Brand Management

[Denverise]

I hear people talk about brand management a lot. Usually they mention it as a justification to pay some blogger to post something entirely superficially positive on their blog, often on a blog that has no credibility and is full of other paid posts.

That's not brand management. Brand management, in my opinion, is dealing with the criticism that comes up on the Internet, in forums and blogs. Not "paying to make it go away" but by responding to it personally or having a representative respond to it, in an honest way.

Let's say you own xyzhosting.com, and somebody posts that xyzhosting.com sucks because the servers were down for an hour.

Now you can go pay some shills to post nice stuff about you, but it ain't going to carry any weight.

Was the server down? If it was, then make right. What was the cause? Was the cause addressed to prevent a recurrence? Then post that. And if somebody is complaining, admit that their complaints are legitimate and win them back by being honest and by making good, for example by offering them a refund and free hosting to make up for your mistake.

That, in my opinion, is brand management. Not paid posts on paid post blogs that carry no weight.

[ant69]

I would agree that paid posts carry no weight, but brand mgt is also about showcasing the positive aspects of the business - hopefully after any problems have been ironed out! A good policy needs to be in place to regularly remind customers the positive reasons for dealing with the business and this then helps when a problem occurs.

[M Becky]

I am not contradicting to your point, just saying this out of curiosity... How Google or any other reader would identify a paid post or genuine post?

[ant69]

I don't know if the OP was referring to Google - I might be wrong but I thought OP was referring to not having much weight in the eyes of the "real" person reading the comments and a paid post may be not be as sincere as the business owner ??? We are all in trouble if Google can analyse our posts that specifically - but maybe they can.....and maybe the post is paid? Just kidding OP