Ben Straley, Director of Marketing Judy's Book
Paul Williams, CEO iKarma
Herbert Ong, CEO Genuosity

Ben Straley talked about reputation value and reputation management. Reputation value is driven by what others write online and off. Reputation management is essential and the first rule is to embrace the concept that it is important and must be managed and integrated into the operation and marketing of your business.

Paul Williams is the CEO of a company called iKarma which is an online reputation management system similar conceptually to the Ebay feedback system. The iKarma system is an open system where comments and feedbacks regarding your business or service can be posted by clients and customers. You set up an account with Ikarma and can start rating businesses and services with a 1-5 star rating and open comments. The business or person that is written about can respond. ikarma seems to be getting positive word of mouth from the blogosphere..

Paul Williams suggests that "you can turn bloggers into happy customers or you can turn your happy customers into bloggers." Your customers, he said are friendly, already like you, have friends and family with active social lives; bloggers, he says already hate you, have online friends and live at home with their mothers. Customers give you standard WOM which is limited to your circle of friends. Relationship Management Systems (RMS) such as iKarma give you unlimited reach and influence. RMS can add credibility to customer opinions. WOM has more power,advertising has more reach. RMS has more endurance. Makes sense.

Herbert Ong, CEO of Genuosity Inc. talked about the importance of testimonials. He says that reputation is word of mouth and testimonials are the most important part of reputation. He has an equation that summarizes what he means:
   PWOM (positive word of mouth)-NWOM (negative word of mouth)= your reputation

He suggests that you always ask for testimonials from your customers and that you collect and display them. They represent your reputation.

He says that promoters, or evangelists, represent positive word of mouth. Passive (amiables) are neutral or no word of mouth and Detractors represent negative word of mouth. It is important to turn the Passives into promoters. He suggests that you need to make it easy for the passives to give positive feedback: use a link in your email signture to a testimonial capture page. An added benefit is with search engines...they eat content and testimonials are content. Additionally you should try to get your customers to do video or podcasts.

He summarized by saying that you should lead with a remarkable product or service..not with marketing.