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Eyecare Business

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Hot Topic: Retail–Social Networking

Websites like Facebook, YouTube, and myriad others can help or hurt your business. Get familiar with ways to make cyberspace work for you.

Eyecare Business March 1, 2010
HOT TOPIC A new look at old problems

Social Media,

Ways to navigate the darker side of cyberspace

By Joe Dysart

While it's easy to be enraptured with the promotional power of social media, it's important to grasp the darker side: a site's ability to damage or destroy a business with a few choice mouse clicks.

Domino's Pizza learned this lesson the hard way last year when a video depicting its employees smearing mucus on sandwiches was posted—and went viral—on YouTube. The video, a staged joke made by two of its employees, was tossed on YouTube as a lark.

But for Domino's, it was anything but. Within days, the reputation-tarnisher was viewed more than a million times.

NO ONE IS SAFE

Bruce Arnold, founder of Caslon Analytics, a web marketing firm that counsels clients on managing company reputations online, says no company or industry is safe from social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and the seemingly daily dose of newcomers. The takeaway from Domino's rude awakening to the risks of the cyber community is that businesses should proactively develop a reputation management strategy before a social media horror occurs, and be ready to pounce when a silly joke—or worse—threatens to go viral on your company.

“The benefits of online monitoring and analysis in the context of brand reputation management are clear and compelling,” says Jeff Zabin, the author of “Brand Reputation Management,” a report by Aberdeen Group.

In fact, larger public companies with such plans are, according to the report, 12 times more likely to increase shareholder value year-over-year than their tone-deaf counterparts. Such a monitoring strategy, web marketing experts say, needs to encompass social media in all its forms.

Fortunately, there are a number of tools and service providers optical businesses can use to protect brand image.

DO IT YOURSELF

One of the easiest ways to know about what's being said about your company on the web is to monitor the major online communities, mailing lists, and blogs—all places where those looking to shape public opinion tend to congregate.

■ GOOGLE. The quickest way to begin is to sign up for Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts), which enables you to track mentions of your business name, including those on YouTube.
■ TWITTER. You'll also want to sign up for an account on Twitter, which you can use to monitor the posts there. Signing up for an account here will also prevent someone else—including a dissatisfied customer—from grabbing your name and/or masquerading as an employee.

One caution: if an employee does begin to post on Twitter for your business or brand, make sure he/she knows the neighborhood.

Essentially, you need to be transparent. You can't hide or be disingenuous. If you're not transparent, you'll be found out, and there will be a backlash.

■ BLOGGING. Blog posts can be tracked with the free blogwatch service Technorati (www.technorati.com). It does a great job of monitoring what's being said and keeping track of newly created blogs.
■ DISCUSSION BOARDS. Boardtracker (www.boardtracker.com) is a free service that monitors the buzz on the countless discussion boards on the web.
■ PODCASTS. To keep tabs on anything that may be cropping up about your business on podcasts—or the grassroots radio show-type productions that are beginning to crop up—Podcast Alley (www.podcastalley.com) offers an excellent overview of what's going on in that space.

Other free tracking systems include: BlogPulse (www.blogpulse.com) tracks blog posts; Keotag (www.keotag.com) tracks keywords, including company names; and Seeking Alpha (seekingalpha.com/tag/transcripts) tracks postings of conference call transcripts. Yahoo's Upcoming (http://upcoming.yahoo.com/) tracks notices of upcoming conferences, by keyword. In addition, Google Trends (www.google.com/trends) tracks the most popular keyword searches.

SERVICE PROVIDERS

If do-it-yourself daily monitoring becomes overwhelming, you may want to try other services, like BlogSquirrel by CyberAlert (www.cyberalert.com/blogmonitoring.html). It will automatically monitor blog postings containing your company's name and/or other keywords, and send you daily reports via email.

Webclipping (www.webclipping.com), a long-established service, will track what's being said about your business on the web, keep you apprised of competitors' activities, and send out alerts about copyright or trademark abuses.

For larger operations with more elaborate tracking needs, there are also services offered by Nielsen Online (www.nielsen-online.com) and Factiva Insight (www.factiva.com/factivainsight/reputation), which is a joint venture of Dow Jones and Reuters.

The latter monitors all media, including radio and TV, as well as posts and blogs. While their offerings are more extensive, each of these services are fee-based.

Joe Dysart is an Internet speaker and business consultant

The FTC Cracks Down

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a stern warning for businesses secretly using bloggers and others in social media to endorse products and services: we're coming after you.

In a move that has generated a backlash as big as the blogosphere itself, the agency put the word on the street last December that it is looking to haul into court the most flagrant users of cloaked endorsers.

”Social media is here to stay, and we have enough respect for advertising on the Internet and the important role of the blogosphere as a marketplace for public opinion to hold it to the same standard we apply to advertising in any other medium,” says Mary K. Engle, director, FTC Division of Advertising Practices.

Websites like Factiva Insight, a joint service offered by Dow Jones and Reuters, can track online mentions of your business, while Twitter can be a great tool when used carefully

BIG BROTHER

Not surprisingly, violent pushback to the new FTC guidelines was nearly immediate in the blogosphere, as cries of “Big Brother” and “1984” sprang up like so many dandelions.

Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), responded with unbridled indignation, dismissing the new FTC guidelines as “constitutionally dubious,” and castigating the agency as being draconian.

According to the FTC, the impetus for the new guidelines has been an ever-increasing prevalence of endorsers—paid either in cash, and/or in free products and services—who masquerade as unbiased, “everyday” consumer reviewers in all sorts of social media forums.

Specifically, the FTC's Engle points to a Proctor & Gamble social media blitz campaign in which she says 400,000 moms were given free products in exchange for their cheery reviews of the same in blogs and on Twitter.

While IAB agrees that brazen misrepresentation in web reviewing needs to be reigned in, what really sticks in the organization's craw is that the FTC drew a stark distinction in their new guidelines between traditional “journalists” and new media “bloggers.”

Essentially, the agency ruled that while any blogger who receives a free product or service must explicitly reveal that fact, traditional journalists will not be held to the same standard.

“What concerns us the most in these revisions is that the Internet—the cheapest, most widely accessible communications medium ever invented—would have less freedom than other media,” Rothenberg says. “These revisions are punitive to the online world.”

PROTECT YOURSELF

Given the firestorm the FTC has ignited, the tussle over what's fair and what's not seems destined to continue for some time. In the meantime, here's how to protect your business, based on the facts on the ground right now:

■ REVIEW GUIDELINES. Either review them yourself or get an attorney to go over the guidelines. The FTC has posted a complete copy of its updated “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” online (http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf).
If you've ever used a blogger to endorse your business or a product, or if you plan to, this should be your first stop.
■ ASSUAGE FEARS: The FTC has recently assured the blogosphere that its primary mission is to go after the companies who hire them. According to Richard Cleland, the FTC's assistant director of the Division of Advertising Practices, the agency also sees as remote the prospect of seeking up to an $11,000 fine, through the courts, for social media reviewers who fail to reveal company ties. Instead, the FTC will first write a series of warning letters to the offenders.
■ CEASE AND DESIST: If your company does secretly have bloggers singing your praises or Twittering away on your behalf, now would be a good time to knock it off. There's no reason to make your business the poster child for the optical industry. Despite the backlash, the FTC has all intentions of moving ahead with its mission to clean up the web.
■ I.D. PAID RESEARCH: For years, companies have been commissioning research that casts themselves in a positive light, ostensibly offering businesses and consumers an unbiased, third-party perspective. Some companies freely admit to financing such studies. Others do not.
Under the new FTC guidelines, all companies must explicitly state that they have paid for such research, especially if it's used for marketing and promotion purposes.
■ CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENTS: The FTC is striving to put an end to the popular marketing trend of celebrities making service or product endorsements for a company without disclosing their commercial relationship with the firm. Essentially, the agency wants that relationship made explicit.
Of course, not many eyecare businesses have the bankroll for a movie star's endorsement, but they still may be using local celebrities.

Websites like CyberAlert can help entrepreneurs keep track of shows up about your company on sites like YouTube

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