Out of the thousands of social media communicators online, I find it ironic that one of the most successful adopters of the social media toolset has been Sesame Street. Of all the CEOs and executives in the world, Big Bird and the Cookie Monster seem to have figured out how to drive the Sesame Street brand into the new media space with childlike glee… but did they look at the “big picture” of corporate business? (PERSONAL NOTE: I love Sesame Street. As a father of a seven year old boy I can appreciate that he gets to laugh and learn from some of the very things I grew up with as a child.)

Sesame Street has detached some of its own video work into appealing directly to the online crowd, skillfully learning to take some of those age old ideas many web surfers grew up with and present them with some adult humor and whimsical entertainment. Surely as a brand name Sesame Street has to have just a little recognition with 39 seasons of broadcasting with over 4100 episodes (Sesame Street is one of the longest-running U.S. television shows in history) That strength allows the main SesameStreet.org site to produce over 800k visits a month (per Compete.com)

Looking at some of the projects Sesame Street has done, they have a YouTube landing page that has 80 videos that have produced roughly 1200 subscribers and 30,000 channel views. While these numbers are not “epic” in the world of YouTube, the viral effect of bringing Sesame Street online creates some new benchmarks for them.

If you do a simple search for the words “Sesame Street” on YouTube- there are dozens of videos that fans have loaded that often have an excess of 100,000 views each. The amount of branding and air time that they have garnished from this evolution to the online space is very interesting to see in such an established brand as Big Bird.

The crew over at Sesame Street has moved the entertainment company into several different projects that include the Sesame Street Podcast “a series of free portable video episodes featuring Murray Monster and all your other favorite Sesame Street Muppets. In this second series of Word on the Street podcasts, celebrity guests and fuzzy friends explain the meaning of words like “octagon” and “insect.”

Unfortunately Sesame Street has some problems online too…

Strangely enough, the CEO of Sesame Street (who in my mind is Big Bird, however the Executive Producer is Carol-Lynn Parente) has a slight image problem online. If you Google Big Bird - there is an unfortunate image in the results (top center of page) that has Big Bird making a rude gesture. Considering he is the public image of the company, the image may be offending his target audience of parents and children.

As we scroll through the results, if Big Bird really was a real person… he also has a YouTube video with the title of “Big Bird- The Muppet Unmasked” that dives deep into his personal life. As a public figurehead that video may be something that he wants to carefully look at and consider the stock ramifications. According to Google, the term “Big Bird” has an estimated click rate of 6 to 8 times a day. That means at least 180 to 240 sets of eyes are being exposed to the wrong message… and a good potential number of those eyes could be children. In actuality that number could be ten times higher in terms of raw searches for the term “Big Bird”

In the real world however, chief executive officers are not the only people involved in running a successful company. Every great CEO relies on a team of professionals to produce results.

So if Sesame Street has a Vice President… we have to look at Cookie Monster too. His friendly furry blue face makes most people feel relaxed and at least a little light hearted, yet right at the top of his image search results is an angry monster saying “What the hell is this crap?”

With a subconscious glance, our visual search has exposed the bi-polar second man of Sesame Street. He has a deep and dark side that many of us didn’t know about, which is further detailed by his YouTube video “Cookie Monster vs Martha Stewart” Who would have thought that the friendly blue running mate had such a two-sided personality?

Understanding the darker secrets of our public facing figures is critical for any business. If Cookie Monster was running for political office or wanted to help his company through an IPO, there could be some very serious repercussions of not managing this issue beforehand.

The “Big Picture” is that web sites have become multi-locational brands. A brand, whether now exists on many different levels on many different locations. On the beneficial side of Sesame Street, the 800k+ monthly visits to the main site is quickly dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands of views to hundreds of YouTube videos (and that is only one social community site) On the negative side we see potential brand damage against the highest ranked executives of the company.

I hope my more light-hearted analysis of social media branding and reputation helps connect the issues for you. Understanding how different elements of the online frontier interact with audience members is critical for companies moving forward in this environment.

For more realistic examples of the same issues, check out my other articles below.

As always- let me know if you have any comments or insight to Big Bird and Cookie Monster’s problems!

Professional brands have always been subject to attack in the media, but until recently there have not been too many options for creating your own news channel to use as platform for staging complaints. A few days ago Robert Mark from JetWhine.com covered “United Pilots give Tilton a Kick” based on United Airline pilots launching a blog asking for the termination of the company’s CEO Glenn Tilton.

United Airline Pilots - “We’ve started this web site because we’re tired of seeing the Tilton organization play the blame game”

Robert does an excellent job of defining some critical elements of the pilots site:

“Although the anti-site is not new, this well-organized site is quite a clever tactic. It’s easy for anyone to choose a juicy topic from the menu like Tilton’s “Operational Failures,” strategic blunders, financial or even employee and customer service screw ups like, “Only 38% of United employees are proud to work for the airline.” Ouch.

Something Tilton is just going to love is the convenient message form tied to Mr. Tilton’s e-mail so anyone can send him a comment. My guess is that mailbox is going to fill up pretty quickly.”

Looking away from the GlennTilton.com site, this is a coordinated effort to destroy a professional reputation (and I must add, it is a pretty well-thought effort too.)

If you search Google for - Glenn Tilton, there are 113,000 documents.

The first result is a Wikipedia entry that has already been edited to mention the GlennTilton site launched four days ago:

“The Air Line Pilots Association has long been a critic of Tilton’s management style and airline experience. On August 11, 2008, ALPA launched a website calling for Tilton’s resignation at www.GlennTilton.com.

Tilton has also been a vocal proponent of mergers in the airline industry, dating back to United’s bankruptcy days. Tilton attracted much scorn for his views on mergers, until recently with talk about consolidation among US network carriers.

Upon exiting bankruptcy, Tilton received compensation valued at $39,700,000, mostly in stock options that vest over several years, and this caused unrest among the airlines labor unions.”

The second result is an article form the Chicago Sun-Times, “United Pilots want CEO Glenn Tilton to resign.” which clearly covers a statement made by the Union “the United chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association said United needs new leadership. It launched a Web site to draw attention to what it says have been Tilton’s failures since he took over as CEO in September 2002.”

“‘‘This is not a personal attack on Glenn Tilton,’’ Wallach said. ‘‘These dismal numbers speak for themselves. They are a reflection of his inability to lead, his incompetence as a manager and his failure in virtually every category that can be measured. We have tried every conceivable way to convince him to invest in, and maximize the goodwill of, his employees. He has failed miserably.’’

Aside from Glenn Tilton, the bigger picture for online reputation problems extends to the overall United brand as well. On a search for United Airlines, one first page result is a wonderful article from Airsafe.com titled “Fatal Events Since 1970 for United Airlines“ (if that isn’t a bad brand line, I don’t know what is.)

The second negative result is a site playing on the same letters as United: Untied.com. The brutal items to assemble information against United are well assembled into brand problems that would rock the most hardened company:  The worst airline — ever, Legal Action Time, Form Letter Time, Mishandled Minors, Joining Lawsuits are all examples of categories of information there.

According to Compete.com, Untied receives roughly 11,000 unique visitors a month who read that information. Assuming that an average ticket is $300 to $400, how many of the 11,000 unique visitors a month to Untied.com are either prospective United customers or current ones? Even if only 5% are (500 monthly unique visitors) the monthly brand damage by this one site can be estimated at $150k to $200k in lost revenue. Unfortunately I would estimate that the actual percentage of possible/current airline clients is in the 25% or higher range ($750k to $1 million monthly brand impact.)

If you are aware of other brand issues online and would like us to cover some of the ramifications or solutions to the situation, please drop me a line at barry.hurd@123socialmedia.com. Our team is always looking at these issues and examing how they are affecting business. FYI- we like hearing about positive social media brand impacts as well!

A good portion of online marketing is understanding how your professional brand is being influenced online. At some point in time, any company will be subject to having good (or bad) press coverage, customer commentary, or industry debate. Knowing that the conversation is occurring is the first part of winning the long-term battle of having a strong brand. For most companies, the knowledge to be aware of this information is mostly free (you just have to know it is there). For that reason, we will take a quick look at how to setup Google alerts for things that are important.

The simple description of Google Alerts is this: a simple e-mail notification that notifies you with the latest and most relevant website pages, blogs, videos, and news feeds found by Google’s search engine relating to particular search terms topics. The e-mail can be automatically set to arrive in your inbox at whatever frequency you need (daily, weekly, monthly.)

Why do you need to use Google Alerts?

This is really answered by a simple question: do you really want to be the last one to know that other people are talking about you?

There are dozens of topics (keywords) that involve you professionally. Your company name, your name, slogan, employees, products, location, competitors, clients, customers, etc.

When you write them all down, you could perhaps have hundreds of keywords and topics that would make you a more efficient business professional by being informed about things as they happen, rather than after they have happen.

Think about situations like:

• A past client post a bad review of your services- do you want to strategically respond?
• Your biggest client gets a commendation in the news- do you want to reach out and congratulate them?
• An employee posts information about the last after hours company party- should they really be publicizing some private moments?

All of this information can be incredibly valuable, you just have to condense it into a usable and friendly format.

An easy first step:

1. Visit www.google.com/alerts.
2. In the “Create a Google Alert” box on the right, insert your keyword in quotes, i.e. “underwater basket weaving training”.
3. Select the Type of alert (news, web, blog, video, etc)
4. Select your desired e-mail frequency.
5. Enter your e-mail address and you’re done!
6. Continue adding more alerts: enter your next keyword phrase, i.e. company name, competitor, employee name, etc.

Intelligence Data is the Most Valuable of all business tools

There are many ways this information can be leveraged for you professionally. Thinking a little out-of-the-box when browsing information about your business is a great way of finding niche areas that you can maximize results with.

• Manage your online identity
• Keep an eye on your industry
• Keep tabs on your competitors
• Join relevant conversations
• Expand your expertise & knowledge

If you want to delve into using Google Alerts a little more strategically I suggest you also read these articles:

• Online Reputation Control
  
• Social Media Measurement
• Can the Web Destroy Your Business?
• 10 Steps of Online Branding and Reputation Control

There is a lot to be said about the power of branding your company online, but also understanding how that branding is perceived and accepted. Search engines are one of the key methods that you are found online, yet what kind of information can you find about a business with online search engine knowledge? continue