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Category Archives: Reputation Management

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Is Your Copywriting Cliché?

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The more copy I write, the faster I get. But sometimes the words flow a little too easily.

One morning a few weeks ago, I felt like I was on a roll, the words spilling out exactly how I wanted them to:

Focus on getting involved and being open-minded in college—trying new things creates memories and opens new doors of opportunity.

Although I expressed this college advice with sincerity in the blog post I was drafting, I quickly realized that something wasn’t quite right about the way that I expressed it.

Opens new doors of opportunity? I wondered. Staring at the words, I felt irked. Was it too corny? Cliché?

Now, this contemplation may be nit-picky, but then again, being nit-picky is part of my job as a copywriter. So I decided to follow what I consider the major rule of combating content corniness:

When in Doubt, Take it Out

Sure, “opens new doors of opportunity” has a nice ring to it. But due to overuse, there’s nothing really special about it. Taking a step back, I had to ask myself whether I’d still appreciate the sentence if it I came across it online. I decided that it was, in fact, cheesy and a little fake. And there’s no greater mistake in copywriting than alienating your readers.

All writers, experienced or inexperienced, feel tempted to use clichés sometimes. That’s because clichéd phrases come easily—even naturally—because they have an active role in our daily lexicon. But although clichés are acceptable in common speech, they make for weak professional writing.

The best written metaphors and details catch our attention because they surprise us and make us think. Adding surprise to your copy requires effort and creativity, of course, but it ultimately makes your writing much stronger.

The worst thing about clichés is how easily they sneak up on you. Avoiding clichés was one of the first things I learned as an English major in college, and as a copywriter I still have to make sure that I don’t let any tired language slip in.

Remember that clichés aren’t always blatant,  as in “you should avoid them like the plague.” Sometimes I even try to avoid Cliché’s evil twin, Clichéd Writing, which simply includes overused go-to phrases such as “you should avoid clichés at all costs.”

Just remember that whatever unique combination of words you come up is much better than any cliché phrase we’ve already heard.

 

(I used at least five other clichés or clichéd phrases in this blog post. Can you spot them?)

 

*Image provided by Tom Newby Photography on Flickr

Posted in Content Creation, Reputation Management | Tagged , , ,

 

Valuing the Value Proposition for Positive Branding

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Oftentimes when a new client comes to Fathom, we quickly realize that it doesn’t know what is special about its products or services. Certainly the client believes in the wares it offers, but really can’t explain why consumers should buy from it instead of from a competitor. It thus becomes part of our Internet marketing campaign to help these clients hone their “elevator pitches”—what is now often referred to as their value proposition.

It seems the old world of advertising and marketing and the new world of holistic online marketing are not so much colliding but rather moving in synchronous orbits together at times, and the branding strategy of the value proposition is definitely one of those occasions. Helping a client to discover and then to present a value proposition gives us a chance to truly empower a client with a multi-faceted tool, as the value proposition can be used in slogans and mottos, on printed collateral materials by salespeople, and liberally all over a company website for branding initiatives.

The value proposition as presented in the interesting marketing fable, Roar!,* offers a solution for a painful situation—a solution that can be solved uniquely and best by the company presenting the value proposition and by its products or services. A few handy tips towards discovering and creating that value proposition include:

  • Creating a 160-character-or-less statement explaining who the brand is, sans marketing jargon
  • Listing the 3 greatest strengths/weaknesses of the brand
  • Discovering what makes the brand stand out or appear different from competitor versions
  • Understanding what value the brand brings to consumers
  • Assessing why customers buy the brand the very first time

These and more, when applied objectively to a brand under observation, can help marketeers to fathom exactly what it is about a brand that makes that brand “pop, ” and can help the brand to become more popular.

Socrates said it best when he said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” That ethic applies to branding as well, and Fathom proudly helps our clients to do just that - examine their brands and present them for their validity and necessity to their clients around the world.

*[Ed. note: In the interests of full disclosure, the author of Roar!, Kevin Daum, once served as a consultant for Fathom.]

Posted in Internet Video Marketing, Online Marketing, Online PR, Reputation Management, Social Media

 

What it Really Means to Engage Your Twitter Followers

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Everyone knows that in order to increase the number of followers you have on Twitter, you must engage your audience. But, what does it really mean to engage your followers? How do you go about creating an environment that keeps your followers active and interested?

The key to engaging users is to interact with them. Using twitter as a marketing tactic is acceptable, but you should also be using it as a way to interact directly with your community. By using Twitter as a customer service outlet, you can offer your followers an added benefit for following you.

Interact and Respond

If your followers are trying to interact with your brand, respond! If someone comments positively on a purchase they made through your site, retweet it. Respond with a thank you. Anything you can do to show you actually care and appreciate their efforts will keep them more engaged.

Damage Control

Conversely, if your products or services receive negative feedback, acknowledge it. You can follow up negative Twitter feedback with an apology or solution to improve overall satisfaction. In responding, you show your followers concerns are important and that you are committed to improving your brand.

This type of Twitter commitment can also lead you to finding key influencers in your field. By having key influencers follow you and interact with your other followers, you can grow your community to include people that have an actual passion for your industry.

One of the best ways to find success through Twitter is to interact with your audience. Whether they have questions, feedback, praise or complaints, do your best to acknowledge your followers. Get everyone in your company involved. Have schedules for your employees to contribute their time to interacting with your existing followers. This type of engagement will lead you to more followers and a community with a rich desire for what your business has to offer.

Let Fathom help you grow your social media efforts. Learn about our social media package today.

Have your own ideas for getting your followers involved with your Twitter account? Share with us how you use Twitter, we’d love to hear what is working for you.

Posted in Online Marketing, Online PR, Reputation Management, Social Media | Tagged , , , ,

 

Fathom That?! – Ep. 7 – “How to Respond to Bad Press With Reputation Monitoring”

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This week’s episode of “Fathom That?!” features Kurt Krejny, who explains how to respond to bad press with reputation monitoring. He shares five great tips on how to control your company’s reputation online.

Keep checking back for more episodes every Friday, and leave us a comment if you have something about online marketing you would like us to cover!

Posted in Internet Video Marketing, Reputation Management | Tagged ,

 

Simplified Holistic Online Marketing: PPC & SEO Working Together

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In my previous post about simple holistic online marketing I stressed how keywords are the strong foundation for your website. Anyone in the search marketing industry knows that keywords are the driving force behind paid and organic campaigns. In this post I’ll focus on how a PPC and SEO campaign can be optimized together to achieve keyword visibility that delivers results and revenue growth.

Paid and Organic Search Working Together

Higher visibility and conversion rates when both paid & organic listings are present
This strategy is pretty straightforward. Often we hear companies want to reduce paid search spend if they obtain a top organic keyword ranking; however, there is the risk of losing prime real estate in competitive search spaces. If your ROI is remaining positive for both, then why would you want to pause your paid campaign? Let both listings support each other for optimal results.

Share top-converting keyword data
Keyword research tools provide part of the data needed to pick quality paid and organic keyword sets. The most actionable keywords and opportunities are the ones that are converting at a higher rate and turning into sales. Make sure to share this information between teams to build new content that can be found organically, and to create new ads for people in the final buying stages.

Use best-performing paid CTAs in organic Title Tag, Meta Descriptions and content
This is such a simple concept, but it can provide a nice boost to click-thrus from your organic listings. Optimizing a page for rankings, traffic and conversions is an art form and can take time, but real-time results from paid search can be applied to organic pages for a quick boost at a low risk. Your best- performing ad calls-to-action can take out some guesswork on writing an enticing Title Tag and Meta Description. Once you find a version that is improving conversion, make sure to tweak your on-page content and conversion funnel paths.

Segment keywords for different initiatives
Paid search provides timely information about specific campaigns tied to highly relevant landing pages. For example, a person that downloaded a whitepaper may be in a different buying stage than someone that is scheduling a demo. Placing these keywords into segments can help create specific organic landing pages that will improve conversion rates. Many times we place all call-to-action funnels on one page and hope for the best. Serving up the best page for these different types of visitors at first entry can drastically increase the chance they convert rather than bounce.

Integrate shopping feeds
On the organic side of search we help our clients manage e-commerce shopping feeds in the major search engines. By connecting this feed to your paid ads, you can make them stand out and get people directly to product checkout pages. Any way you can reduce the number of clicks it takes people to find what they want is important to the conversion funnel. It’s important to stay current with the beta tests Google and Bing continue to roll out for shopping results.

Use internal site-search data to create highly targeted, branded paid ads
A paid search landing page may not always be the best option to get someone to a very specific page on your site when they are looking for information crucial to the buying process. Consider using internal site search data to mine for keywords people are using once they arrive to your site. Finding the right information on large websites can be a challenge… so before people even get to your site search, attempt to serve them up a highly targeted paid search ad to save them time. A good example of this can be for someone searching for technical specs or reviews for a costly product. Once they have all their questions answered and feel comfortable in the product, they are ready to buy!

Google Places and local business extensions
People that are looking for your company in your geographic vicinity can be top conversion prospects if you get them all the information they need. Having an optimized Google Places page ensures the searcher knows your exact location, store hours, forms of payment, and can read helpful customer reviews. Syncing this page with your local paid extensions improves visibility and increases the chances that person will visit your location in person.

Combat negative PR
People are going to talk about your company online whether you like it or not. Disgruntled customers or even cut-throat competitors will threaten your online reputation. Organic search listings and items like Google Suggest can be hard to influence for your brand if others are writing negative reviews and articles. A timely defense mechanism to offset damage is to set up paid campaigns for your brand along with modifiers that are affecting you. Words like “reviews,” “complaints,” “scam,” and “rip off” should be targeted as soon as you see them pop up. You may be surprised at the traffic you can generate to your own properties by placing some creative ads to help answer customer questions for negative PR.

Social media visibility (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube)
On the organic side of search we spend a lot of time helping our clients optimize for the major social channels for both branded and non-branded keywords. Each of the major social channels allows for paid ads that can help increase the visibility of the social profiles. Use paid options to send more targeted traffic to your Facebook page and Twitter profile. Make sure your pages/profiles offer something of value like a white paper or contest to keep your audience engaged and coming back for updates. LinkedIn ads also can be a great way to promote a timely white paper to a specific audience. YouTube also offers nice text- and link-overlay calls-to-action on your videos when you connect your Google Adwords account with a minimal daily budget. Don’t be afraid to spend money to make money! Properly tracking all these efforts will quickly show you what works and what does not.

Test the long-term viability of organic keywords
Paid search allows you to show up quickly for keywords in top positions while you are working towards a top organic ranking. If you are seeing these keywords convert from the paid side, then they are likely good candidates for organic optimization. Take action on these keywords by weaving them into your content and creating keyword-focused landing pages that solve searchers’ problems.

Test lead-capture forms on paid landing pages and apply them to your top organic pages
Learn the qualities of a top-converting paid landing page and incorporate the best elements into your organic landing pages. Tools like Click Tale and Crazy Egg will show you how people interact with your pages. Are people clicking on a graphic without a link and expecting something? Simple tools can uncover usability issues across your entire site to fix in order to improve conversions.

What works for your campaigns?
I’d like to encourage readers to leave comments about the holistic online marketing tactics that have produced results and revenue for their campaigns. Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts in this holistic online marketing series!

Posted in Conversion Optimization, E-commerce, Keyword Research, Local Search, Online Marketing, Paid Search, Reputation Management, SEO, Social Media, Usability

 

7 Deadly Sins of Blogging

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When it comes to blogging, you might think there’s no right or wrong way to go about it.  Blogging gives you the freedom to creatively express your opinion and state your viewpoint on any given subject.  Yet, there are a number of things you could do wrong that not only make it difficult to communicate your point effectively, but also tarnish your reputation.  Here are the “seven deadly sins” of blogging:

1.  You don’t answer the 5 W’s (and the H).  In just about anything you write, you need to address the who, what, when, where, why and how of the subject you’re talking about.  Without these basic questions answered, readers won’t have a complete understanding of the subject and will wonder what was the point of your blog post.

2.  You make “actual word” typos.  Any typo will easily and immediately tarnish your reputation.  Don’t use spell check as your safety net because this tool won’t catch an incorrect word spelled correctly.  Examine your content to make sure that each word is actually the word you intended to write.

3.  You publish your first draft.  Each step of the writing process needs to be carried out when blogging.  Your process should include writing, editing, proofreading and more proofreading.  The first draft of your blog post should never be the final draft.

4.  Your post looks like a Wikipedia article.  Don’t mindlessly spit out facts.  Each fact included must have a purpose and support your blog post thesis.

5.  Your paragraphs break the four-line rule.  Edit your paragraphs to be four lines or less.  People don’t have all day to read your blog posts, so your posts should be structured for short attention spans.  Shorter paragraphs grab people’s attention and keep their attention.

6.  Your posts include obvious factual mistakes.  For instance, if the URLs you link to are not accurate or are no longer live, your post just ends up looking sloppy and you look like a careless blogger.

7.  You make word choice errors.  Do you know the different between “stationary” and “stationery?”  You should.  By not using the correct words, your blog post looks unprofessional.

How do you keep your blog and your reputation in mint condition?  Share your tips in the comments below.

Posted in Content Creation, Reputation Management, SEO | Tagged , , ,

 

SEM & SEO for Enhancing Your Online Reputation

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View the presentation from the June 29th Web Association Luncheon:

Posted in Paid Search, Reputation Management, SEO, Social Media

 

Fathom Serves Up Online Reputation Monitoring Luncheon

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Fathom’s own Director of SEM Best Practices, Mr. Kurt Krejny, was asked recently by Metrics Marketing Group to speak on the topic of online reputation monitoring & management for an upcoming Web Association luncheon. Kurt, who has been instrumental in the development of the search engine marketing strategies Fathom uses to help companies manage their reputations online, jumped at the chance, not only due to his knowledge and expertise in online marketing but also because he’ll get the chance to share the podium with his fiance’ – Ms. Alison Morey of Metrics Marketing.

As Kurt puts it, “Companies today are far more vulnerable than ever before to criticisms, complaints and negative feedback about their products and services. Disgruntled former employees, competitors and even dissatisfied customers can use the Internet to unfairly smear the name of legitimate businesses. Those comments can show up in search results and deter possible new clients from engaging. Reputation management is all about pushing down those negative comments so your company can be seen in the best light possible, using search engine marketing techniques.”

The luncheon promises to be a tasty event, and an informative one too. Information can be found by following this Web Association link for registration details on the June 29th lunch, which starts at 11:30 a.m. at Windows on the River in Cleveland, Ohio.

Posted in Conferences and Events, Reputation Management

 

How a Deer-Hunting Photo Diary Can Help Online Reputation Monitoring

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I’d like to share a funny story about a how a client of mine has gotten some recent reputation-monitoring help from strange places.

Background

This client is in the consumer electronics industry, but the name of its business happens to share a name with:

1. a medical iPhone app

2. a .net website belonging to a farm

The Rankings

As logic would dictate, these ranking pages that helped them have zero connection to my client’s business or industry, but the fact that they were ranking #14 and 15 in Google today in a search for the company’s name is a blessing in disguise. The reason is because these pages do not reflect negatively on the client’s business. They may not appear to be positive by themselves, but the idea that they are potentially preventing other negative website results out there from showing up in top results for my client’s name is reassuring. Even if the farm website contains an extensive diary with graphic photos of a deer hunt. Believe me, I’d love to show these photos or link to them, but I don’t want give up my client’s identity or get in trouble with a competent gun owner, so I’m just going to show the site’s “navigation.”

reputation monitoring help: deer hunt

Help from unexpected places.

Lesson: Take Reputation-Monitoring Action

If you find a similar situation for your business, depending on how high the doppelganger site(s) rank and the severity/prominence of the negative result(s), you should consider linking. One humorous way to go about it would be to add a disclaimer saying:

These places could be confused with us, but are definitely NOT us.

In this way, you could link to an unrelated namesake while not confusing your own visitors. Perhaps giving these sites some links could be the factor that pushes up their rankings in searches for your name. Linking out might be worth a try, especially if these sites are already showing up on first- or second-page search results for your business name. Again, the question is, “How bad and prominent is/are the negative listing(s)?” If no other current option exists for changing these search results, then your time would be well spent. You would have nothing to lose and much to gain.

So, remember, you can’t always change the bad things people say about your business, but you can sometimes get a little help from random places.

Posted in Google, Reputation Management | Tagged , , ,

 

Google’s Tips for Online Reputation Monitoring & Management

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Susan Moskwa, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google recently wrote about ways to manage your reputation through search results.

It is great to see Google offering practical tips to people or companies looking to improve their online reputation. As an online reputation monitoring strategist I am encouraged that Google is taking steps to educate their audience on this topic. Reputation management can be a daunting task for any company or search engine marketer looking to repair or improve upon negative publicity.

Susan approaches the problem at hand with three strategies. Here are some additional tips to help with your online reputation management campaign:

Think twice
If you decide to put your information online, it is crucial to determine the right keywords to use. Whether it is the name of a company, product, or individual – the key to success is to remain consistent. URLs for online profiles are typically derived from the user name you select, so be mindful of your final choice. Your Facebook, Twitter or YouTube account can rank right behind your website on a search for your company name.

Tackle it at the source
You noticed a forum post from 2004 ranking #57 on a search for your company name. If you are trying to get this post removed from a site to lower the ranking, the worst thing you can do is reply to the thread. Adding new content to the thread can increase the chance that Google will re-crawl this page and increase the ranking of the forum post. Leave it alone!

Proactively publish information
Be very careful to the way you go about responding to any reputation issues. If not handled correctly, a small campfire can turn into a raging forest fire. Don’t add more fuel to the fire if you can help it. If a blogger is not responsive to your rebuttal of false claims, consider taking the conversation offline with a phone call. Some journalists strive to post controversial topics, but make sure they aren’t denying your right to respond. I have seen a well written response denied by the journalist because they don’t want to cater to the reasoning of the company they slammed. As unfair as it is, it is a reality for a blog that has comment moderation.

Publishing new and positive content across the web is the best thing you can do to improve your online reputation. There are numerous social networks, wikis, article and press release websites that can be used to spread your name and positive image, along with improving your inbound links as entrance points to your website.

View more reputation monitoring articles by Fathom.

Posted in Google, Reputation Management

 

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