Do blogs drive public perception of a business?

You bet they do. A reader emailed me a href=”http://fitzmartin.com/dnn/Home/tabid/39/EntryId/18/Social-Media-Reputation-Management.aspx”a post on social media and reputation management/a that featured a href=”http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2009/09/all-men-are-pigs.html”my post/a entitled, “All Men are Pigs” that discussed my negative experience at a health food store. The former post makes clear how important it is for businesses to monitor their online reputation:br /br /blockquoteAn online dialogue about your goods, services or business practices can be the sharpest of double-edged swords: everyone’s either a critic or an advocate. But mostly a critic. When’s the last time you blogged about how glad you are that your morning soda wasn’t stale, or that your roof didn’t cave in today? After all, we’re more likely to tickle a keyboard in frustration than praise. It’s human nature. And due to the social networking explosion, there’s a lot of human nature out there for your current and prospective clients to see. If a href=”http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/williamcon100903.html”William Congreve/a thought scorned women were bad news, he would have been even more disturbed by what a disgruntled customer can do to a business’ reputation over the Internet.br /br /Which begs, nay screams, the question: are you managing your online reputation? /blockquotebr /br /I must say that I have been very impressed with some of the social media people who have stopped by here and other blogs to comment and offer help or apologies. For example, I just wrote about my experience with Comcast and a href=”http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2009/12/is-cable-worth-it.html”heard from their Customer Service Center/a in the comments. I emailed Melissa Mendoza to tell her my complaints and she said she would have someone call me from the local Comcast office to see what can be done. My phone rang and a professional Comcast customer service person listened to my complaints but said that I would have to pay the extra charges, downgrade my service, or bundle all my services together to get a reduction in price. Nice gesture, but nothing was accomplished. br /br /Perhaps bloggers should offer more praise when things go right with businesses. For example, my local Walgreens was awesome today in helping me to get the drug Tikosyn that I take for my heart rhythm problems, even though a href=”http://www.tikosyn.com/”there is a shortage/a currently. They called me promptly when there was a problem and helped to resolve it. br /br /Do you think that it is important that businesses monitor their online reputation and respond to bloggers and readers who criticize them?