Brand is not just a simple logo, slogan, color combination or a name for your product or service; it represents the personality, the living form, the part of your products that people want to connect with and be engaged in it.
That’s why branding is always an important part in marketing. Good branding management will not only allow you to lower your marketing costs, but also collecting more revenue from the extra profit that a good brand can bring to you.
Branding is also important in blogging. A blog with a good brand and a persuasive elevator pitch always make good impression in the first encounter with online users.
For instance, Darren at ProBlogger has been able to develop a very successful brand image for his blog with an elevator pitch “ProBlogger helps Bloggers Build Exceptional Blogs”. Today, ProBlogger’s logo has been spread to lots of people through his books, workbooks and many other products. Darren is able to keep most of his income from his products because people believe in his brand, in his guaranteed-quality inside the products and his commitment in helping them to create a successful blog by themselves.
Now, I don’t cover about how you can create a strong brand for your blog. That will be too much for me. I will assume that you have a brand name for your blog already and in this post, I will show you how you can protect and nurture brand online, including how to deal with negative feedbacks from other people effectively.
Why Should You Care?
Listen to the story which I paraphrase from the book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” by David Meerman Scott.
On October 31, 2005, a new blog post about Sony Digital Rights Management was published by Mark Russinovich in which he complained about security issues exploited by software used on Sony BMG music CDs. The blog post intantly became hot. In the next several days, a huge flow of comments landed on his blog. Most of the comments harshly criticized about the Sony software. Then, the press started to pick the news up after it had been spread to several forums online. Where do you think Sony in this progress? Not on forums. Not on blogs. Not on anything, until November, the firm’s representative appeared on the radio with an apology. But the Sony’s problem didn’t end at the radio. It ended with very expensive law suit filed by many states, claimed that Sony had made a spyware software which infected a lot of American users. If Sony had reacted sooner, the problem would not have ended this way.
You probably don’t end up with a law suit like Sony did, but you can imagine part of the effect. If you don’t monitor and react right away when some people say bad things about your blog, you aren’t only destroying your blog’s image, but also hurt your residual income later.
How Do You Monitor Your Blog Brand?
You can use these tools to effectively monitor your blog name online. You can even monitor your name, to see if anyone steals your identity to spread bad things about your blog.
- Google Alerts. This helpful service from Google will monitor Internet and email you once a week or daily if there are results that have to do with your blog name. You can also use Google Alerts to monitor the topic you care about. Google Alert definitely is the first service I would recommend to you.
- Twitter stand-alone apps. Twitter has been known as a personal broadcast station where your message can be picked up by many of your followers through retweeting. However, the bad thing about retweeting is negative comments can pass from a person to another pretty fast. Imagine if some power users say your products are just scrap, how many percentage of sale it will drop? Luckily, you can always use tools like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or Seesmic to monitor what are being talked about you on social network.
- Omgili. Omgili stands for Oh My God I Love It. Although it has a funny name, this actually a search engine on forums. This tool will help you monitor your blog name on various forums and discussion boards.
How To Set Up A Google Alert for Your Blog
Google Alert is pretty fast and easy to set up. Follow these steps:
- Go to http://google.com/alerts.
- In the Search Terms box, type in your blog name.
- Leave the Type select box in default value.
- Choose As-it-happens in How often checkbox.
- I choose Only the best results in Volumn checkbox. I don’t want to fill up my mailbox quickly. You can always select All the results if you want.
- Enter your email address and hit Alert. From now on, whatever news, discussions, etc have your keyword, Google will automatically email it to you.
How To Deal With Negative Feedback online
Blogging is not an easy path. There’ll certainly be a moment when you receive a lot of praise from fellow bloggers and they make you happy. However, there’s time when you have to face bad comments and here’re some tips to deal with them.
- Respond quickly. If you have found a bad comment about your blog somewhere, do not delay in answering it. Respond quickly even you don’t have the answer at that moment. Ask the person who posted the comment why he feel that way. After that, you can promise him to look into the problem and find a solution later.
- Stay calm. It’s easy to get freaked out when you saw a first bad comment about your blog online. Try to stay calm! It’s nothing to worry about when you answered quickly and properly.
- Be honest. Don’t lie about your mistake; Admit it if you have any. Hiding the fact will make you look pretty bad if that person find out about it later.
- Record the conversion. This tip is just a back-up solution in case some one play unethical tricks on your blog by spreading bad words all over the place. Contact him and remember to record down any conversations you have so you can use them later to prove you’re innocent.
How Was Your Experience In Dealing With the First Negative Feedback?
I would love to hear you talk about that moment. What did you feel? What did you do? What did you change after that experience?
Image credit: Dave Apple
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By Susan @ Home Workouts
My first negative experience was when someone unsubscribed from my email list because they were getting similar affiliate launch emails from other fitness pros they were on lists for. My email came last, so she wrote me and told me I was copying one of the well known guys in our industry. I was crushed to think that someone thought that. It’s one thing if what you are accused of is actually true. But when it isn’t it sucks.
By Mike
It is! I doubt she hadn’t read your email before she made that judgment
My first negative experience was when I tweeted my post with reply sign (@) to a guru. That post basically contained some affiliate links and I wasn’t supposed to do that. I didn’t know at that time. I sent the apology email to him and stop sending tweet like that since then. I learn quite a lot since that mistake.
By Propaganda Times
Hello your following article:
http://www.eblogcamp.com/good-and-bad-link-building-methods-for-bloggers/
has a picture from PropagandaTimes.com which you edited.
That is a violations of my Creative Commons License which can be found here
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
The edited picture you posted needs to be removed.
Thanks.
Propagnada Times
By Mike
Hi,
I’m so sorry about it. I have removed your picture from my site. I did not know I can’t edited the Creative Commons License pictures so I will have to go back every post and check it again. This mistake won’t be repeated in the future. Thank you very much for your inquiry. Have a great day!
By Propaganda Times
No Problem Thanks for removing it.
If in the future you need visuals for your articles just contact me.
If it’s something similar I already have I could do some changes on it without it affecting the original !
Your blog is very interesting !
Thanks
By Mike
Thank you very much for your kindness and I really appreciate it
I just browse your site for a while and it has a lots of interesting infographic. Love it!
By Gabriele Maidecchi
I personally use Google Alerts not in “email mode”, but making an RSS feed with all the alerts and following it with Google Reader. Works flawlessly and it’s, for my personal use, much more efficient than emails
By Mike
How did you do it? Oh, I also want to turn emails into RSS one day so they don’t fill up my inbox so quickly
By Gabriele Maidecchi
Just select Deliver to: feed, instead of selecting an email, and you’re good to go
By Mike
Hah, it’s right here. Why didn’t I notice about it. Aw…
Thanks for showing me how, Grabiele
By Murlu
I’ve been lucky enough to avoid these things so far but I can say that we’ve had it happen at work – which I’ve set up GAlerts to pay attention to.
A previous customer that bought one of our products had a problem and went to a forum to complain. We quickly signed up and addressed the issue and let him know that we’re there to help him, we have tech support always available, email open at all times and even offer a life-time guarantee.
After we got him back over to us to chat – he calmed down and we both worked things out – we helped him get back up and running by refunding and giving him a free product and now he’s a loyal customer.
If we didn’t respond to it quickly enough – that forum topic would have kept spreading to the point that it could leave a nasty mark on the business.
Additionally, remember that when people talk online – it’s forever. If a post came up that did really well in search engines – you can’t get that removed so whenever someone typed in your brand – that’s what people see too.
By Mike
Glad that you have got your problem solved out, Murlu. In my opinion, the customer should not have acted that way. He’s supposed to contact you first too see if the problem was sorted out before he filed a complaint over a forum but I guess it’s just the way people act when they meet a problem
And I agree if a negative post is posted on Google, it has a permanent effect on your business. The only solution is getting other good reviews showed up and burying the bad ones down. It’s how some of the reputation management services are doing right now. I think this type of service will be popular in the next few years when people are aware of it. Don’t you think, Murlu?
By Murlu
Brand/reputation management will be pretty huge, I agree – you already see a few companies springing up out there.
If you think about it – the businesses have yet to see major major backlash from the web because anyone could easily destroy the entire reputation of a brand – if there was a force behind it than it could just wipe it out in a day. I’m sure there’s companies out there doing this as we speak – paying people to write negative things about companies.
That’s a whole topic in itself. Anti-buzz agents.
By Propaganda Times
The problem with negativity these days, is anyone at anytime if they see something they don’t like they are quick to jump the gun and leave you a bad reviews.
It happened to me a while ago someone didn’t like of the design I work for my website so they quickly reblogged it and bashed it, they even said that the designer who did it, didn’t even have a clue about anything.
Luckily I keep tabs on social media and I quickly thanked them for reblogging something they thought that was so bad, and respected their opinion.
I know the saying sometimes bad advertise is good advertise and I totally agree as long as a negative feedback can be turned to your own advantage, it makes the juices in your head work overtime to find a perfect response to turn it into a positive !
Also if you put in google links:www.yoursite.com you can find who is linking to you it also helps to keep tabs along with google alerts !
By Mike
Sometimes negative comments can turn into positive thing for you, too, but as a small level and that issue has been address positively. It’s like my friend, Murlu, comment in here, in which a guy who had said bad thing about his service turned into a loyal customer after received good customer service from him. So I think it’s not always a bad thing, but we have to act right away when it shows up.
I met the same situation with you several years ago when I was still a web developer who wrote blog about HTML, CSS and other stuff. Sometimes, there were several guys come into my blog and say pretty bad words which forced me to ban the IP. Not stopping there, they also went to forums and created a thread over there. I did not know how to react back then, so I was silent and believed my loyal readers would not leave the blog due to what he said. It’s funny that he turned..tired and stopped his act. Pretty scary memory for me but I learned sometimes, silence can be a good way, too.
By Propaganda Times
Silence is a very powerful weapon.
There is a saying I always follow in life
“Kill Them With Kindness”
Arguments just push more arguments and you fall into the he said she said.
But kindness and class triumph over anything!
By Mike
That reminds a story that happened to me quite a long time ago. A person came to my blog and argued pretty harsh about the future of blogging and why blog is a stupid way to make money. Well, at first, I was kindness by just clarifying my points and agreed that some of his points were also true. I acknowledged his thoughts. So after several comments, he left hahaha. I could say I have avoided a “war” back then since 2, 3 other people were also involved into this discussion.
Great quote, by the way
By Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach
I wrote a bit about brand manglement a few days ago regarding the Tiffany and Dan dealie thingee – you can see it at http://www.barbaraling.com/insights/opportunity/ .
I think staying calm, cool and making sure you focus on how you can best come out looking like a professional worthy of doing business again…is the best path to take.
By Peter J
It does happen, but the most important thing to do is not be worried about it; there are always going to be pessimistic people who put your work down
Omgili is awesome, thanks for the share!
By Mike
It’s hard to imagine one day we can deal business without enemies
If they don’t backbite us, posting negative comments somewhere, they will try to copy your business model and other things. Oh, it’s just how life is and we can’t avoid it 
By Richard
Hi Mike,
I didn’t even think about how to monitor what the outside world was saying with my blog. I’m setting up my google alerts now. Thanks for the tip.
I always think it’s a good idea to respond to negativity with professionalism. Acknowledge the other person’s feelings and respond constructively. It does a lot to diffuse some potentially volatile situations.
By Mike
That’s right Richard. When we deal with negative feedbacks, we should put ourselves into their shoes and match our thinking with them. Don’t quickly react like “What a dump ….” type of thing because it will you look pretty bad
By Steve@Lifestyle Design
I haven’t really had any real criticism issues yet on my main site. Most of what I have had I would label under, “constructive” which is more than fine.
Reacting badly to negative criticism hurts you more than it helps. Just the other day I got involved in reading a comment war.
It seems that someone reviewed one of Brian Clarks (copyblogger) products. The review was definitely negative. But reading it, I didnt think it was scathing or mean spirited, just someones honest opinion on how they felt (right or wrong). It even went as far to say EXPLICITLY that they thought it WAS NOT a scam..just that in their opinion it wasn’t effective
Now I really like Clark and all the things that he writes. I would have easily have dismissed one negative article and never thought of it again. But he came on the comments and made all sorts of bullying “i will sue you” type remarks.
The post didn’t change my opinion or view of him and his products one iota, but his extreme negative reaction to a little bit of criticism really did. I am not saying I don’t believe in the guy and what he has to say anymore, but his reaction has tainted my view of him for a while.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that criticism happens, particularly as you get bigger, as long as it doesn’t go over into true libel it best to
1) Address it in a positive light. i.e: try to take care of an issue if it exists.
2) Be big about it i.e: “i am sorry you feel that way, but…”
3) Simply ignore it: If people are being “troll-like” in their attacks and not really looking for a “fix” but just enjoying bashing you, there is always a “delete comments”. This is a last resort, but if it devolves into name calling and trolling, it is better to delete than to lower yourself to that level
just my $.02
By Mike
I read through all of your comment and I could not believe in my eyes. I have subscribed to Copyblogger’s blog for a long time but this is the first time I heard this story. I did not expect Clark will react this way.
I totally agree with you Steve. I think although blog is a personal thing, but as you have decided to become a pro blogger by writing guides, tutorials and news, you have to take customer service seriously. Readers should be treated like customers, which they should receive correct and helpful content to solve whatever problems they have. That’s when you just write content only. If you are creating your own product, it’s more likely that you have to deal with customers all the times. That’s just how the way business is and we can’t avoid it.
Sometimes, I see large firms treat badly to customers. It’s like “We don’t need you because even without you, our sales will never go down” type of thing. I really hate it. Customer service, no matter what level your business is, should be centered as a core of the whole company.
By pcd2k
Coincidentally I just spent an almost unjustifiable amount of time thoughtfully writing my reply to a rather critical component of my blogging. If your interested you may like to take a geek and gander about it:
http://www.neverthelessnation.com/2009/03/if-time-was-infinite-and-space-was.html#comment-95667922
By Mike
Thanks pcd2k! That’s a great example right there, mate
By Tristan
Great post! I have yet to experience negative feedback, and hopefully it’ll stay like that for a while. Thanks for the tip about Omgili. I’d never heard of that before, but it looks like a great tool.
By Mike
Lol, look at what you are doing now and I would doubt if any body dare to say a negative word about your blog. You appear every where I go today, Tristan
How could you manage the time to do all of the guest posts like that?
By Alex Papa
Hi Mike,
That was a very informative and well written post. When you started talking about how to deal with negative feedback I thought the first thing I would do is to admit my error – if I have made an error. Indeed, you said that you have to be honest – which is the same thing.
You see, one of the greatest mistakes in social networking is being defensive. It is good to express our opinion, but being offended when somebody offers their own opinion or ever worse, defending our own position aggressively is not constructive.
Thank you for sharing such a great post with us.
Alex
By Mike
Hi Alex,
Dealing with offensive feedback and handling your own defensive mechanism are huge, at least according to my own experience and what I have learned in my Interpersonal communication class. Being defensive in front of untruth statement is good, but in online world, I think you have to handle it correct way. We better express our feeling first, by saying thing like “I feel concerned”, “I feel discomfort” or “I feel inconvenience”, then clarify our reasons. Lastly, we can ask why the other person feel it that way and suggest a win-win situation for both. Do you think it’s a good way to handle defensive mechanism and offensive feedback, Alex?