{"id":1204,"date":"2013-10-26T09:40:18","date_gmt":"2013-10-26T15:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sebersole.wordpress.com\/?p=1204"},"modified":"2013-10-26T09:40:18","modified_gmt":"2013-10-26T15:40:18","slug":"word-of-mouse-and-reputation-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/word-of-mouse-and-reputation-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of Mouse and Reputation Management"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WordOfMouse\"<\/a>Research suggests that personal recommendations are\u00a0 preferred by most of us when making decisions about future purchases. Whether you’re buying a car or selecting a movie, knowing what your friends and acquaintances think about a particular brand, model, or company can be an important factor in your decision. Word of mouth advertising has been around since the beginning of time (“Hey Adam, check out these delicious apples”) and it continues to be highly effective.<\/p>\n

When WOM moves online, i.e., Word of Mouse<\/em>, things get a little more complicated. The complication comes from the way that we define online relationships. Facebook “friends” are often not friends<\/em> at all, but distant relatives or causal acquaintances. Even more removed are the reviewers on Amazon or Yelp. They are most often completely unknown to us yet we often grant them more influence than we ought. We decide which movie to see based on reviews at RottenTomatoes.com<\/a> and we avoid certain restaurants because of what strangers post at Zagat.com<\/a>. Most of the time that works out just fine.<\/p>\n

However, like any trend this one is being hijacked by unscrupulous individuals and businesses out to make a quick buck. Just Google Ryan Holiday<\/a> or read this article<\/a> at Forbes to see how far someone will go to hoodwink gullible people, including reporters<\/a>. Or check out this news story<\/a> about Samsung hiring bloggers and students to attack rival HTC.<\/p>\n

Public Relations firms and professionals have been involved in the business of reputation managements from the early days of\u00a0 Bernays and Lee. As this business moves online, new strategies and tactics are needed to stay ahead in the game. What to do if your law firm is getting bad reviews online? Write your own reviews<\/a> under a fake name. What to do if your company’s Wikipedia entry does not present your brand in a favorable light? Just hire wiki-pr.com<\/a> to come to the rescue. Wiki-PR will write or edit your Wikipedia entry and monitor it for future edits\/changes. Because Wikipedia is consumer-generated it is vulnerable to manipulation by anyone who has a motive and, in many cases, money to hire others to do the dirty work. Wikipedia is aware of the problem and is trying to stay ahead of the curve, but the task for the editorial staff at Wikipedia bears a strong resemblance to Wack-a-Mole.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: whether you’re reading an online review or an article at Wikipedia, a healthy dose of skepticism is your first line of defense. Don’t assume that the person on the other side of that recommendation or scathing review is honest and fair. Too often they are neither. And sometimes they are crooks with a financial interest in duping you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research suggests that personal recommendations are\u00a0 preferred by most of us when making decisions about future purchases. Whether you’re buying a car or selecting a movie, knowing what your friends and acquaintances think about a particular brand, model, or company can be an important factor in your decision. Word of mouth advertising has been around … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Word of Mouse and Reputation Management”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10,16,19,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-interactive-media","category-new-media","category-pr","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}