Managing Your Small Business’s Online Reputation

Monitoring the Web conversations, interacting with customers and honing your technical know-how can help your business get ahead.

New York Times, July 29, 2009 — Your customers are talking about you — and the whole world is listening.

Local review sites are reshaping the world of small business by becoming the new Yellow Pages, one-stop platforms where customers can find a business — and also see independent critiques of its performance.

How do you manage your reputation when everybody is a critic?

An Unwelcome Delivery

BusinessWeek, April 30, 2009 — Domino's Pizza has become the latest company to learn how quickly a brand can be tainted in a Web 2.0 world--and how important it is to monitor social media. On Apr. 13 a prank video made by two Domino's employees in North Carolina hit YouTube. In it, one of the pair sticks cheese up his nose and "sneezes" into a sandwich he's making--using that cheese. After Domino's learned (from a blogger) about the video, it issued a statement and created a Twitter account to answer questions. And in a YouTube message, Domino's USA President Patrick Doyle conveyed his outrage, announcing the impending arrest of the workers (who said they never delivered the befouled food), a scrubdown of the outlet, and extra vigilance in hiring.

Out of Office: Job Loss in the Age of Blogs and Twitter†

Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2009 — It's been decades since Americans had this much time on their hands and — thanks to the Web — never have there been so many opportunities to burn it.

In November, Julia Otto was headed to her first day on a new job, car keys in hand, as an administrative assistant with a New Orleans construction company when her phone rang. Her position was eliminated before she even started.

Now, when she's not sending out resumes or doing household chores, the 43-year-old spends several hours a day playing games. Her favorite is an adventure-puzzle game called "Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst," where she hunts for clues inside a spooky mansion to unlock a mystery. She spends about $7 a month playing games on the Big Fish Games site.

"They're an... continue reading

The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World†

Consumers are flocking to blogs, social-networking sites and virtual worlds. And they are leaving a lot of marketers behind.

Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2008 — For marketers, Web 2.0 offers a remarkable new opportunity to engage consumers.

If only they knew how to do it.

That's where this article aims to help. We interviewed more than 30 executives and managers in both large and small organizations that are at the forefront of experimenting with Web 2.0 tools. From those conversations and further research, we identified a set of emerging principles for marketing.