The story below is entirely in Italian, click on image if you want to read the complete version.

Unfortunately, reality tends to bring out the bad comments and bury the good ones which become harder and harder to find. It seems that online comment boards are becoming more and more of a place where frustrated individuals air their petty grievances and dislikes.

Instead, I personally think comments should be for honest discourse and to correct misleading information that may be spotted throughout the article, just as there should be an online etiquette for comments. However, it is every brand’s duty to react accordingly and take the right measures.

What we usually tell our clients is that if the negative comment is written in a proper manner and not in an unpleasant manner, the brand or product should come forward and give its official response to the matter. Otherwise, if the negative comment is done in an improper way, and this may seem counterintuitive, our advise is simply to ignore it and invest in a SEO strategy that can ‘bury the evidence with positive pages in the search results so that it is difficult to find.

Other ways for brands to manage and defend against online comments could be the following:

* Respond promptly- try to address the comment within 24 hours or less

*Do not attack the commenter, attack the issue- respond in a professional and objective manner- do not provoke the commenter

* Respond by focusing on the issue- go straight to the point, avoid going off on a tangent

* Apologize if necessary- if the customer is unhappy or unsatisfied, apologize and perhaps offer a consoltation package

* Ask if something remains unclear- it is good to interact and ask questions, that way you can provide a more accurate answer rather than just partial

* Do not market yourself- avoid trying to sell your brand or product while providing your response

It is clear that while you can’t control what others say about your company, brand or service on social media platforms, blogs or forums, you can do damage control. If you have an online presence and are actively participating in social networks, you should engage in a monitoring program and constantly listen to what people are saying about your brand and the competition.

The article below was published today, 12 January on PambiancoNews, an offline and online publication focused on fashion, entertainment and design news in Italy.

It’s entirely in Italian, however, it discusses pretty much what we’ve laid out for you in the post above. Click on the image to view entire article.

Answer is…immediacy.

As Seth Godin clearly states it, “self-service customer support outperforms the traditional model because people don’t have to wait in line.” Today, there are many online services available that allow for any kind of business, big or small, to come closer to its customers.

Online social services are ideal to understand what customers are looking for, what they like and dislike about your brand or service, for sharing information and most importantly, as a feedback channel. It is through these channels that your customers finally feel like they are part of something and are acknowledged by you, the brand.

Another aspect that’s good about online customer service? It helps decrease operating costs. No more need to invest in unecessary focus groups, phone surveys which generally only a few pay attention to, or lengthy FAQs forms to fill out. All these are extremely impersonal and don’t allow for any interaction.

Forums, for example, are a great way to get in touch with your community. Apple does it, they have an Apple Discussion section divided into numerous categories that you can choose from and pose questions. Next thing you know, either an employee or a customer itself will give a solution to your issue.

Online Chats are also an effective way to communicate with customers. Going back to the ‘waiting in line’ detail, chats allow for anyone to begin chatting with customer service for support. It’s quick, it’s easy and you get on-the-spot answers to your problems. Skype, for instance, is a great example of an online chat, imho.

Twitter, although it’s not a chat, but a micro-blogging platform, presents itself as a great solution to quick responses. More on this subject, refer to the iMedia article ‘4 Steps for Customer Service success on Twitter‘.

And of course, the little page called Facebook. Another way in which Facebook Fan Pages can be exploited is for servicing concerns and requests as well as requesting feedback. The bigger the Fan Page, the more discussions will  arise and the more attention that needs to be dedicated to the network.

Each brand or service can apply these services in the way they find most useful. However, there should a strategy that helps in identifying the best way to leverage these services according to your communication objectives. The better the outcome, the people will spread the word about you and generare positive press.

There’s nothing new about the statement that social media is extremely fast-moving and fluid, hence it’s very important for agencies, marketers and advertisers, who dedicate loads of time into them, to understand how to go about controlling what is being said about their brands across all types of social media; wikis, networks, forums, microblogs, etc.

This process is called Social Media Monitoring. Brands should really grasp this process as to be able to take full advantage of conversations about themselves as well as their competitors’ in the online arena (and offline if the brand is integrating online and offline campaigns).

The importance of social media monitoring is that it let’s you discover conversations in real-time, understand positive and negative opinions on behalf of consumers and perhaps even point out who the individual influencer to get to the possible root of the problem.

The first step to begin measuring what is being said about your brand is to use social monitoring tools. Some of these you might have already heard of- Radian6, ScoutLabs, BackType…Twitter!

Another way is by using keyword targeting. You should begin by establishing a main list of the most pertinent keywords rlevant to your brand. This will help filter out those keywords that have no relation whatosever with your brand and focus on those that do.

Spam elimination. Get rid of all that’s useless to you and your feeds, the noise. Also, you should make a list of negative keywords to help with the elimination process and even blacklist sites if needed. As you do this, you’re automatically refining the data and gathering all that’s really worth exploring for further analysis. Sentiment analysis to be exact. This is the process in which you can distinguish the writer’s emotional meaning or the attitude with regards to your brand or product.

This will then define whether it’s time to take action or not. What does it mean to take action? It means to manage rumors, emerging opinions, risks and engage the participant or the social network where it is happening. Your duty is to protect and enhance brand equity. Target the social media influencers and understand the conversation in order to intervene accordingly.

For more information on social media monitoring tools, read the following Marketing Pilgrim and ReadWriteWeb articles.

Now, if we were to go back, say one year, such statement would have seemed atrocious to many. But it can also feel as if we’re going against nature. Companies are made up of people, and people like to talk. People have lives, hobbies, interests and friends, whether they’re work friends, friends met through business or just lifetime friends.

Here at 77, for example, we’re encouraged- even required on some level to explore and engage in social media networks. We all know socializing is good for business and that contacts can really take you places. In fact, the same study also shows that 31% of respondents said their CEO is on Facebook (14% have a Twitter profile). These are exactly the guys that take you places.

Other significant numbers reported leveraging social media and Web 2.0 tools to create brand awareness, brand building, communicate internally with employees and for recruitment purposes.

Now the downside of it all, which is nothing new to us– is the fear that these new media tools may harm a company’s reputation, which made up 24% of respondents who strongly agreed.

“While the decision to post videos, pictures, thoughts, experiences, and observations to social networking sites is personal, a single act can create far-reaching ethical consequences for individuals as well as organizations,” said Sharon Allen of Deloitte. “Therefore it is important for executives to be mindful of the implications and to elevate the discussion about the risks associated with it to the highest levels of leadership.”

There’s nothing a little online reputation management wouldn’t be able to solve. However, what I would recommend is for companies to dedicate the time to teach their employees and give them the option to participate in social media. In the end, they are your company’s best endorsers, so it’d be best to capitalize on their energy in order to deliver all the right messages to the right audience.

We’ve touched on this subject before, online reputation management and the importance of having a positive image for a business’s success not to mention a durable competitive advantage.

If you have an online presence and are engaged in social media marketing activities for you brand, you’re bound to have somekind of online reputation.

Between blogs, websites, Facebook, LinkedIn and numerous other social websites, there are people out there who are mentioning your brand- good or bad.

One way of monitoring your reputation is by using StepRep, an online tool that allows you to manage, monitor and build your image.  We know how news can travel at the speed of light, specially bad ones, StepRep is one way of keeping a close eye on what is being said about your brand.

You can sign in for free using your Google log in information. Once in, StepRep categorizes the good and bad reviews sorting the good ones so that they appear higher up on the Google rankings. Once this is done, you can choose whether you want the StepRep widget to sit on your website, blog, facebook or linkedin profile as to broadcast all positive stories said about your brand for everyone to see.

Because people’s opinions matter, the idea is to try and embrace the power of social networks as much as possible, exploiting when someone recommends you, your services, your company and use all positive remarks to your favor in order to maintain a good reputation.

Try it yourself, sign-up to StepRep and see how you can monitor your online reputation.

For more details check out Brick Marketing’s Social Marketing Journal.

Viral equals a positive message. There can be good viral campaigns and bad viral campaigns. The reputation crisis which detonated this past weekend which was witnessed by just about every single mom-blogger existent in the blogosphere gives us the bad version of it.

For those of you who happened to be away from your computers, here’s a quick sum up. The McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of J&J, launched an offline/online campaign sending what was obviously, the wrong message to current and future moms.

The advice to moms: “take Motrin to ease the agonizing pain caused from carrying your (innocent and beautiful) baby on your back all the time”

The reply from moms- 48 hrs. after campaign was put online: “How dare you, Motrin!”

Within hours both Twitter and YouTube were flooded with anti-Motrin remarks and anti-Motrin videos. Every single mom in the blogoshere made sure her voice was heard by the people back in McNeil Consumer Healthcare. Take a look at how the online reputation crisis for Motrin was like over the weekend:

Motrin eventually pulled the ad and offered their sincere apologies, as still displayed on the Motrin site.

The Motrin case serves as more than valuable evidence that social networks have an immeasurable potential and really do work. As a colleague of mine says, social media really brings ‘power to the people-we better think twice before publishing any kind of message up on the Web’.

Most importantly, companies today should have a very clear idea who their messages are intended for and know exactly what their target audience is and not just assume that ‘moms feel pain from wearing their babies’.