RMV Episode 29
Online Reputation Management – Crisis Management
Welcome to Resort Marketing Vids. I’m your host and resident marketing expert, Michael Grimm, here for the Resort Developers Association to help you navigate the world of online marketing.
Today we’ve got a bonus video for you on Online Reputation Management, or O-R-M. Crisis Management. Or what to do if you’re under serious attack Right Now.
We’ve covered all the easy nice stuff. But what about crisis management? It’s essential to have a plan in place that allows you to react quickly in the event something like this happens to you. You need to be able to communicate quickly and effectively with your team and your audience.
An ORM crisis can manifest in several different forms, such as online member organization for the sole purpose of trashing your resort. Or a bad sales rep being the cause of blankets of members to go onto consumer complaint sites to bomb the resort. Because the online space is constantly evolving, and the idea of managing a solid reputation on it is relatively new, few companies are prepared to handle such an attack.
When this happens to you, you’ve got to immediately launch a counter-attack, defending your resort and overwhelming the public with positive things about the place.
Step one is to develop your online assets. Immediately contact an expert in search engine optimization that can provide solid references and make sure your corporate site is optimized to the max. If your site isn’t the number one result to come up in the search results, this is Especially for you.
Next you need to set up a corporate blog. Use WordPress.com, or install it on your existing server, but whatever you do, set it up as a separate site. In fact, your URL should be www dot your resort blog dot com. That site should have a separate page on it dedicated to your resort that gives detailed attention to it. Then the rest of that site should be nothing but daily content. Anything positive. Set up a “Blog†menu item on your corporate site that redirects the users to this new blog site.
Have at least two employees you trust implicitly set up their own blog sites that are keyword optimized for your situation. Blog daily. Keep it positive.
Once you have enough blog posts in your pocket, mix two or three of them together and create an article out of it. The absolute best thing you can do to overwhelm people with the information You want them to see, is upload these articles to every article site you can find on the web. I even know at least half a dozen good ones off the top of my head that let you upload articles for free. Take three or four articles, blast them out to a dozen sites, and in no time you’ll have new content creeping up in the search engine results knocking down the negative content that’s attacking you.
The next thing you’ll want to do is call up all of your business partners and friends that own a business. Ask them to please include information about your resort on their site, and a link back to your site. Note, this is not Just a link back to your site, this should be a page on their site with a description about your resort and either testimonials, press releases, or keyword optimized industry articles. Offer them and their family a free weekend in a cabin in exchange.
Next, to really contribute to your search engine result presence, set up a paid ad campaign online. The great thing about pay per click ads, is that you can control exactly which keywords they come up for. So if members are specifically looking for dirt on your company and you don’t quite have the natural listings up where you want them yet, you can still specifically influence what they’ll see about your resort, give yourself the edge if you will.
Keep in mind, a pay per click campaign is the only thing that will give you immediate results, the rest will take time. Maybe only a few days, but they still won’t necessarily show up over-night. Online reputation management is a marathon, you have to approach this as a sustainable campaign.