Contributor sites like Yelp, CitySearch & Google Maps / Local make it very easy for anyone on the web to write and publish a review about your business. You might be thinking, “That’s great! We really strive to provide great service, an awesome product (fill in the blank).”

But what about the dangerous cocktail of that one customer who received bad service, slipped through the cracks and likes to talk? You may provide great service 99.9% of the time but one negative review or comment can spread like a nasty virus. You’ve worked for months – even years to build your brand – don’t let one disgruntled person wipe it all away.

Fortunately my client’s online reputation was all very positive but one of their main competitors had numerous scathing, negative reviews and comments that I would guess they know nothing about.

Monitor what people are saying about you

First of all, in order to take action against negative comments about your business you need to know that they exist. If you don’t know they’re out there how can you possibly respond quickly and effectively?

Is the buzz about your business good or bad?

Tools to help you manage your reputation online

One free tool that I like is WhosTalkin. This site lets you search social media conversations. Their search and sorting algorithm uses data from over 60 social media websites like Twitter and WordPress.

WhosTalkin for Reputation Management

Another essential tool for managing your online reputation is Google Alerts.

Google Alerts is an extremely useful tool when you want to know what both consumers and the press are saying about a brand, company, issue or event, or, if you want to know how the public feels about something.

Setting up Alerts is easy. Simply go to Google News and click on the ‘Alerts’ button in the left hand column, choose the word or phrase you wish to monitor, what kind of alerts you want and how often. You can edit and add new ones whenever you like but remember to use quotations to designate an “exact search” if you are monitoring a phrase rather than a single word or you’ll get a lot of irrelevant results.

Google Alerts for Managing Your Reputation Online

Google Alerts can be useful to track the evolution of a news story such as the H1-N1 virus or follow an industry trend. I use it to track SEO trends and product news. It can also be very useful to track the competition and as a reputation management tool. For example, if a disgruntled employee bashes your business on a blog site you will be notified and you can take action.

What should you do if you find a bad review?

Find out who wrote the comment. Who are they? Who do they work for? Is it a competitor? Try to determine what their comment will mean for your business? Is the comment posted on a well-respected, heavily trafficked site? What is their audience reach?

Determine whether the comment is factually incorrect. If it is, request removal or retraction of the comment. Offer to keep the person who wrote the comment up to date on your business via email. If you receive no response leave a comment in your defense at the site. Keep in mind that this should be your last resort. You really want the comment removed.

What if the comment is negative but true?

Try to share your side of the story. Were there extenuating circumstances that kept your business from performing well that day? Note – Don’t make excuses. Show how you are resolving the issue. Did you make an additional hire to help assist customers? Did you change a policy or procedure? Indicate that you are willing to take additional questions or comments via email. Doing so will make the public conversation private.

What can positive review do for you?

Other than giving you a nice stroke and ego boost, a positive comment can have a positive effect in your local search rankings. Local search rankings are influenced by the number of reviews and citations the business has. Citations are “mentions” of your website (may not have a link).

How can you get more positive reviews?

Writing a review for your business may not be on the top of your customer’s list. Let’s face it – It’s a pain. Make it as easy as possible for them to give you good feedback. At ArcStone we use RRR (Ratings, Reviews & Recommendations) pages to help facilitate gathering reviews. The RRR page provides links to the local search sites and explains the process.

Good luck managing your online reputation! Remember if it’s too daunting or you’re just too busy doing what you do – reputation management is a service we specialize in at ArcStone Technologies. Please contact me at lisa@arcstone.com if you’d like details on our SEO & Search Marketing Services.

Flashbelt 2009 is right around the corner. A truly exciting event where local flash designers and developers converge to see some amazing demo’s. A chance to learn what Adobe and flash masters are working on to push the boundaries and maximize the efficiencies of using flash in day-to-day work and play. The event is made up of both presentations and workshops and other events, and is appropriate for all experience levels.

Never been? Check out at least one presentation, you will undoubtedly go back for more. get yourself registered, space is limited.

Learn more about it and see who’s there this year.

Thanks to our friend Dave Schroeder at Pilotvibe, the founder and host

At that time our baby clothing project was still in the design phase, so one of our goals for this year was to apply to become a vendor – and am pleased to announce we were accepted. Vendors are judged and a limited number are accepted so we were very excited. Come and say hi, and support our local artists. In fact, I will even offer $5 off any onesie or t-shirt if you mention this post! Preview our wares, http://orangerhinokids.etsy.com

Craftstravaganza takes place this weekend, complete information on the website: http://www.craftstravaganza.com/2008/home.html

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Saturday April 26th, 9am – 6pm
Minnesota State Fairgrounds - Fine Arts Building
Complete directions here

Our booth will be directly across from the band (yes there is music too!), our business name is Orange Rhino
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I had the pleasure of hearing a talk by Jillian Perez recently. The subject was “thinking wrong”, a thought process that forces the mind out of cookie-cutter style problem solving and unlocks your creative potential.

Surprising, Innovative, And Down Right Brilliant Solutions
Although Jillian discussed thinking wrong mostly in the terms of graphic design, the techniques can be applied to many situations. Most projects tackled at work or home will require a problem solving thought process. When this process is gone about the “wrong” way, it can yield surprising, innovative, and down right brilliant solutions.

Keep reading for more insight on thinking wrong and my personal take on thinking wrong techniques.

Disclaimer
I am by no means an expert in the thinking wrong philosophy, or a representative of the movement. I encourage you to explore the other resources out there and put the theories of thinking wrong to the test for yourself.

Why Should I Think Wrong?
At the core of how humans solve problems is a process that drives the brain to solutions that are familiar, comfortable, and direct. This may be efficient, but it doesn’t derive creative or unique solutions, which are often better.

Repetition Builds Specific Neural Pathways Over Time, Which Your Brain Intern Favors
The phenomenon that prevents your brain from developing highly creative solutions is called a heuristic, or cognitive bias. This bias is developed in your brain as similar problems are solved over and over again. Repetition builds specific neural pathways over time, which your brain intern favors over building new ones that result in highly creative solutions to the same problems.

The thinking wrong process can force your brain out of this pattern, and bring creativity to your thought process. At first it can be quite difficult — after all, your are essentially starting to argue with your own brain. But don’t fear, gentle readers, here are some techniques for winning the argument.

Just because something has been done the same way for a long time doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Take a step back and ask, why do we do it this way? Are there actually advantages to the current way, or is it just the most familiar and comfortable option?

A good way to bring attention to a new idea, and raise questions about old ones, is to be a disruptive force. When everyone else charges a fortune, give your product away. If the competition is doing X and Y, do Z. Historically, some of the most successful business ideas have been ones that were a disruptive force in their industries.

Sometimes the best ideas come from completely unexpected places. The post-it-note was actually the product of an experiment to develop a super adhesive, not a weak one that doesn’t leave residue. Don’t disregard potential solutions just because the come from an unusual place.

If you always start your problem-solving process at the same place, it’s likely to end in a predictable place. For a creative outcome, change your entry point and perspective on a problem. If you usually start a design with user A in mind, start from user B’s perspective. Often a neglected point of view has the path to a creative solution.

At one point, many great ideas seamed utterly stupid. For example, when eBay was in its infancy, the idea that complete strangers would buy and sell goods, without meeting, or ever seeing the item in person, was preposterous. Billions of dollars later, the idea doesn’t seem so dumb. When your brain says something is stupid, don’t take its word — argue back.

Good Luck
Hopefully thinking wrong will help come up with the best ideas you’ve ever had. Although I have only been aware of the thinking wrong philosophy for a short time, I have embraced it and am already feeling more creative. Let me know your thoughts and experiences with thinking wrong, so I can in turn think wrong about them.

The book is great. The concentration of the books content is the philosophy that Yvon holds and used for the development of his company. I could talk about the book and the specifics but you should just read the book. What’s most interesting to me is the idea of the philosophy and how he has put it into action.

There are a million seminars and books out there that give you the top 8 rules and the 5 most effective techniques to achieve “X”. The sad thing is most people take the seminar or read the book and then use what they learned once or twice, if at all, and then move on to the next popular thing. (I’m all for education and continuous learning, but this seems like waste of resources.) They never take the time to think about develop the foundation that they need (the beliefs, values, and ideals) so they can espouse the ideas through actions. Yvon’s admitted overwhelming management technique is “management by absence”. What I interpret from this is that day in and day out while he was out actually using and testing the equipment Patagonia creates he spent plenty of time thinking about and his ideas and building the foundation he needed to live and apply his philosophy in action.

The next time you read a current business or management book or attend a seminar, I challenge you to ask yourself afterward, “What foundation do I need to build to be able to apply this in action day in and day out?” Spend some time thinking about it over a few weeks before you dive into something else. Pick the three most important things that struck you as you read the book and let that be a filter that you use to view your world through. I find that this helps me build a foundation for which to apply and integrate new things into my daily behavior and actions.

Additional information:
You can purchase the book from Amazon or you can read an excerpt of the book at Outside Magazine’s website

Star identification is undoubtedly astronomically more difficult than decoding the minute variations of LBJs. There are billions upon billions of stars, and unless you have access to the Giant Magellan Telescope, they’re going to look pretty darn similar to one another.

There is no longer a need to be intimidated by the million twinkling lights in the sky. The new Meade MySKY Sky Navigator is a silvery-gray gun-like apparatus with Nintendo-esque red buttons that you can point and shoot at the sky to learn about the cosmos.

It’s not a telescope; it’s a GPS system and database. You can hook it up to Meade’s computerized telescopes to have your telescope automatically align to where you point your star gun.

I would have loved this gift when I was a young’un. If you really loved your star-loving kid, you’d buy it — just don’t look at the price tag.

Who can resist when Masi Oka is the spokesman?

Additionally, T-Mobile is rewarding donors with one year of HotSpot access, available in about 8,500 locations in the U.S., such as Starbucks, Borders, airports, and Amtrak stations.

The hope, of course, is to bring technology to children who don’t have exposure to it.

The XO laptop, which resembles a kiddie robot with cute green antennae, is designed to respond to challenges like extreme temperatures, scarce power sources, and language barriers. Better yet, the display is designed for easy reading even in bright sunlight. If there are many XO laptops near each other, they can see each other instantly – even without an Internet connection. Read more about XO features and functions over at OLPC web site.

Additionally, $200 of your donation will be tax deductible.

First read up on the reviews at The New York Times, Freedom to Tinker, and Laptop Magazine Online.

Then go donate.

Across the world on Thursday, people learned how to “make life easy.” Yes, there is an entire day devoted to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use. While this year’s theme was healthcare, we are going to focus specifically on the Internet, or as some of us like to call it, the Global InterWeb.

The University of Minnesota Office of Information Technology and Digital Technology Center celebrated the day by organizing a free event in the Walter Library on campus with the help of the UMN Usability Services Laboratory. Yesterday’s event included guided tours of the state-of-the-art usability lab, a presentation discussing practical usability practices and a professional panel discussing an overview of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

So what does all of this mean and why is it important?

Web sites that follow good usability practices and accessibility standards will benefit both the economy and our health. After all, the easier it is for us to find and potentially purchase what we are looking for Online, the lower our blood pressure is and better the economy. The equation is simple:

Usability and Accessibility Planning (>) Well Designed Web Site (>) User Productivity (>) User Satisfaction.

But Carrie’s post about Architect Web sites, shows how hard it can be to develop good design. Usability.gov says “people cannot find the information they seek on Web sites about 60 percent of the time.” In fact, designers – did you know that screen readers do not read hyper-text link titles by default? This should make you think twice about adding a link to the words “click here”, or “read more”.

• Usability, like traditional marketing, forces us to research and understand who we are building our Web sites for. What is our desired user experience and how do we accomplish it? A.K.A User Centered Design.

• Accessibility forces us to make sure we create equal opportunity Web sites. We need to make sure any and all users, including users with disabilities can easily and equally receive our Online message(s).

How do we do this?

My suggestions are to …

1. Review on the Usability Basics and step-by-step visual usability guide on Usability.gov.
2. Read up on the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) The real Web 2.0.
3. Download a screen reader and see how accessible your Web site really is. You may find out that what you see is not always what you get.
4. You can also network with other Usability Professionals by joining the UPA. It’s always good to have a lot of friends when your doing your own usability testing.
5. Finally, as my track coach once told me, “practice makes permanent, not perfect.” The more you implement smart Web design practices, the sooner you’ll develop your own processes and successful user-centered Web sites.

The presentation discussed the importance of monitoring your IP address reputation to better understand and manage your email deliverability rates. Reviewing your email bounce rates is one thing, but understanding why your email subscribers are unsubscribing, or not even receiving your messages is another.

Both eBrochure Pro and eBrochure xPress are email marketing services that offer deliverability reports that show which subscribers received or complained about your message. So, if you’re an eBrochure client and scratching your head trying to figure out how to increase your deliverability rates, email me and I’ll send you your eBrochure IP address. You can use the following free resources to monitor your IP address reputation as well as general spam activity around the world.

1. Secure Computing’s Trusted Source
2. Iron Port’s SenderBase
3. Window’s Live Mail (beta)
4. Deliverability.com (general deliverability resources)

If Paris was an IP address, and the general media are the ISPs (Internet Service Providers), she would probably have some cleaning up to do before she could deliver some messages. For example, being seen carrying the Bible is hardly enough for a church to allow her to deliver a sermon in front of their members. The church would recognize her reputation from various media sources (ISPs) and likely would not allow her to deliver a sermon until her reputation improved.

So what are the “Five Things You Need to Know to Get on the Good Side with ISPs?” ReturnPath says.

1. Understand and Correct Email Complaints
2. Decrease Unknown User Rates (messages sent to emails the receiving mail server doesn’t recognize)
3. Spam Traps – Clean your lists from dormant email addresses.
4. Mail Server Infrastructure – Luckily Email Service Providers like eBrochure take care of this for you.
5. Increase Sending Permanence – aka decrease your bounce rates.