United Airlines and online reputation - responding to Sons of Maxwell ‘United breaks guitars’

Posted by: Paul Matthews

Check out this YouTube effort by Canadian band Sons of Maxwell who have been fighting United Airlines since March 2008 over compensation for damaged guitars while touring. Clearly, the band felt they weren’t getting a satisfactory response from the airline, so after a frustrating 12 months or so, they finally took matters into their own hands. The  video was loaded onto the Sons of Maxwell YouTube channel on Monday, and after only three days it’s already had 640,000 views!! It’s certainly not doing any harm to the band’s reputation at the moment, with loads of coverage both online and offline. Read the rest of this entry »

Corporate blogs level the playing field for small businesses

Posted by: Nicholas O'Flaherty

In the latest issue of b-Innovative, the publication of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, writer Catherine Slogrove sought my views on the opportunities that social media provides small businesses. As I am often asked this question,  I thought I would re-publish some of those thoughts here.

Social media is a leveller. Traditionally, small businesses can’t compete with large corporates which enjoy vast advertising budgets in traditional media. But due to the low costs of new media, a small business can have an equal, if not greater online presence than larger  companies. And when an online presence  is planned, executed and managed well, the benefits flow. These include attracting new customers, engaging more effectively with existing clients, and stimulating relevant media coverage. Read the rest of this entry »

PR and social media observations on the demise of Ferrit

Posted by: Thom James

The news that Telecom is folding its online retail outlet Ferrit has come as little surprise to most commentators. In the pick of the blogosphere’s musings on the story, Lance Wiggs lays out the reasons he believes Ferrit has failed. I agree in particular with his third point about Ferrit’s poor business case. From a consumer’s point of view, it was always a somewhat confusing proposition, while to retailers it will have seemed a rather questionable channel to opt for - a commissioned intermediary over direct trade with the customer. Read the rest of this entry »

Judge Harvey bows to the inevitable

Posted by: Thom James

An update to my previous post on the Judge Harvey online name suppression order: the judge has lifted the ban in the face of submissions from lawyers representing APN, Fairfax, TVNZ, TV3’s owner MediaWorks, Radio New Zealand and NZPA. This would have been an expensive process. Access to the accused’s names online was possible regardless of the ban, so it begs the question; what was the point in the first place?

Judge Harvey’s attempt to thwart the internet is doomed to fail

Posted by: Thom James

There’s a lot of debate out there in the blogosphere over yesterday’s decision by New Zealand District Court Judge David Harvey to prevent the online publication of the names and images of two men charged with the murder of teen John Hapeta.

It’s a curious one. As the likes of Bernard Hickey point out, this guy is no internet ignoramus; he’s actually one of our foremost authorities on cyber-law in New Zealand. If that’s the case, then he must surely recognise the impracticalities of his ruling. Name suppression orders are imposed on a regular basis in New Zealand, which makes this particular half-measure all the more curious. If it is Judge Harvey’s intention to restrict access to this information in order to prevent potential jurors being influenced during a future trial, why allow their names to be released in the first place at this stage in proceedings?

The judge states that he is “concerned with the viral effects of digital publication” - is he not similarly concerned with the viral effects of conversation around the water-cooler, in the pub, on the phone? Surely Judge Harvey is not so na?ve as to perceive the Internet as some sort of conduit for disrupting and influencing the judicial process? One can see what he is driving at, in wanting to restrict future access to the information, but the idea is just too full of holes to be practical.

At the end of the day, it’s a moot argument - the names are already out there should you care to google them. Even if they weren’t, the information is now public record, and can be accessed in future by anyone who can be bothered to track it down. While news websites may adhere to the ruling for fear of the legal ramifications, information online has a life of its own, and is no respecter of the law. As of 4.40pm on 26 August, there are 133 hits for the two names, and that will only grow exponentially. So what exactly was the point? It will be interesting to see where this precedent leads, as there is already interest internationally in Judge Harvey’s landmark ruling.

Using Yahoo Pipes in your Online Reputation Management

Posted by: Thomas Rowley

Keeping track of your online reputation is time consuming enough without having to decide which of the myriad tools you use to get the job done.

However, whichever combination you decide on, whether Google Alerts, Google News Feeds, IceRocket Search Feeds, Technorati Watchlists, etc, make sure you aggregate them through Yahoo Pipes, an essential tool for today’s communications professional.

Yahoo Pipes helps you keep track of your Online Reputation without having to search in 20 different places. You can aggregate content feeds from a number of different sources, and present them in RSS, email or even SMS, without needing the skillset of a programmer.

Here is a Yahoo Pipe I created from an existing News Aggregator Pipe (Yahoo Pipes allows you to easily ?clone? existing pipes & modify them.)

How to use this Pipe:

1. Enter your search term in the search box and click ?Run Pipe?, which will return a list of results.

2. You can then subscribe to the updates through RSS, etc.

As with any Online Reputation Management tool there is a certain amount of manual reading involved to determine which results are relevant. But Yahoo Pipes certainly goes a long way toward simplifying the task in hand.

Online Reputation Management Tools

Posted by: Nicholas O'Flaherty

Sarah Perez at Read Write Web gives a useful overview of some of the tracking tools currently available for online reputation management, from the well known and widely used (and free!) Google Alerts, to Trackur, the latest offering from Internet marketing guru, Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim. Of course there is more to effective ORM than these tools alone. For instance, some of them may not be timely enough for the exigencies of doing business today; and without specialist knowledge and counsel, companies may be deluged with unqualified reports.

Then there is the active role an online public relations specialist should play in ensuring your share of voice online.