I’m sure the tales will be retold elsewhere, and the video’s of the presentations will also be published soon. Sometimes a shame that only one session can be attended at a time. The streaming by Werner.tv fell through for lack of bandwidth.
After Bart De Waele’s subject, i pondered this question in my own slow way: is online reputation management, doing what it takes so your critics so they appear at page 500 in Google’s classification, ethical ?
There are several clear cases:
- the critics actually have a valid point, your company made a mistake
- they want to actively harm your online reputation
- They are neither right nor wrong, they just have a different taste/opinion, or are just plain difficult to please.
In the first two cases, the answer is clear. Only the third is a grey zone.
On the other hand, an unhappy customer is much more likely to complain, then a happy customer to praise you. Anger is a strong motivator. So all in all, the risk exists that the purely objective online content about you is negatively balanced, however honest and competent you are. In this light, it’s only fair that you try to redress the balance, at least a bit. As long as you answer the sincere critics honestly, i think you stay on the right side of the Force.
I did a totally unethical and bad thing today: i caused Brussels sprouts to be tagged national dish of Belgium on Freebase (only thing i could come up with in english – how’d you translate ‘Boulet sauce lapin’ or ‘limburgse vla’ ?). Now i really need an invite to correct that wrong, otherwise i’m certainly going to reincarnate as a toadstool.