The culture of participatory social media is having some surprisingly significant effects on both the way satisfied customers play a role in contributing to the marketing message development of products and services. And it is also playing an increasingly important role in defining the key touchpoints that customers use in the deciding factors one what to purchase. What makes this all the more noteworthy is that much of this is rooted in offline purchases. I’m putting this together from two recent studies…

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Check out the article in last Thursday’s Times, Dealing With the Damage From Online Critics, that addresses how to handle consumers who develop a personal vendetta against your company. Well, you could send lawyers but legal cease-and-desists generally just make the customer madder than hell and it isn’t hard to just start yet another attack site.

I hate to say it, sucking less always helps. Start with treating your customers better. Also, be sure to register lots of domain names and work on your online reputation aggressively before it becomes a problem.

Online, the best defense is a good offense and an ounce of online promotion is worth a pound of cure. Here are some great commented-by-me excerpts from the article, Dealing With the Damage From Online Critics, so you can get a gist:

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With the issue of reputation management in the news, I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent discovery that many of the Mattel toys made in China were painted with lead-based paints. This had followed several other unrelated incidents that had previously caused embarrassment to either Mattel or to China.

A company such as Mattel needs to have a proactive online strategy that could meet the negativity head on, to help suppress those damaging rumors that could hurt the company both immediately and permanently. A company needs to understand what is being said about them in online forums, on blogs, and, if necessary, it needs to help blunt and diminish the negativity headed their way.

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Abraham Harrison friend Joe Jaffe had a tough weekend.

Seems all he wanted to do is just return two defective toys that his four year old son got for his birthday. Unfortunately he tried to do this sans receipts. Nice try, Joe. Ain’t gonna happen.

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Today I read in MediaPost’s Online Media Daily that insurance companies are going to spend about $980 million on internet marketing in 2007. That’s a lot. The breakdown will be about 50% to search, 30% online video and other forms of rich media, and 20% display.

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I have yet to read How, my next purchase, but after listening to Dov Seidman interviewed by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on Word for Word (podcast), I have another soulmate in Dov with his radical business ideas such as “authenticity,” “reputation,” “transparency,” “relationship,” “conversation” and “integrity” business ideal. Listen!


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