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Online PR Disasters & How Blogs Could Save The Day!
By Jim Kukral | June 6, 2007
We write a lot about search here at Fathom primarily because we’re recognized as a search firm mostly, but we should also begin to talk more about online public relations. Heck, we offer that as a service, in case you didn’t know. :)
Here’s a good story for anyone reading. Did you ever have a bad customer experience? What did you do about it? Did you call them and ask for a solution? What if they didn’t help you or turned a blind eye to you, their customer?
Nowadays, you can turn to the Internet to help get your voice heard and your problems solved. Check out this story about a guy who bought a camera from CompUSA, but came home to find that there was no camera in the box. Then when he told them about it, he was told that “sorry, all sales are final, you should have looked in the box before buying it.”
Now, can you imagine what happened from there?
In summary, he blogged about his encounter. Which then got picked up by other blogs, then read by thousands of other people, all the way up to a feature story on Fox News website.
Ouch!!! Bad PR for CompUSA, right?
Right. So the question is now, for you as a business… what could CompUSA have done better to control the conversation about their brand?
The answer… have their own blog. By blogging about the issue on their own blog, and explaining themselves, they could have killed the conversation, effectively stopping the viral thread of blog posts and news articles that shredded the company’s brand in the public view for the past few days.
Next time you’re wondering how to get your message out, or to control the messages about your brand, think about a blog.
Read more coverage of this at Techmeme.
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August 30th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
I think blogging to get your voice heard is a very powerful way to do it. Instead of a phone call or a letter to one person, you are reaching millions in just minutes.