Does social responsibility protect the company name?

Negative information about businesses is omnipresent. Even much-admired businesses, such as Apple Inc., must deal with negative information, as Apple discovered when consumer complaints surfaced in 2010 about the antenna design of its iPhone 4. Negative information tends to spread faster than positive and, because of increased usage of social media and the Internet, businesses are likely to be confronted with more — not less — negative information about their companies in the future. While a business may not always be able to control the spread of negative information, it can try to mitigate the potential damage from negative information in different ways.

An increasing number of companies invest money in corporate social responsibility initiatives, in part to build general goodwill for their organizations. However, it's not clear how effective corporate social responsibility initiatives are in strengthening customer resistance to negative information, compared to other tactics that can enhance a company's reputation, such as investing in product or service quality or customer care. Does doing good help protect a business's reputation against negative information it may be confronted with in the future?

Not completely, suggests some recent research, conducted by researchers at MIT, Michigan State University, and IE Business School in Madrid. The survey asked 854 customers of a commercial bank about their opinions of the company and how they would react to negative information about it. The results of the survey showed that the company's reputation for corporate social responsibility had a greater effect on consumers' willingness to overlook negative information about the company than did the company's reputation for being customer-oriented (defined as the extent to which a business is viewed as being caring and attentive to customer needs) or for being oriented toward service quality. These results suggest that a dollar invested in corporate social responsibility initiatives would buy greater insurance against negative information than a dollar invested in either service-quality orientation or customer orientation.

Despite the positive impact of corporate social responsibility on customer resilience to negative information, further results tells a cautionary tale. In a second experiment involving 133 participants, researchers exposed customers to negative information of specific types, relating to a company's corporate social responsibility, service quality orientation or customer orientation. In this second experiment, a reputation for corporate social responsibility did not protect a service business against negative information related to service quality or concern for customers; what it did was help protect a company's reputation more narrowly against negative information related to corporate social responsibility. Something similar held true for service quality and customer orientation as well. Customers who began with a high opinion of an organization's customer care, for example, were less likely to be influenced by new negative information about the organization's customer care.

In light of this research, businesses should not expect investments in corporate social responsibility to provide blanket insurance against any negative information they may be faced with in the future. Corporate social responsibility is more effective in strengthening customer resistance to negative information when the majority of customers have low levels of service-related or product-related expertise. In the case of expert customers, however, a company's reputation for good quality has a stronger influence on customers' resistance to negative information than corporate social responsibility does.

© Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011

Social Media Today, Google +1, and SEM

My colleague Daniel Goldstein wrote an insightful post, “Google +1, Social Media, and the Future of SEO,” on how using social media today will increasingly help organic search-engine rankings tomorrow. Here, I wanted to add to his perceptive thoughts with a few of my own. I recommend reading his article as an introduction to this post.

SEOmoz has released its newest analysis of search-ranking factors, and a comparison of the most-important elements have changed in recent years highlights how SEO professionals — and their clients and customers — need to change their strategies. SEMmoz’s old analyses are no longer available on the company’s website, but a few summaries have been preserved. Here I will present them in chronological order and then explain the importance of the differences as far as link-building and social-media marketing (SMM).

From SEOmoz:

Top 10 Ranking Factors in 2005:

Title Tag Anchor Text of Links Keyword Use in Document Text Accessibility of DocumentLinks to Document from Site-Internal PagesPrimary Subject Matter of SiteExternal Links to Linking Pages Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community Global Link Popularity of Site Keyword Spamming

Top 10 Ranking Factors in 2007:

Keyword Use in Title Tag Global Link Popularity of Site Anchor Text of Inbound Link Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure Age of SiteTopical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site Link Popularity of Site in Topical CommunityKeyword Use in Body Text Global Link Popularity of Linking Site Topical Relationship of Linking Page

From Kent Ong:

Top 10 Ranking Factors in 2009:

Keyword Use in Title Tag Global Link Popularity of Site Anchor Text of Inbound Link Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link StructureAge of SiteTopical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community Keyword Use in Body Text Global Link Popularity of Linking Site Topical Relationship of Linking Page

From an excerpt of SEOmoz’s latest report specifically on the future of Google search:

Top Changes to Ranking Factors in 2011 and Beyond

Analysis of perceived value to usersSocial Signals [from social-networking websites]Usage data (CTR, bounce rate back to search results, etc.)Content Readability/Usability/DesignPresence + Prominence of Advertising and ContentOn-Page Topic ModelingQuantity of Paid Results on SERPsAnchor Text in External LinksThe Effectiveness of Paid LinksExact Keyword-Match Domains

(Important note: Re-read my phrasing of the last list — it is not the top-ten ranking factors now per se; it is reportedly the top factors that will increase and decrease in influence). According to a majority of the SEM professionals interviewed by SEOmoz, the influence of items one through five in the last list will greatly increase as far their affects search-result rankings. In descending order, the influence of last five will either remain the same or decrease.

I highlighted many of the items with the following colors: traditional optimization-tactics like keywords and title tags are in red, items involving incoming backlinks are in green, and items pertaining to social media and content are in purple. Glance at the list again. As the distribution of colors reveals, Google’s algorithm has gone through three general periods over the past decade or so:

Keywords. Google search-results were ranked based primarily on items like keyword-optimized meta titles and website text until 2005 or so.Links. SERPs were increasingly ranked based on the quality, quantity, and anchor text of backlinks from 2005 to today.Social content. From now into the indefinite future, Google will begin prioritizing rankings based on social-media sharing and the quality of the content on a website.

The reason should be clear to anyone who has worked in Internet marketing: Google has had to stay one step ahead of spammers and people who use black-hat SEO software. After people began stuffing keywords into pages, Google switched to preferring links as a sign of authoritativeness. After people began to obtain junk backlinks through tactics including directories and blog spamming, Google had to look elsewhere — and that will likely be quality content and social-media sharing.

As Danny Sullivan writes at Search Engine Land: “This would be a way for them to know how much authority that people — rather than pages representing people — have on social networks, and to let those people have a signal that influences rankings.” Rand Fishkin also has a must-read post at SEOmoz.

The takeaway: It is obvious that websites will still need to be optimized for chosen keywords and that select links will still need to be sought (like through business partners or media coverage that mentions your business but does not provide a link) — but the overall emphasis will increasingly need to be on publishing quality content on a quality, optimized website that provides easy methods for social-media sharing. This practice itself will generate more natural backlinks — the ones that Google will likely still prefer — through social media and other sites that mention a site’s content. And without the site’s owner or marketer needing to do anything else.

Google reportedly has more than 200 ranking factors, and keywords, title tags, and backlinks will likely always remain among them in some significant capacity. But now it is crucial to add social-media sharing — like Google “+1? now — towards the top of that list.

For more information, I recommend my prior posts on article-marketing automation, lost blogs, famous blogs, blogger search-engine optimization, and turning your website into a center for social media.

Will Social Networks invade Your TV?

By Bill Slawski, on June 5, 2011, at 11:02 am

Tweet

Maybe a better question is when will TV set top boxes give people the ability to interact with others on their TV screens when watching? A patent filing published at the end of May shows one possibility that we might see in the future for making TV more social.

In addition to enabling television and social networking to be available via a real time interface, the set top box might allow people to preconfigure access to different social networks based upon channels on the television or certain time ranges.

For instance, you might associate ESPN with a Twitter Red Sox Fan Group at @Rdsxfans, as seen in the user interface screen below, or chat access to a specific person on Facebook between the hours of 7-10pm:

The patent is:

System and Method for Social Network Chat via a set top box
Invented by David Emerson, Kelsyn Rooks, and Gary W. LaFreniere
Assigned to Embarg Holdings Company, LLC
US Patent Application 20110126258
Published May 26, 2011
Filed November 25, 2009

The ability to associate a specific channel with specific social network walls, contacts, or chat interfaces is interesting. Imagine watching the game along with a dozen or so friends, each from the comfort of your own homes.

Or imagine watching that same game while having tweets available from ball players, sports casters, and other fans of the team, and being able to access additional news, film, images, videos, and other information about the game while watching.

An interface like this might enable you to catch a movie or TV show together with friends or family members remotely, watch news or public policy programming with an organization that you’re a member of or with a very informed audience who may have interesting and significant viewpoints to add.

Imagine watching, for instance, the State of the Union address along with members of your state or national political party, or with a public policy think tank you might belong to, or with analysts from a television network.

The patent application describes how different user settings might be added to your set top box, and how different family members might be able to associate social networks with different channels.

This system might also enable you to search for and switch over to televised content being viewed by a social contact

A picture-in-picture feature might allow for live-time video chatting while watching television broadcasts as well.

Will we see either Apple TV or Google TV start integrating social networking features into what they offer sometime in the future?

Apple has a past history of attempting to converge television with computers with the Apple Interactive Television Box in the mid-90s and the Macintosh TV in the early 90s. Maybe adding a social aspect to TV is a difference that would make a difference?

Google TV’s main innovation seems to be integrating search capabilities with television and bringing Web video to the TV box. Given Google CEO Larry Page’s recent mandate to Google employees to make Google more social, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Google sprout ideas on how to make watching a TV a more social activity as well.

Google has published a number of patent filings that involve seaching for or scheduling television broadcasts or performing analytics on viewership for advertising purposes, but none of those appear to include a social aspect. They’re still worth a look, especially since some of them describe possible revenue models that Google might use on television screens:

Where Should I Put My Ads

Today, there are thousands of  sites which you  can put your ads for free. The trick is to find the ones that work best for you. Not all that sites are  created equal  and  the  most active ones or biggest ones are not necessarily the best ones for your needs.


Traffic Exchanges, Safelist  and Social Site  are a great  marketing tool  for a  variety of  reasons. The  most obvious  reason  is that you get  lots  of  people  looking,  and  hopefully  clicking  on your website or promotional pages.

If  you are an  affiliate marketer,  then you need  to make yourself a good  splash page  to capture the leads attention and get them to click through  to your site.  You must always  be watching your results.  If or  when sales  start falling,  it is time  to  change your splash  page or  design another one.  Always  design  2 at  a time and  measure  the  results from both. This way you can scrap the ones that  don't  get a very good click through and keep the ones that convert.


If you  are going to be using  multiple free traffic  exchanges, and I recommend  that you do, your first priority should be to pick up a multi-tab web browser such as Mozilla Firefox.

Getting  free traffic  to your website is a  lot of work.  If you don't have  the  money  to  spend  on  full  blown  PPC ( pay-per-click ) campaigns  like Google  AdWords,  free traffic exchanges,  safelist and  social  site  are a great  way  to get  the traffic  you  need to succeed.