engine• Seed organic content before and after launch• Active site users interacting and updating content• If I knew then, what I know now:
- Faster internal content jump-start & maintenance
- Extremely active daily blog b/a launch
- Social brand domination & activity b/a launch
(Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc.)
- Submit to directories ASAP
- Vivid social sharing tools
Did You Mean: Guideposts?Management Lessons
• Flickr user became a Guidespot hater
- Emailed 100 photographers
- Created multiple forum posts
- Emailed demands to Guidespot HQ
- Emailed and insulted Guidespotters
• Immediate backlash was short term
- Blog post moderation
- Flickr Forum moderation
- Response to photo removal requests
The Flickr Photo Tsunami• New Layout = linkbacks to where photos were used online
• Reputation was challenged within largest photo collaboration site online
• Manage complaints and fulfill requests within 24 hours
• React and be transparent – Connect
The Flickr Photo TsunamiManagement Lessons
• If I knew then, what I know now:
- Community guidelines in place at launch
- “Request Permission” pop-up reminders
- Incorporate auto photo-credit below image
- Admin photo removal capabilities
- Links to CC or purchased stock photos
Layout Sucks A**: Social Media Comments
• ORM limits within Piranha-like social media platforms
• Massive traffic was shadowed by complaints about layout
• Popular guide on social media ignited negative user experience
• Success improves SEO, but risk = what potential users will read
Layout Sucks A**: Social Media CommentsManagement Lessons
• Reputation was challenged within multiple outlets:
- Largest traffic to Guidespot - Social media users
- Natural search users looking for an outlet
- Highlights layout and not the product or content
- Internal morale – Hard not to take personally
• Do not reply to the comment, or have others do it for you
• Privately contact negative commenters and ask for input
• Moving Forward: Distinguish patterns, address comments on site blog, who is the site for – user or reader?
• Authors want traffic and overuse social sharing buttons
• Most over-subbers are businesses trying to get into social or traffic
• Others sub trying to make a mark
• Over-submitting hurts both of us:
- Domain looks like spam
- Can hurt a business’s ORM
Guidespotter Gone Social Subbing Crazy
• Reputation was challenged within social platform
• Interact with the author about their content
• Fly-out next to share buttons with info and links
• If I knew then, what I know now:
- Community guidelines in place at launch
- Social sharing guides in place at launch
- “How-to” traffic building guides in place at launch
Guidespotter Gone Social Subbing CrazyManagement Lessons
Thank You!
www.guidespot.com - Facebook.com/Guidespot - @guidespot
Alexandra Friedman – [email protected] - @alexfriedman