Polls aside, a sampling of a few comments posted on Facebook for Mitt Romney gives the sentiment of some people:
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Mr. Romney, May I suggest rather than attacking your opponents, please tell us your plan for America. I know what Mr. Obama’s leadership has done for this country. I know what the “Old Guard” has done. Give the American voter a positive based roadmap that will take this country on the road to recovery. I believe a lot of voters are tired of the negative campaigns that we listen to for months on end. A positive voice will be a refreshing change. I do not by any means to ignore the facts, just stick to them, hold your opponents responsible for their past actions but show me and the American voter your roadmap for obtaining a more prosperous country. What can you do for America, not what has been done. Thank You

“I know that Mitt donated millions to the poor! I know that he went to Harvard! I know that he is a good man! That doesn’t mean that he is electable. I voted for him in 2008. I am a registered REPUBLICAN! The fact of the matter, is that our party had become a disgrace to this country, and there is a rEVOLution happening! We want sound money, anti-war, and constitutional rights RESTORED!

STOP THE NEGATIVE ATTACKS TO OTHER REPUBLICANS, SAY WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO ….YOU ARE HURTING OUR CHANCES….
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So, does Ad spend on TV make a lasting impact on the results of an election?  Do citizens cast their vote under the influence of media or do they demand definitive candidates’ position on key issues that matter to them, such as Economy and Jobs?  Regardless of the strategy, candidates’ reputation remains at the heart of every issue and the analysis of this reputation will be paramount to their candidacy.

Manish Sheth
Chief Operating Officer
Neputation

• Ethics – We have to be right and fair with our conduct. There can be no compromises to our values under any circumstances.
• Trustworthiness – We have to be honest and reliable in all customer interactions.  We earn trust by genuinely helping customers with their toughest problems.
• Openness – We have to be open and accessible to our customers. We make it easy for our customers to contact us on their terms—anytime, anywhere and anyhow.
• Communication – Be proactive and share relevant information (good as well as bad) early and often. There can be no bad surprises for our customers—ever!
• Accountability – We have to be accountable and responsible for all of our actions. We routinely over-deliver to our customers on all fronts.

The above qualities of transparency must permeate in all aspects of your business from people to processes to technologies. Easier said than done, right? So how do companies execute on the culture of transparency? Let’s take Eli Lilly and Company as an example. Lilly strives to be a leading voice and role model in transparency efforts in the biopharmaceutical industry. Lilly strongly believes that transparency is critical to rebuilding trust in their industry and their ability to execute on their mission to make medicines that help people live longer, healthier, more active lives. In 2004, Lilly was the first company to establish an online database of clinical-trial results, and in 2007, they were the first company to establish a public registry of their grants and charitable contributions. Again, in 2009, they became the first company to report their payments to physicians for speaking and advising services.

All of the qualities of transparency discussed above are critical; however, ethics may have the deepest impact on shareholder value creation. The impact is so great that one can claim that ethical organizations are transparent organizations and vice-versa. ETHISPHERE compiles an annual listing of the World’s Most Ethical (WME) companies. The WME designation is awarded to those companies that have leading ethics and compliance programs, particularly as compared to their industry peers. Below is a partial list of ETHISPHERE 2011 World’s Most Ethical companies based on target industries that are of interest to us. You can find the complete list here.

Aerospace

• Indra Sistemas
• Rockwell Collins Inc.
• The Aerospace Corporation

Computer Software

• Adobe Systems
• Microsoft
• Salesforce.com
• Symantec Corporation
• Teradata Corporation

Diversified Industries

• General Electric Co.

Electronics and Semiconductors

• Freescale Semiconductor
• Premier Farnell
• TexasInstruments

Engineering and Design

• AECOM Technology Corporation
• CH2M Hill
• Fluor Corporation

Industrial Manufacturing

• Caterpillar
• Deere & Company
• Eaton Corporation
• Milliken & Company
• Schneider Electric

Internet

• Zappos

Medical Devices

• Becton Dickinson
• Royal Philips

Telecom Hardware

• Avaya Inc.
• Cisco Systems
• Juniper Networks

Transportation and Logistics

• AutoridaddelCanal de Panama
• East Japan Railway Company
• NipponYusen Kabushi Kaisha
• UPS

As we review the WME company list, we see several of our favorite brands like AMEX, General Mills, PepsiCo, Whole Food, Marriott, Starbucks, Target and UPS. One of the primary reasons we remain loyal to these companies and brands is because of the transparency of their products, services and experiences. There are no gimmicks or pretending to be something they are not. I am a bit surprised to not see Apple on this list, and maybe it is because of their top-secrecy with respect to new product development, design and supply-chain execution. However, as part of Apple’s newly launched Supplier Responsibility initiative, they are driving a range of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities across their worldwide supply chain. For example, they unveiled the names of 156 companies that represent 97% of their global supply chain, performing a thorough supplier audit in the areas of Labor and Human Rights, Worker Health and Safety, Environmental Impact, Ethics, Management Systems and Worker Education and Development. It is an unusual move for Apple, underscoring that new CEO, Tim Cook, has ushered in an era of greater transparency. So it’s just a matter of time before Apple is inducted onto this list.

The very foundation of the Internet industry is built on transparency, so I was surprised that only Zappos made the list. Why Amazon, BlueNile and scores of other companies like Costco and Staples did not make the list is up for debate. Within the computer-software industry, the big familiar names within enterprise software, such as Oracle and SAP, did not make the cut.

According to ETHISPHERE, it pays to be ethical, and ethical companies on average generate shareholder returns four times that of S&P 500 returns (see the chart below).

[click to enlarge]

Thus, the business case for transparency is right in front of our eyes. In this dynamic, ever-complex and hyper-competitive world, the organizations that are built on transparency as a core foundation have unfair competitive advantage. As Simon Sinek showed us in his inspirational video at TED, “people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” Unless transparency is weaved in as a core fabric of your organization, your customers will be challenged to understand both the “what” and the “why” of your purpose. Transparency helps you stay grounded and focused on things that really matter.

Are you committed to making “transparency” a top strategic goal for your company in 2012 and in the process build a stellar reputation?

- Sanjiv Karani, CEO

Upon logging in to the site, Bre.ad allows users to create personalized pages (aka “toasts”) comprised of a billboard (720×300), an avatar (110×80), and a tailored message. Toasts are fully customizable and seem to vary significantly based on the user’s personality. This includes anything from a brand or cause to some blatant self-promotion. Initially, I created two toasts: one giving a shoutout to reigning MVP Derrick Rose and one encouraging people to follow me on Twitter. Whenever someone clicks on any of my shortened Bre.ad links they will see one of my toasts (randomly selected) for five seconds before the actual website itself. Additionally, they always have the option to skip through by clicking in the upper right corner.

In my opinion, I find this five second pre-roll to be powerful when used appropriately. It can add some mysterious swagger to the links in your tweets showcasing something that you are truly passionate about. Think of it as a personal endorsement for something you feel is relevant enough to tell the world about. The dynamic nature of it is intriguing as you can update your toasts at your discretion and still generate matching impressions from any of your existing Bre.ad links. Another impressive feature is the ability to instantly shorten any URL by simply typing bre.ad/ before the URL in the address bar of your browser.

Notice the advertising terminology I have used so far to describe this tool (ie: billboard, pre-roll, impressions), but is this really advertising? The Bre.ad Team clearly doesn’t think (or want you to think) so, but it is easy to make that assumption if you are unfamiliar with the service. I feel like it truly depends on how it is utilized, however, no matter how you articulate it, it’s still advertising. Whether or not you can appreciate it is an individual preference.

Regardless, it should be noted that there are plenty of opportunities for misuse. It will be critical for Bre.ad to keep a close eye on the content of its toasts to prevent spammers from tarnishing its reputation. The last thing they need is to find themselves in a Chatroulette-like scenario with a perpetually negative stigma.

There are plenty of haters out there and some have already created scripts to bypass the five second interstitial period. Still a few weeks away from public beta, it will be interesting to see how Bre.ad is received when the novelty wears off. What do YOU think?

As firehose data access becomes increasingly commoditized, it is the depth of analysis that truly differentiates these solutions. Terms like natural language processing (NLP), text analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) have become all the rage. However, it is sentiment analysis that has received the most hype and it is frightening how often it is abused.

The following will examine some critical mistakes to avoid when analyzing sentiment…

LUST: Sentiment analysis can be extremely tempting to use, but any good analyst will recognize that there are plenty of occasions where it can be highly irrelevant. Understand that you must put everything in context. It may be extra sexy to crank out a fancy visualization breaking down positive, negative, and neutral data. However, there is a time and place when sentiment can be valuable. Recognizing this will require self-control.

VANITY: Whether you’re a well-established Fortune 50 juggernaut or a promising lean startup, being arrogant can have severe consequences. Just because your sentiment may be trending positively for a designated period of time doesn’t mean you are doing everything right. It is easy to become overly confident and fail to take existing threats seriously. Having your own desired sentiment metrics that are clearly aligned with your business and strategic objectives will allow you to stay on track, the more specific to your business the better.

ENVY:  Sentiment analysis can be particularly useful when examining your competitive landscape. Seeing how you stack up against your competition is helpful to an extent. However, becoming obsessively jealous of such benchmarking can cause you to drift away from the predefined goals of your campaigns. The leading players in your market may have more appealing metrics when it comes to sentiment, but this may simply be due to the fact that you have different strategic objectives.

WRATH: At a high level, sentiment analysis allows you to identify individuals that feel negatively about some aspect of your business. This will range in severity and often times your business is indisputably at fault. Keep in mind that many of these individuals are simply seeking attention or looking for an altercation. Regardless, the worst thing you can do is fuel the fire by being aggressive or angry. Make a solid effort to show overwhelming compassion and kindness while attempting to move the conversation to a more private channel in a timely fashion.

GREED: Sentiment analysis can offer actionable insights for multiple business units other than just public relations and marketing. This is especially true with both the product development and customer service departments. Being stingy with your findings and failing to dispense relevant insights across your entire business is a missed opportunity. Having a proper workflow seamlessly integrated into your analysis will allow your business to make the most of its data. Time-sensitive opportunities should be capitalized on and risks should be mitigated whenever possible.

SLOTH: With sentiment analysis becoming an increasingly automated process, it is relatively easy to get lazy and make unrealistic assumptions. Accuracy will vary significantly based on the sentiment engine of the solution, but none of them will be absolutely perfect. In fact, many will require frequent human interaction to fine-tune the algorithms. This is not something to be overlooked and having some zeal can make all the difference. Failing to consistently verify the precision will cause the margin of error to fluctuate erratically resulting in useless data or potentially bad business decisions.

GLUTTONY: Sentiment analysis must be utilized in moderation. Overuse can lead to misguided assessments that can negatively impact your bottom line. Make sure that you are taking a balanced approach when analyzing your data and avoid being heavily reliant on sentiment. Keep in mind that sentiment is often entirely irrelevant. Just because you have the ability to leverage it doesn’t make it practical.

(Note: Artwork by Chris Hill)

Facebook and Google are both very fortunate to pull as much data as they currently do and they will have a tough road ahead to keep it this way. In the end, they are both competing for advertising revenue, but Google’s sketchy data collection tactics have been under heavier scrutiny. Meanwhile, the “Like” button has gone viral with developers and Facebook continues to aggressively mark its territory. The +1 can be interpreted as an obvious reaction.

One major difference about the “Like” button is that its data remains in a closed network and is unindexed by search engines that matter. +1 recommendations have the ability to help improve Google’s PageRank algorithm. Not only will the +1 influence search results, but it has the opportunity to make search a lot more personalized. From a user’s perspective, the +1 will help to see through the garbage quicker and magnify the discovery of relevant content. It will also help to ensure that critical material doesn’t get overlooked nearly as often.

For developers, the +1 may present some interesting new engagement opportunities. Publishers will eventually be able to add the +1 to their own sites alongside the existing “Like” and “Tweet” buttons. The “Like” button essentially offers publishers a kickback in that if you get “Liked” you get exposure within Facebook. However, the +1 offers publishers a way to get better exposure within search results. Depending on the target market, it is debatable which is more advantageous, but you can guarantee publishers will leverage them both.

Instead of tackling the “Like” button head on, Google has strategically chosen to utilize search, the technology that it knows best, in order to obtain the valuable recommendation data that is has been longing to pull. Since the +1 will also be integrated within Google search ads, it has the potential to make them more engaging and consequently more profitable. Will it be easy to game the system using resources like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to boost +1s? This is something Google will have to carefully monitor.

At a high level, the +1 is a reminder that a Google account can be used for something other than just Gmail. It is another chance to pick up where Buzz failed to find its critical mass. The real challenge will be to figure out the best way to integrate existing social graphs and achieve mainstream usage.

What are some of YOUR predictions? Can we expect to see Microsoft launch Bing’s +2?

The emergence of the internet may have given anyone in the world a unique voice, but it is the recent proliferation of social graphs that have given these voices both credibility and real-time reach. The once fragmented shouting match of the Web has now been refined to personalized networks, organized communities, and unique identities. People are now able to instantly reach out to anyone with a shared interest, passion, friend, location, etc. Uncensored peer reviews offer more trustworthy opinions than the neatly packaged 30-second Madison Ave propaganda of the past.

As the web continues to become increasingly social, some of these graphs are being dynamically comprised of our closest personal connections. We believe them to be extremely reliable and we make an effort to leverage the collective opinions in order to help determine a reputation for every company, brand, product, or individual.

Both consumers and businesses have had to entirely change the way they operate online. The social web has empowered them to seamlessly interact in an infinite two-way dialog, but this “groundswell” has brought many additional threats along with it. Information now flows at lightning speed and even the most bizarre idea can become a viral hazard with the proper backing of influencers.

We have consistently seen rock solid reputations snap, crackle, and pop in a matter of hours. Even the smallest rant or questionable word choice has the potential to spawn a trending internet meme of negative connotation. We have all witnessed how one epic “decision” can transform a heroic poster-boy into an ostracized villain overnight.

Make no mistake, public discourse has changed dramatically. Online reputations are becoming increasingly impactful with fatal consequences for those who choose to look the other way. Here are some relatively straightforward universal guidelines to consider:

• Be transparent, authentic, and timely: Make yourself openly available and genuinely engage. Speak the language of your audience and offer a timely response.
• Embrace the haters: Accept that these will come and go. Don’t ever let it get under your skin and avoid fueling the fire at all times.
• Don’t be a dickhead: Self-explanatory (See @kanyewest).
• Earn your credibility relentlessly: Make an effort to always add value and build a stockpile of authority to leverage when needed.
• Always try to give something back: This will certainly vary, but may even be as basic as a simple “Thank You”.
• Eliminate threats at their source: Don’t get sucked into the expensive game of “SEO manipulation.” Hiding your tracks is only a temporary fix that will eventually resurface.
• Be over prepared for the worst: Resolve any gray areas, plan accordingly for all scenarios, and know exactly how to nail the execution.

Your reputation is what drives your business and learning to manage it properly is only possible with a deeper understanding of everything comprising it. Try to look beyond all of the buzz or mentions and find a way to tap into the essence. There is plenty of pontification and spam bots to sift through, but deep inside this plethora of data streams are valuable insights waiting to be mined with the right tools. These can be leveraged to make smarter business decisions, mitigate risks, and maintain a quality reputation.

There has certainly been a noticeable paradigm shift in 2010 to a much broader acceptance of social media in the corporate suites. However, because of its unpredictable nature and lightning speed, showing social media’s direct linkage to the bottom line (ROI) can be challenging and can make receiving an adequate budget rather tricky.

Even with solid buy-in from above, most organizations fail to take their social media efforts to the next level. This is usually because they don’t make the most out of all the available data sources. They do an average job at maintaining their strategic objectives individually, but are unable to fuse together the right elements to uncover the hidden insights. The most valuable intelligence comes when you aggregate all data types, not just the unsolicited/unstructured social media segment by itself (see image below for more details).

Trying to manage all of these fragmented channels manually is a losing battle. There are plenty of FREE monitoring tools out there to help aggregate these data sources in a timely fashion, but they are extremely limited and 90% useless. Paid offerings significantly vary in both functionality and price. However, the majority of the players in this concentrated market fail to do much more than provide buzz and mentions about the keywords you input. They also like to regurgitate the universal analytics provided to you by your major social networks as if they are doing you a favor.

The better solutions will allow you to integrate your social media, CRM, and other proprietary data sources. They will probably overwhelm you with fancy word cloud visualizations and tell you that they have the most accurate sentiment analysis engine. They may even be able to help you identify influencers and generate some leads. However, they lack the ability to determine actual meaning from the data and leave it all on you to synthesize. They are incapable of clearly identifying relevant and truly actionable insights aligned with your specific goals and objectives.

Uncovering this deeper meaning is by no means an easy task and requires some serious technology to pull it off well. As linguistics and semantics are united with areas such as machine learning and decision engineering, the data begins to move beyond its previous limitations and closer to its full potential.

There are plenty of issues to address with monitoring tools, but attempting to do without any at all indicates that you have given up entirely on your social media efforts. Be sure to find the solution that best fits your specific needs. Know exactly what you are paying for and don’t fall victim to false claims.

Please share your thoughts with us in the comments below and let’s continue this discussion…

1.      Who are the key influencers?

• Key influencers for one company, brand, or product may have absolutely no influence at all for another. Obviously, the number of followers, friends, retweets, mentions, subscribers, etc. is certainly important. However, there is much more criteria that must be considered than simply quantitative metrics focused on reach, frequency, and amplification (or audience, authority, and activity) such as expertise, credibility, or experience. Plenty of startups have taken their own crack at influence including Klout, PeerIndex, or EmpireAvenue and, naturally, they all have their own approach. The common methodology seems to be assigning a standardized influence score for each piece of an individual’s social media footprint (ex: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.). This makes sense, but another question to consider is about the timeframe in which this data has been pulled. Do they have access to historical data and, if so, how much? How long will it take to get a solid reading on the available data? A week? 3 months? 3 years?

2.      What are the right data sources to tap into?

• This really depends on your objectives. If you are international, you will have to face the challenge of dealing with multiple languages. Some argue that gaining firehose access is the way to go if it’s offered, but others are more concerned with tapping into strictly the data they feel is actually relevant (GIGO). Unfortunately, the web will never have one universal API. Try to identify the most vital sources based on your objectives and make this an ongoing process. The most important thing is that you are constantly uncovering relevant insights.

3.      When will automated sentiment analysis become accurate enough to require zero human interaction?

• Natural language processing (NLP) has come a long way and, coupled with machine learning, artificial intelligence, and various other semantic elements, researchers are making significant progress. The industry norm for sentiment accuracy is somewhere around 70%. Even if it becomes 100% accurate in the future, this won’t provide much further value unless it can expose more than simply if something is positive, negative, or neutral. Scalability is not the issue with such automated methodologies, but rather their ability to determine deeper meaning.

4.      Where are the standardized social media metrics?

• Unlike web analytics (ex: page views, unique visitors, bounce rate, etc.), social media lacks a system of standardized metrics. This is mostly because a lot of these have yet to be fully defined. Everyone is taking their own approach and getting different results even if they are all tapping into the same exact data sources. What is important now is to figure out the best approach and most relevant metrics to support your specific objectives. As social media matures, universal standards will eventually be established and aggregate analysis will be more feasible.

5.      Why are most of the current monitoring solutions so complex and expensive?

• There are hundreds of solutions out there and you don’t necessarily get what you pay for. One thing you can count on: the cheaper the solution, the more spam and less detailed analysis you will receive. Not to mention, many are incredibly overpriced and lack adequate value or differentiation. Even the fanciest UI or visualization in the industry can’t compensate for the tremendous amount of synthesis it takes to truly uncover any actionable insights. Merely getting started frequently has a steep learning curve. With the majority of the solutions, setting up your queries perfectly is essential for a useful output and often requires significant tutorials or personal assistance which usually costs extra. Finding a solution that fits your objectives, budget, and abilities can be challenging.

6.      How do you consistently measure social media ROI?

• This is an ongoing challenge that has certainly yet to be conquered. Social media’s qualitative nature, fragmentation, and lack of measurability across platforms make it relatively difficult to quantify with total certainty. Simply put, you must make the most of the data and common keys you’re able to recognize. Set appropriate goals and make estimations to track your progress as needed. Strive to uncover an approach that satisfies your needs and provides enough evidence for ROI. Not only would this allow you to quantify the true value of all your social media efforts in dollar amounts, but it will provide the much desired buy-in from upper management that can be rather hard to come by. Start talking impact to the bottom-line and you’ll be sure to get attention.

Eric Kramer, Creative Director, Marketing & Business Development @NEPUTATION

Attached are the key takeaways from the Charles Schwab case study:

• Absolute score is not as important as the actual learning, growing, and coaching from NPS
• Feedback from Net Promoter surveys enable companies to react to product feedback and market changes quickly
• Management can rapidly identify trends, issues, challenges, and take appropriate actions
• NPS helps identify patterns of behavior for improving the customer relationships by transforming transaction-focused business to relationship-focused business
• NPS is directly co-related to a company’s financial performance

At Neputation, we are strong advocates of NPS, as there is not a better benchmark to measure customer loyalty. When your customers recommend your company and your products/services to others, it speaks volumes related to your ability to consistently delight the customers.

One key challenge of NPS, however, is that it requires companies to send out Voice of the Customer (VOC) surveys to all their customers on a periodic basis. The response rate of such surveys are pretty dismal and the results can be skewed in that only companies that are currently satisfied are likely to complete them. There is also an on-going debate about objectivity and validity of solicited customer feedback versus unsolicited customer feedback. In the customer empowered Web and Social Media world, it is a dangerous assumption that the customers will provide feedback only when you want it and also on your terms. With the hundreds of independent customer feedback and social media sources out there, the voice of your detractors is most likely to be found there and not within your monthly/quarterly VOC surveys.

In order to get a holistic benchmark of a company’s NPS, there is fundamental need to aggregate and synthesize the customer feedback across the Web, Social Media, and CRM channels. This is what Neputation does so well. Neputation business customers are not only able to get a single voice of the customer, but they are also able to distill that voice into actionable insights in improving customer relationships and the company reputation. Neputation’s analytics capability boils down Voice of the Customer feedback into major value drivers including Loyalty. Our sentiment analysis on the Loyalty value driver creates a perfect proxy for a company’s NPS from the Web and Social Media perspective.

If you are really intrigued by the NPS concept and want to learn more about it and how you can leverage NPS in your environment, please contact us at sales@neputation.com or Request a Demo.

Sanjiv Karani
Founder & CEO
NEPUTATION

STELLAService identified 11 Internet retailers that qualified as “elite” in the area of online customer service led by Zappos.com. The other “elite” online retailers include: Diapers.com, Blue Nile.com,Amazon.com, Staples.com, Crutchfield.com, LLBean.com, BestBuy.com, Apple.com, Sears.com and REI.com.

According to the survey, the top-3 considerations for great online customer service are:

1. Speed of delivery
2. Helpfulness of customer service representatives
3. Ease of access to information on a company’s website

This survey parallels Neputation‘s own research in which we found that the fulfillment or the speed of delivery accounted for almost 50% of all consumer reviews for a major online retailer.

We think STELLAService is a great resource for anyone trying to find the high-quality online retailers that excel when it comes to customer service. While STELLAService ratings are currently available for 149 top online retailers only, we should reinforce that Neputation has detailed scorecards and analytics on almost half a million online retailers. We are also delighted to announce that we are already working to incorporate STELLAService as an additional 3rd party rating source for Neputation.

We hope that with the existence of Neputation, you are no longer taking chances and making sure the company or business checks out solid relative to their N-Score. Also, feel free to pass on Neputation to your friends and families and we always welcome any ideas or feedback related to your Neputation experience.

Wishing you safe and sound online experience!

Sanjiv Karani, CEO
NEPUTATION