Hot on the heels of being included in Econsultancy’s top ten recommended social media agencies, we have made it into the Reputation Online listing.

And more importantly into the top 5 ‘most respected agencies’ and ‘ones to watch’.

Thanks to all those that voted for us and congratulations to others on the list.

Sadly this good news is somewhat marred by the fact that Reputation Online closed on the day the results came out.

Back when this was just a twinkle in the publisher’s eye, I worked closely with Centaur to create a magazine for the burgeoning social media industry. And two years later it is the central point of the UK social media community. Not least, because it was led by the superb editor, @vikkichowney. Vikki is the heart of the industry and made sure that the site was always topical and a jolly good read.

But in these hard economic times, and I guess tough decisions had to be made.

Although I do find it surprising that it wasn’t considered an investment by the publisher. As the magazine closes, the top 100 list is showing a social business in growth. A diverse range of agencies from boutique to mainstream are claiming success in social media ventures. An industry where there is a great deal of opportunity for future revenues.

I suspect the industry will bounce back and coalesce around an alternative news and feature source. But we will miss Reputation Online a great deal. And all of us here at immediate future wish Vikki and her team the very best for the future.

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Online crisis phase 1

So, in case you’re not aware of it, the international fashion retailer is facing a bit of a brand crisis. In short, it has been accused by Stevie K of tru.che of copying a line of her jewellery.  In the industry it appears that Urban Outfitters has something of a reputation for copying complimenting other designer’s work.

Stevie has stated on her Tumblr that international fashion brand had ripped of her designs for her “I heart New York” necklace, which can be purchased through Etsy.

This claim struck a chord with the Tumblr community first. The micro blogging site (with its high proportion of fashionistas and creatives, all early adopters) was keen to back the little guy, but from there the movement against Urban Outfitters was picked up by the hugely influential Huffington Post, rounding off his article yesterday, blogger Jason Linkis, openly called for a boycott of the company.

The spike in social media mentions

Here are a few more insights of how the online sentiment has really gone against Urban Outfitters in the last 48 hours. The monitoring of social media estates reveals in the last 48 hours the negative sentiment from consumers is rising against Urban Outfitters. You can clearly see the leap in posts and tweets around the brand from midnight GMT on 26^th May.

Reputation analysis

In the last 48 hours there have been more than 800 tweets with the word hate in conjunction with Urban Outfitters:

The normal average for daily mentions of Urban Outfitters is 1,470

The number of mentions yesterday topped 15,000 (that is a tenfold increase in 24 hours)

Mentions of hate/hating in conjunction with Urban Outfitters – 1,900 /25,000

Mention stealing in conjunction with Urban Outfitters – 1514/25,000

Mentions boycott in conjunction with Urban Outfitters – 6029/25,000

The word cloud below shows just some of the negative sentiment being expressed by consumers on Twitter: stealing, bastards, boycott and hating are prominent.

An inadequate response?

The US Urban Outfitters Twitter profile with more than 400,000 followers has, responded with the vanilla holding statement – “Hey guys, we see your tweets regarding the I Heart Destination necklace. Please know that our accessories buying team is looking into this.”

So why not kick back, get some snacks and see how this pans out. It’s going to take some deft footwork from Urban Outfitters’ PR dept to turn round this mass of negative sentiment with anything short of a public apology and remuneration for those with a designer axe to grind. This isn’t going to disappear from Google news results for Urban Outfitters for a while…

Here comes Miley

And once influential celebrities get a sniff of it you can be sure that they’ll make the biggest splash of all. In particular, Miley Cyrus’s tweet to her million plus fan base has been picked up in more than 180 news articles, dwarfing the number for the original story.

In short – If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… A celebrity on Twitter.

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Search is a hot topic at the moment. With innovations in mobile and local search and the impact of real time mentions and social media, the competition for the much sought over front page position is hotting up. For some, the temptation may be to take advantage of one (some) of the many free press release distributors in the hope of creating  a few of those juicy Google links –

Here’s why we don’t think they should jump in, without looking deeper…

Death by association:

Your content might be good, but there’s no saying what it might be next to.  Scanning the headlines on a couple of the leading free press release sites shows that “Innovative Bilingual Program Builds Bright Future for YCIS Beijing Students” is next to “New Website Scores You On How “Do-able” You Are” and “Sceneric relaunches Frasers Autographs on hybris”  precedes  “Inspired or expired meat! Can cancer make you feel horny?” With little say in what your content will sit alongside – both in terms of other stories and links –  the reputational risk is definitely worth considering.

But press release pages are for journalists and not consumers, right?

Well, yes. It could be argued that journalists are accustomed to sifting through press releases to identify the relevant stories; however, what you’re paying for in traditional press release distribution sites – direction, focus, proactive targeting – is lost when you take out the price. As Daryl Willcox from DWP Publishing said in an Econsultancy interview last year: “You get what you pay for with free press release distribution services. Enough said.”

So, free press release sites aren’t great at taking a story to the right person, but what about generating online links?

An SEO strategy?

As one of the determinants of page ranking, the promise of online links might be enough, on its own, to tempt businesses towards free press releases. There are few flaws in this thinking. For a start, not all the free press release sites that we reviewed permitted live links, and the majority did not permit anchor text. And then, the risk to reputation that we were talking about earlier? With some recent noise around the quality of Google’s search and the consequent demotion of low quality, spammy sites, a link is not always an asset.

This extract from the Google blog illustrates the point:

“As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content.”

Recommendations

Google’s emphasis on relevance is the key, we think, to both effective online content strategies and getting a news story out. The internet may have opened up the media, but some of the old rules still apply:

• Targeted approach: Invest time in identifying, targeting and developing relationships with appropriate online influencers. Individually pitching your news angle to the top people you’ve identified within your market is more likely to result in coverage and any links will be more valuable due to the relevant content they’re associated with.

• Content strategies: Having high quality content online is more likely to generate natural linkage and encourage share-ability.  Ensure that content is well optimised for search so that news is discoverable and will appear in any relevant online searches.

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Way back in 2005 Arianna Huffington set up a small left wing blog on a ‘shoestring’ budget while AOL was part of the world’s fourth largest corporation, AOL Time Warner. Arianna’s blog quickly became on online sensation with a high ranking and growing unique visitors. While things were riding high for Arianna and her team at the Huffington Post, things weren’t so rosy for AOL. Its merger with Time Warner, which still sets records as the world’s biggest business merger, started to crumble and finally dissolved in 2009. Now the two online giants have announced they are joining forces in a whopping $315 million deal, creating a new media force to be reckoned with – ‘The Huffington Post Media Group’.

All of the sites AOL currently owns will fall under the newly created media group and will be headed up by Arianna Huffington herself, including Engadget, TechCrunch and PopEater. According to Tim Armstrong, chairman and CEO of AOL “the acquisition of The Huffington Post will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers.”

AOL’s reputation isn’t great right now. Following the failed Time Warner merger, AOL appears to be grabbing at every opportunity and piggybacking off something successful and unique to boost its own reputation and business. But, the merger could also be looked at as a good strategic move by teaming with a blog with firm political and editorial values. This could give AOL an identity – something it seems to have lost along the way.

So what does all this mean?  Is this the start of a new media contender, happy to take on the larger,  more traditional media conglomerates? Or will the merger suffer the same fate as AOL’s previous high profile business partnership? With the shrewd Arianna at the helm, this blogger is leaning towards the former. One thing is for certain, the deal has got us all talking and perhaps Mr Murdoch looking nervously over his shoulder. AOL is a trending topic on Twitter at the time of writing and opinion is split.

Related articles

• AOL buys Huffington Post: reaction (telegraph.co.uk)
• AOL to pay $315 million for Huffington Post – USA Today (news.google.com)

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Ikea vs. Apple via Fixr

We like this visual representation of how the Swedish and US companies stack up (no flat pack puns intended.)

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You may have heard that Google has changed its search algorithm and with that change, instilled the word Abuserank forever into the minds of SEO experts.

According to Google they were spurred into action by the story of Clarabelle Rodriguez and the shocking (and by shocking I mean truly abusive and in some cases illegal) treatment she received at the hands of one online retailer (Decormyeyes.) This retailer had discovered that even the most negative and vociferous online complaints from consumers actually improved his Google SEO ranking. The Google spiders were picking up the negative reviews on high profile consumer feedback sites and so the owner was deliberately abusing customers to farm bad reviews!

Now, according to the Google blog, the coders thought up numerous ways to combat this new and disturbing retailer scam and in the end opted for an “algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience.” Sounds a bit like a black list to me and not as technical as some in the industry would have you believe.

There are initial industry fears that unscrupulous brands might use this new algorithm to try and seed fake complaints on forums and message boards to try and drop their competitors down the SERPs. However, I think Google are wise to this type of system gaming. Also, hasn’t the risk of fake complaints been around since the beginning of retail.

So in truth, if you* refers to you as a brand then online customer reviews are more important than ever and dealing with customer service issues in a timely manner is vital. If you* refers to you as a consumer, with a lot of Christmas shopping to do in the next few weeks, then this is probably something you’ll welcome. But, if you’re a social media agency, then this is just a reinforcement of what we’ve been saying to clients and prospects for years. Online monitoring of and involvement in consumer conversations is vital for maintaining brand position and competitive edge. Plus, we like a challenge!

p.s Oh and in case you were wondering, all the negative publicity (400 high profile articles in the last two days alone) Decormyeyes has received in the last few days hasn’t done its PageRank much good, standing as it is at 1 out of 10. Looks like the algorithm is working for one retailer at least.

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On Wednesday, we blogged about the new ASA regulations and some of the questions that it raised in relation to communications in the online space.

It caused a bit of a stir.

Whilst marketing, PR and social media professionals all seem to concur that ensuring vulnerable people can trust marketing communications in the online space is important and that guidelines are helpful for professionals operating in this area, there are some grey areas requiring resolution and some questions that need to be addressed.

Like whether hosting a conversation through a live social media feed on an advertisers’ website is promotion. Or what the implications are for re-Tweets.

As we continue exploring the implications of this measure, we were pleased to see that Copy Advice is beginning to address some of these questions and wanted to mention the piece as it nearly slipped under our radar.

You can read the full article for yourself here and, whilst it’s reassuring that some of the questions we touched on are being addressed, the article also highlights the complexity of the debate. For example, whilst Copy Advice offers reassurance that each breach will be examined on a case-by-case basis , we are already starting to get a sense of just how many subtleties will come into play – think context, tone, solicitation – and how hard interpreting the regulations may become.

Similarly, the attempts to define ‘marketing communications’ and a reminder of the exemptions are helpful, but fail to clarify some of the haziness around the increasingly blurry definition of editorial content.

With such rich and varied content being created by both users and companies, gaining clarity is of paramount importance – both in relation to protecting consumers and also keeping social media exciting and fresh.

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The extension of the ASA’s CAP code to cover digital marketing communications – both on brand’s own websites, but also through social media, has been driven by a need to close the gap related to companies’ claims online, in particular to regulate marketing to children.

There is no doubt that regulation is essential to protect the vulnerable. And to give brands clear guidance on accepted professional standards of communication. Everybody benefits.

At face value, the digital extension is clear: online communications that are generated or commissioned by a brand fall under the CAP code’s remit. All you need to do to ascertain liability is ‘follow the money.’

But is it really that clear cut?

Marketing communications falls under the Code; press releases on a company website are exempt. But ‘editorial’ and ‘marketing communications material’ can be difficult to distinguish. PR covers more than just press releases. Many different forms of content may be used to grab the attention of influencers.

And many different flavours of influencers may be engaged. If those influencers are professional journalists they are deemed capable of making up their own mind about PR material. What about bloggers? At which point do they move from interested member of the public who needs protecting by the Code, to media professional who can apply a different set of criteria to evaluating marketing material?

So what is marketing promotion?

Beyond online PR, the non-paid-for space online presents even more shades of grey. If a brand commissions user generated content (UGC) which is shared online, that communications piece falls under the CAP code digital remit. Unsolicited UGC is not covered. Promoting unsolicited UGC is covered. So what is considered a marketing promotion?

• Is a tweet highlighting UGC a brand admires to be considered under regulation?
• Is hosting a conversation through a live social media feed on an advertisers’ website, promotion?

There are many challenges here for social media marketing.

• Advertisers may have many different social media estates. These are not always managed at a senior level and engagement with those sites is not always defined. There is a potential that this extension will add to the fear of social media that already stops many companies from taking part.
• Those individuals already engaging in social media activities will need a level of communications expertise and an understanding of regulations that may be unfamiliar and outside of their experience.
• Hat tipping trends and influencer comment has become common amongst social savvy brands. This will now need some forethought to prevent false claims.

ASA will risk your brand reputation

Another concern is the risk to reputation represented by the planned ASA ‘outing’ of non compliant brands.

Even under the existing code, long after reparation is made, an adjudication can still show up high on a search engine results page. The new Code will bring a new ‘name and shame’ site into play. The impact of appearing on that site will affect business and increase punitive measure way beyond the fines.

The industry needs clarity

We have many questions that the Code as yet leaves unanswered:

• What is the difference between marketing communication and editorial on a website – and will the decision be made based on solely ASA assessment?
• Is an RSS or Twitter feed that pulls UGC onto a company website considered promotion and therefore covered by the code?
• When will the ‘name and shame’ site come into play? While the Code is still being defined advertisers could easily fall foul. If the point of contention is an ambiguous one, will there be negotiation room around the complaint or could a brand fall victim to a temporary ambiguity, while the judgement remains online for perpetuity?

Perhaps the biggest question that remains however, is this: given the ambiguity between editorial, PR and marketing, why was the CIPR not even consulted?

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I was casting my eye over the Facebook Places logo this morning, yes I know I have no life, and noticed something a little odd. Under the pink marker there is definitely a number 4 inside a square. Go on have a look yourself.

Facebook/Foursquare

Now this could be a mere coincidence or one of the following:

a) Mark Zuckerburg showing the middle finger to the current/former rulers of the geo location market

b) Mark Zuckerburg joking around with his users and the media in general

c) Mark Zuckerburg revealing that he is behind Foursquare as well as the most popular social network on the planet

Or, depending how you look at it, that could be an oblong and not a square. Anyway something for you to think about over your cornflakes.

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Image via Wikipedia

Is it just me or is everyone talking about crowdsourcing at the moment? Every meeting or event I go to, it comes up. Crowdsourcing advertising (see T-Mobile, Berocca, Hyundai etc.) has been around for a while, providing ad agencies and brands with a new way of showcasing a brand or product (whilst also helping them save some budget, I’m sure.) More and more companies going down the route of taking product suggestions and improvements from its core audience:  innocent ask customers for new recipe suggestions, PlayStation’s US blog has an ideas section, whilst Dell’s IdeaStorm is the tech poster child for actually implementing people’s ideas.

For brands, it makes perfect sense, and we’ll see more and more companies extend their involvement in crowdsourcing, either by giving trusted advocates a voice on their official social media estates or giving supportive influencers the tools to actually create their own content, not just be one of the stars of an existing idea.

For the public sector, crowdsourcing seems like a perfect fit. Everyone has an opinion on how the country or their local area should be run. Public opinion of politics and politicians is at a low ebb; how better to get the public engaged again than to open the clandestine corridors of power for people to suggest their own ideas?

The problem with any crowdsourcing tactic is that there has to be some guarantee that, if you ask people for their ideas, something is going to happen with them. When the coalition government asked for people’s thoughts on policies, they received 9,500 responses. The only thing was that nothing happened with them.

In modern politics, it seems that only good old-fashioned public outcry gets anything done. Just this weekend, the government was forced into an embarrassing climbdown over cancelling free milk for nurseries after the media took umbrage at the idea. On one hand, this kind of action is great – mass movements still have an effect; a unity of voice gets things done. But, the government is ultimately there to make tough decisions. What would happen if something like Proposition 8 in California was proposed over here? Would the inevitable Daily Mail/Daily Express/Daily Star campaigns influence things so far one way that all rational thought goes out of the window? How do you legislate for personal agendas monopolising the activity?

I guess we just shouldn’t ask for, or expect, too much actual involvement in the way things are done. Just as Dell wouldn’t let an amateur into one of its factories to play around with the expensive equipment, we should hope that the government will keep at least of some its policy making and activity behind closed doors.

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