The September Influencers from Around the World post comes all the way from down under, from Australia's only Cialdini Method Certified Trainer Anthony McLean. Anthony just started a new venture called Social Influence Consulting Group. You can connect with Anthony on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Brian, CMCT
influencepeople
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.
influencepeople
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.
Treat Your Reputation Like Gold!
How are with staying on top of things? Are you across social media? Do you hide away from it? Well this next big change is going to drag you along whether you like it or not!
Imagine a world where:
- You are hired based on your performance in online forums.
- Where banks review your online reputation as well as your credit rating.
- Where good references in making payments on time like renting a house can assist in renting a car.
Your digital reputation is fast becoming a guide to your trustworthiness; both in the digital and physical realms.
Wired magazine
reported in its September 2012 issue, “The value of reputation is not a new concept to the online world: think star ratings on Amazon, PowerSellers on eBay or reputation levels on games such as World of Warcraft. The difference today
is our ability to capture data from across an array of digital services. With every trade we make, comment we leave, person we ‘friend,’ spammer we flag or badge we earn, we leave a trail of how well we can or can’t be trusted.”
In the Principles of Persuasion Workshop, we know that when we are unsure of what we should do in a certain situation we look to a recognized Authority to guide our behaviour. Critical to being a credible authority, however is not only our expertise but also our trustworthiness. Therefore managing and marketing your reputation has just become far more important in persuading others because it will be tracked and easily found in the reputation centric world of the future.
In marketing now, a good online reputation will easily establish your authority, however if it is not managed well and is tarnished by negative comments, reviews, activities or statements, this will be made available for others to see and judge.
Likewise, when have no other ability to assess a person or their request we look to the behaviour of others like us to guide our decisions. This is known as consensus or social proof.
A new study conducted by Berkley Economists Michael Anderson and Jeremy Magruder (published this month’s Economic Journal)found that across 328 restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, if crowd-sourced reviews moved a restaurant from a 3.0 to a 3.5 star rating, this would increase a restaurant’s chance of selling out during prime dining times from 13% to
34%. Moving from 3.5 to 4.0 stars increased the chance of selling out during prime dining times by another 19 percentage points and these changes occur even though restaurant quality held constant.
The study reaffirmed that crowd-sourced reviews have a bigger impact when there is a lack of alternative information available by which to judge a restaurant’s quality. “If a restaurant has a Michelin star or it appears in the San Francisco Chronicle’s list of Top 100 Restaurants in the Bay Area, the Yelp star becomes irrelevant,” said Magruder.
Therefore Consensus (the opinion of others) is
trumped by Authority (proof you are
credible and trustworthy)!
IMPLICATION FOR YOU!
You need to start managing your reputation. From reviews to referrals, to customer service, to being mindful of the comments you and/or your staff make.
Get good comments, solicit referrals, and provide mechanisms for others to praise you, but stay on top of the negative feedback. Counter it.
Apologise where necessary. But
ignore it at your peril!
“We are only at day one in the whole idea of global reputation,” says Brian Chesky, cofounder and CEO of the peer-to-peer marketplace Airbnb. “By the end of the decade, a good online reputation could be the most valuable currency in your possession”.
Anthony, CMCT
Sources:
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