Marine Retail University, Boston, Jan. 14, 2015. If you're not managing your online reputation, you have no idea what people are saying about your company. Learn how to use social media, directory listings and more to guide the conversations people are having about your business.

1. The GOOD,
the BAD,
and the UGLY
Online Reputation
Management
Lauren de Vlaming
Dominion Marine Media

2. Hi, there.
Lauren de Vlaming
Social Media Manager
Dominion Marine Media
• Proud Alabama alumna
• Labrador retriever owner
• Manage 24 social media
properties for four brands
• Proven success driving
traffic to websites
• Armed with enough SEO
know-how to be dangerous

3.  Building
 Soliciting reviews
 Monitoring
 Guiding/Responding
 Ethical considerations
The basics

4. BUILDING

5. “It takes 20 years
to build a
reputation and five
minutes to ruin it.
If you think about
that, you’ll do
things differently.”
— Warren Buffet

7. percent of consumers who have made a purchase
based on a review they deemed accurate. (Comscore/The
Kelsey Group, 2007)
97%

8. percent of consumers who trust online reviews from
people they don’t know. (Bright Local, 2014)
88%

9. percent of Americans who believe what they read
about a brand based on the search results page.
70%

10. Why is this important?
Reputation management

11. You don’t control your brand.

12. ZMOT

13. Where do you manage your
reputation online?
 Yelp
 Google Business
 Yellow Pages
 Boater Rated
 Bing
 Social media
 Other
 None
Management

14. Q: What is parasite hosting?
A: Parasite hosting refers to websites with
high trust and authority that allow the self-
publishing of content. The benefit lies in the
ability to leverage the host domain's authority
and trust to get your content ranked.
Parasite hosting

15. Social media

16. Opportunity:
Brands
using
social
annota3ons
see
a
5-­‐
10%
up3ck
in
click
through
rates.
Social annotations

17. Opportunity:
Increase
click-­‐through
rate
and
influence
with
social
proof.
Social annotations

18.  Allows
you
to
curate
your
own
communi3es
of
influence.
 Gives
customers
a
chance
to
build
long-­‐term
rela3onships
with
you.
 Gives
customers
an
easy
way
to
voice
feedback
and
allows
you
to
respond
to
any
feedback
that
arises
in
those
communi3es.
 Can
give
you
more
influence
over
what
shows
up
in
search
Social media

19. Google is starting to use social media to help vet authority
and relevance when it comes to brands and businesses.
That means your social platforms can give you authoritative
clout and can cause you to rank higher in search results.
Social media

20. SEO

21. Google+

22. Opportunity:
Free
marke3ng
and
great
for
SEO.
Add videos to YouTube

23. Review sites and directories

24. Review sites

25. Google reviews

26. Create a reviews page

27. SOLICITING REVIEWS

28.  Email signatures
 During the contract-signing process
 Service appointments
 Follow-up calls or emails
 Dealership or marina events
 Trade-in
 Newsletters
 When you review other businesses
How to ask

30.  Actively manage your own account (It can boost your result in
search!)
 Don’t repurpose your reviews on other sites.
 Don’t include URLs or phone numbers in the reviews.
 Emphasize honesty.
 Request reviews individually rather than in large groups.
 Tell your customers that any length is acceptable.
 Request that customers not re-post their reviews on other sites.
 Don’t focus solely on Google+ Local.
Avoid getting filtered

31.  Customers with iPhones must navigate to your
listing via the Google Maps app to write a review.
 Do you have a review that’s missing?
• Is the listing claimed in multiple accounts?
• Move it (if you’ve moved recently or changed your
company name)
• Report it: https://support.google.com/business
 Chill out.
Troubleshooting

32. Share your reviews!

33. MONITORING

34. Don’t let this happen to you

35.  Free:
• Social media platforms/Review sites
• Google alerts/Me on the web/Yahoo alerts
• TweetBeep/Twitter search
 For business:
• Trackur/KnowEm.com
• DMM Social Solutions
• Nuvi
Tools for monitoring

36. Watch the competition

37. Review sites

38. GUIDING/RESPONDING

39. • The
Good,
the
bad
and
the
ugly
Tackling reviews
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

40. The good

41. @_asherleen: What are your views on Sealine going
bust?
@boatsdotcom: We are worried for the employees
whose jobs are hanging in the balance.
@_asherleen: my dads just lost his job, they had no
intention in saving the company. They knew what
was going on.
The good

42. @boatsdotcom: ♥ ♥ Sending you and your dad our
love. ♥ ♥
@_asherleen: You must be a female to send a nice
reply. Thank you. ♥ ♥
The good

43. Sometimes we do dumb things.
The bad

44. The Ugly

45. The ugly.

46. The ugly.

47. The ugly.

48.  Know your stuff.
 Be nice…
 …but don’t get too personal.
 Be brief.
 Customize your responses.
 Thank your reviewers.
 Stop selling. Start conversing.
 Err on the side of caution.
Best practices

49.  Cut them off at the pass
 Identify and engage dissenters
 Respond quickly
 Have someone else do a gut check for you
 Diffuse the bomb
 Treat the customer as “innocent until proven guilty”
 Report it if it’s inappropriate
Responding

50. The silver lining

51. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

52. Ethics

53.  Disclosure. Be up front about who you are, even
on others’ websites or blogs.
 Don’t review yourself.
 Don’t offer incentives for reviews.
 Don’t buy reviews
 Don’t censor. Allow people to voice their concerns.
Ethics

54. Don’t censor.
Ethics

55.  Disclosure. Be up front about who you are, even on
others’ websites or blogs.
 Don’t review yourself.
 Don’t offer incentives for reviews.
 Don’t buy reviews.
 Censorship. Allow people to voice their concerns.
 Honesty. At all costs.
Ethics

56. “If there is
anything more
annoying in the
world than having
people talk about
you, it is certainly
having no one talk
about you.”
― Oscar Wilde

57. Lauren de Vlaming
Dominion Marine Media
Social Media Manager
Boat Trader
Questions?