Our next guest for our online reputation management blog is Peter Roberts, Head of Issues and Crisis Management at Bell Pottinger. A crisis PR specialist, Peter has handled a range of reputational situations for numerous blue-chip clients including insolvency, data loss, pressure group activity, television exposes, terrorist activity, kidnapping and employee fatalities. Prior to leading Bell Pottinger’s Crisis Practice, Peter was deputy Head of the Crisis Practice at Hill & Knowlton in London, and former Head of Communications for BBC News. [Read more…]
Go Daddy Issues Apology After Massive Service Outage
September 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment
On Monday morning September 10, Go Daddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar and Web hosting provider, with more than 53 million domain names under management, experienced an unprecedented service outage affecting millions of web sites. GoDaddy posted a statement on Twitter as it became aware of the extent of the interruption across its network and issued a public apology late Tuesday night after completing an internal investigation and restoring service to its customers.
According to the company, the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables, and not, as initial reports suggested a coordinated attack by the mysterious hacker group Anonymous. Once the issues were identified, the company said it has taken corrective actions to restore services for affected customers and implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again.
On Wednesday morning September 12th, Go Daddy CEO Scott Wagner sent an email to millions of impacted customers apologizing for the disruption and providing assurances that sensitive customer information, such as credit card data, passwords or names and addresses, were not compromised. Go Daddy is also giving customers until Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at midnight (Pacific Time) to take advantage of a credit for the value of one month of service for each active/published site.
Go Daddy is no stranger to controversy. The company’s racy Super Bowl ads, featuring scantily clad women in suggestive situations, have gotten them in hot water with feminist groups and outspoken founder and former CEO Bob Parsons was a lightning rod for criticism by liberal bloggers, animal rights groups and others.
However, the latest service outage is the greatest threat to Go Daddy’s reputation as one of the most reliable hosting and online service providers available. Regardless of what you might think about Go Daddy’s advertising strategy, the company did right by its customers this week and delivered an excellent lesson in online reputation management — delivering prompt notification to their customers on social media, working quickly and efficiently to restore service to millions of customers and issuing a formal apology and credit to restore confidence to business owners who rely on Go Daddy’s hosting service for their livelihood.
5 Tips to Turbocharge Your Google+ Business Profile
September 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Creating a business profile on Google+ is easy. Like Facebook and Twitter, anyone can join Google+ for free and invite friends and colleagues as well as post photos and link to favorite blogs and articles and more. Google+ is also a powerful tool for engaging customers and clients. A well-optimized Google+ page will frequently rank among the top search results for your business or brand name and Google+ should be an important element of your company’s online reputation management strategy.
There are many ways to promote your business online and it can be daunting to figure out which social network is right for your company, but you can’t afford to ignore Google+ for business. Google + has more than 100 million users and growing. Although it is still in its infancy, it has the backing of the most popular search engine in the world.
To learn more about Google+ for business, we’ve taken the time to break it down into 5 simple tips: [Read more…]
Interview with Crisis Communications Expert Susan Tellem
September 4, 2012 by 1 Comment
This week, I am very excited to invite Susan Tellem to share her thoughts and experience with visitors to our online reputation management blog. Susan is a senior partner at Tellem Grody Public Relations, Inc. where she leads the crisis team. She also has served on crisis management teams at Burson-Marsteller and the Rowland Company. Follow her on Twitter @susantellem.
What is crisis communications?
Crisis communications is the art of managing an unexpected event or a challenge to the reputation of a company, government or nonprofit organization, individual or any entity so affected. Recent high profile crises include Penn State sexual abuse charges; an insured’s claim against Progressive Insurance; the California Department of Motor Vehicle computer meltdown; and wildfires in several states. [Read more…]
