The United Destroys Guitars song on YouTube, which has been viewed over 5.5 million times in a few weeks, is a great example of this trend. When people want to know what the eWord of mouth is about you or your organization, all they need do is an addictomatic.com search to see what people are saying in the social sphere. Then they can run a socialmention.com search to see what your relevancy is on the Web. When you step back and think about it, we were able to live pretty anonymous lives ten years ago. Now we are torn between wishing we could be invisible from bad guys, but knowing we have to be visible in order to prosper in the business world. In the end, our reputations will be formed on-line whether we agree or not. People will talk about us, upload pictures and video of us, and generally post comments about us, and our performance in life. ORM is here to stay so we might as well figure out how to manage it.

Lots of people ask me when they hear about the concept of ORM, how they can get bad press off the Internet. As if there is some magic electronic Mr. Clean Eraser that can be wiped over the screen and a negative mention in a blog will simply vanish. I, of course, give them an answer they do not want to hear, which is to make sure it does not get on the Web in the first place. When people talk about social media being one of the most democratic devices known to man, I agree. In a democracy, there is freedom of speech. In a democracy, you can try and outvote the other side by working hard to gather people to your message. Will there be the occasional negative person that attacks you or your organization for no apparent reason? Sure there will be. These really are not the problem because they will be drowned out by the good in most cases. The problem comes when you do something to deserve the negative press. Like when you break a guys guitar, and then refuse to fix it. Or when you break up with your girlfriend through texting while on a date with the next girl. You will be flamed publicly, and you will deserve it.

ORM might be manageable in some ways, but it will not be controllable, and this is a great thing. In a world where one person can “talk” to 1.5 billion other people for free, it would be wise to treat people very well. Although that sounds simple, anyone that has had to call an AT&T help line could tell you, we still get shafted daily. Just as a person could be anonymous in years past, protected from public scrutiny by the lack of a technology to post and store feedback from the rest of humanity, organizations could also get away with horrible service. ORM will prove to be their undoing because it will be impossible to “manage” what you cannot stop from hitting the websphere. Social media will now cause people and organizations to reap what they sow – at the speed of light.

Story Links:

• United Destroys Guitars song on YouTube
• addictomatic.com
• socialmention.com

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com

Upon dissecting this story a bit more, I learned that the company feels that when their leaders have a high online profile, it is easier for them to hire good people, and do deals on behalf of the company because when people do a search, they get to see a waterfall of content – mostly positive – on the exec. Now, I must admit that I have been carefully observing my online presence, and making sure that I do all that I can to generate good blogs, tweets, and UGC media with the word Klososky somewhere therein. As a speaker, I am clear that when a potential client wants to learn about me, they go to the Internet and instead of just going to my Website, where they will get glowing and eloquent words about me, they run searches to see what others are saying about me. Sites like Addictomatic.com are great at showing what the social sphere thinks of people like me. So I was not too surprised that a company would focus on creating the best online reputations it can for its leaders. I was just a little surprised they hired a third party coach to help with the job.

There are moments of time when I have two minutes with nothing to do, and I will search for someone I went to high school with – and get nothing. I don’t mean, nothing important, I mean nothing. These are people with unique last names, and I should be able to find someone, somewhere, that has mentioned them. Maybe even a Facebook account, or LinkedIn. Nothing… It is as if they simply do not exist on this world. This leads me to think of high school. For some reasons, kids like to categorize other kids. They like to label them as jocks, goth, cool, geeks, or druggies. Girls get labeled in a long list of even more unkind ways. In other words, most kids in high school have a reputation as something –earned, or unearned. Then there are the kids that are just ghosts. They went to your school, but were just non-entities in the reputation land. I guess they have never turned up. We leave high school and for the most part, our reputations are grown out of, left behind, and strangle us. Get ready, your online reputation is going to bring a bit of this back…

On the organizational side, we have a wonderful story that warms my heart. It is a video uploaded to YouTube and now viewed over a 3.5 million times, called United Breaks Guitars. If you have not seen it yet, please click the link and view it before you read on. So now that you have seen it, what do you think pubic relations like this does to United? I swelled with pride for the poor guy that had to spend his time making this video as a way to get even with United. I secretly cheered for he and his whole band as I watched the viewer counts skyrocket. I was uplifted whenever I saw someone email the link to his or her friends, or post it on Twitter. And I wondered if anyone else understood that for the first time in history, a person with a little effort and no money could strike back at injustice. For all the people that the airlines abuse, rip off, and lie to every day – one man got even. One man held them accountable for poor service when he had no choice, or ability to make the do what was right after they broke his guitar. For some reason, the US Congress refuses to pass a flyers bill of rights. Well, I guess I know why, and it is because abused flyers do not have the same kind of lobby the as the airlines. At last, we the people have the ability to deservedly tarnish an online reputation without having to marshal huge resources. This video should serve as a serious warning that social media has the power to impact those that once could hide from poor service, or behavior.

Reputation was once a bit of a mysterious thing that was only known to people that were close at hand, and had associated with us for years. Within a few more years, reputation will be whatever those around us say about us online – and then anyone with Web connection will be able to imply a reputation from afar. There will be good and not so good news about that.

Useful links

• YouTube video of United Breaks Guitars.
• Addictomatic.com
• An excellent online reputation management provider: Buzzding.com

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com