Online Reputation Management (ORM)
& Viral / Social Media

Simply selling “Social Media Consulting” is selling you Actions.
You prefer Results over Actions.

Lately, there’s been a ton of “social media consultants” that have popped up, but the vast majority of them are focused on building an engine, instead of a complete car that gets you somewhere.

First, the Problem & Opportunity:

• Social media is already huge (500+ million and growing exponentially), and provides a platform for anyone to comment on your business, like it or not. You can be a benefactor of this system, or a victim, but you cannot sit on the sidelines. This includes systems to manage relationships (facebook, but for niche markets also myspace, friendster, and others), review systems (Yelp, Google Places (now Google Hotspot), foursquare), microblogging (Twitter), blog platforms and other communities of people. This will weed out some of your competitors done right, but if you ignore it, you’ll be one of the casualties.
• Angry or dissatisfied customers / clients are 800% (8 times) more likely to leave a negative review, damaging your business, than happy clients are likely to leave a positive review. Our systems greatly change this ratio to “pre-flood” positive reviews into social media, helping to build a firewall against any potentially negative reviews.
• Businesses are almost never good at both Mass Marketing and referral marketing (they’re good at one or the other). Traditional “Hugs & Handshakes” selling works, and newer technology and mass-marketing client acquisition works, but these two worlds are usually separate. Virtually all companies are good at one or the other but almost never good at both. If your business is mostly based on referrals already, we’ll help you expand those results by leveraging new technology (i.e. facebook, online video, etc.); if your business is already successful online but your clients are not self-reproducing, we can help you install systems to get some of that “hugs and handshakes” style marketing happening online.

Our system is unique, in that it is more integrated and delivers better results. While this service is a bit more complex to set up, that is exactly why you’ll beat your competition. They don’t have this systematic approach to greatness and the same proactive online reputation management you will enjoy. Here are our project objectives for you:

1. Reputation Firewall: Proactively generate good reviews from happy clients in a way to actively protect your online reputation in advance as a “firewall” against any negative reviews. We also “flood” page one regarding your brand, as protection from rogue competitors leaving fake bad reviews, or dissatisfied clients from tarnishing your brand. It is far easier to protect your online reputation than it is to clean up from a public relations disaster.
2. Increase Happy Client Reviews: Proactively entice happy clients to refer you, in a way that can be measured and improved. Most small businesses get some referrals, but have no tracking method set up, have no idea what % refers them, who their best referrers are, and don’t even believe that referrals can be improved (i.e. believe referrals are outside their control, which has been clinically proven to be incorrect). Included with this ideally is use of client video testimonials, with a framework for soliciting, obtaining, then integrating video testimonials into your marketing.
3. 100%+ Viral Lift: This incredibly powerful strategy led to massive online hits like Facebook, MySpace (albiet 10 years back), Digg.com, and similar sites. The basic idea is simple, but execution is difficult. The goal is that each client produces more than 1.0 paying clients for you. Typically this might be that 80% of clients refer you at least three times and you close (get paid on) one out of three clients, and some of that 80% refers you more than one paying client to make up for the minority who never refer you. Referrals, while individually never within your control, macroscopically can definitely be a sure thing – measurable, predictable, and controllable, through carefully controlled “exit surveys”, “viral lift pages”, social media tactics, and use of online technology to help clients solve real-world problems.
4. Provide You Actionable Feedback Intelligence: This includes capture of negative reviews so you can both call these clients / customers and ask for a chance to make it right if you choose, or at the very least do a “post mortem” on the transaction and work to better manage client expectations and minimize unhappy customers. Furthermore, careful use of exit surveys will increase retention, upsell, and cross-sell opportunities and client profiling.
5. Increase Sales Conversion by connecting socially online. Facebook and other social media systems provide unprecedented information about your clients and customers. The information within these frameworks can help you understand the needs, and upsell / cross-sell opportunities. Implementation of this step simply means providing one-click access to profiles, and reports on aggregate behavior.

Compared to our Search Engine Optimization, Online Reputation Management & Viral Marketing via Social Media is far more complex to execute, but the payoff is even greater and an absolute necessity if you want to dominate your local market and/or build a national presence.

Frankly, what’s tough isn’t the software: it’s the humans. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) won’t require any human input on your side except to convert the leads as you normally do, but ORM will require installing a few basic policies that human will need to observe. Don’t worry, we’ll make these as easy as possible, and over 90% of the work is done by us, by “information robotics” and autoresponders and software-based systems – but it’s absolutely paramount that other 10% is done and so these packages include human consultation and monitoring of human behavior to ensure uptake and successful deployment.

The bottom line to you, the business owner,
is an increase in business,
and insurance against online reputation threats.

with a clear before / after report on ROI (Return on Investment), Cost-Per-Closed-Sale, Cost-Per-Lead, or whatever success metric you define. Like all our consulting work, we provide a snapshot report on your before, and a framework for accountability on the “after” to help you make smart decisions.

Because each client varies widely (based on the audience, the assets in play, current SEO dominance, and geographic territory you sell to), the next step is to have a conversation with your Swift Marketing consultant and get some options to consider.