Rightly or wrongly this simple outage has cost Chambers his job and caused much stress for himself as well as his family. Although support from the Twitter world has flooded in and offers to pay his legal fees, Paul is unsure whether to take people up on their kind offers.

Celebrities such as Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross are amongst those who have sent their wishes of support.

This just shows, the Twitter world is truly unique and takes communication to a new level, bringing people together and uniting a worldwide community.

• Customisation of page contents
• ‘Verified account’ badge
• A wider range of preferences to expand consumer reach
• Allows multiple tweeters from one account.

The next step from Twitter will certainly help build online brand reputation and businesses social networking strategies through this new beta platform.

For more information visit Mashable.

For more information visit http://www.internationalsearchsummit.com or follow the latest updates on the day through Twitter: #ISSLON
@jennysimpson
@J__9
@IntSearchSummit
Live blogging on the day can be followed on Multilingual-Search.com.

Is it a reasonable complaint?

Assess the complaint. What is the complaint about?   Is it reasonable?  Can your Customer Support team put the problem right, by replacing damaged goods, or offering a refund?

Is it easy for customers to contact your Customer Support team?  The correct action may be to put the complainant directly in touch with the people that can help them (and do make sure that they can help them, otherwise the complainant will be doubly aggrieved).  In this case, respond to the original comments politely.  Don’t make false promises or confirm/deny the original complaint.  Be sincere

Is the comment libellous?

Libel is a tricky issue, but if the comment is excessively heated (“Don’t use blah.com – they are rip-off merchants!”) it’s probably not worth your while getting into a debate.  It may be worth your while contacting the publisher/webmaster and pointing out the wording.  Most forums have strict policies about such content and will either remove the post, or remind the poster to abide by their T&Cs.

Don’t demand the post to be removed! Again, that could make the reputation problem even worse if you are too heavy-handed.

Is it that big a deal?

If the negative post is appearing prominently on searches for your brand name, this could definitely cause you a problem.  In this case,  the negative post will surely appear on a highly popular forum/blog and replying to the original post may well lengthen the life of the negative comment.

In this scenario, the best action is to “push down” the comments by engaging in a PR campaign that will generate lots of top level results.

If the post is hidden away on the 5th page of results on an obscure forum or blog, it’s probably best not to take any action, other than to learn from any mistakes your company may have made.

Reputation Management tips – get the basics right….

1. Make sure your customer complaints route is effective and can be easily found
2. Don’t rush into responding
3. The customer may not always be right, but they should always be spoken to as if they might be right

Research is essential in defining the direction of ideas, if you don’t know the brand, how can you come up with new ideas? Knowing the products and services you sell and adapting them to fit with a certain brand culture can be tricky, however using a creative and imaginative drive will help you work to fit your products or services to suit the brand.

Creating a new service is a great way to enhance the agency portfolio. Every brand has a different culture, objectives and goals. Agencies working with brands need their products and services to be readily available and adaptable to suit the needs of any brand.

Adapting your writing style is a necessity in order to appeal to different readers; also the style of writing depends on who your community is. Adjust how formal, or quirky your tone of voice is to suit the expectations of your readership.

Be interesting yet factual where you can. Make sure your headline grabs the reader’s attention, so it gives them the urge to read on… Creating content does take time, so try not to rush, but do set yourself a realistic deadline.

1. My friend and colleague Samia “Likes” Pop Boutique on Facebook
2. I MSN her excitedly that I am wearing a dress from Pop Boutique today
3. I also “Like” Pop Boutique
4. I visit their website http://www.pop-boutique.com/ from Facebook, browse a bit and add myself to the mailing list
5. Samia has visited the London store and can’t place where the Leeds one is, so I go to Google Maps and use the Streetview to show her where it is.  Samia plans a shopping trip.
6. I write up this piece and post in on our blog
7. I tweet about this
8. I add it to my Facebook
9. Samia and I discuss Pop Boutique some more – we are both planning shopping trips
10. BINGO – Social Media Marketing for fashion definitely works…

PS – We are not connected to Pop Boutique in any way, shape or form – we are just fans.

PPS – We are more than happy to hear from anyone from Pop Boutique if they would like to get in touch

Having worked in SEM for around 18 months I think there is still a lot I don’t know, so I think this will be a great learning experience for me. I’m particularly looking forward to finding out more on video optimisation and mobile in Europe (Greg Jarboe and Bas van den Beld) also, as I use Twitter regularly, I think the presentation by Oscar Carreras on: Twitter – An International Strategy, will be most informative.

Hopefully there will be a few of us tweeting, so follow us #ISSLON @IntSearchSummit @J__9 @jennysimpson @davidecorradi… to find out more if you can’t make it!

Are you going to ISS? If so, who are you looking forward to seeing and why?

Online PR is used more now than it was 10 years ago, with the internet now established as a primary communications route and the increase of search engine optimisation (SEO), online PR has developed with the help of SEO techniques to gain prominent search rankings in the major search engines.

Press releases

The use of high value keywords is essential when writing press releases for online distribution, also high quality links are what takes your audience to your websites products or services.

When writing press releases it is essential to keep the content interesting and provide insights or useful information like statistics to enhance the likability factor so your audience will continue reading. Knowing your audience is key when creating a public document, the style and way an article is written needs to appeal to the reader. Don’t forget to include your keywords!

Press release distribution

There are many paid and free resources online to send press releases to, depending on your online press release campaign budget. Not all resources will allow you to publish links; however some will include your homepage URL in the company information. It’s worth noting that getting a story published on a site which doesn’t allow links may offer substantially higher value than one that allows multiple links – such as the BBC site. Publishing your press releases may be time consuming, but after a week or so you may start to notice search results for your keywords in the most popular search engines like, Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Here are the top Twitter directories I use:
WeFollow – Grouping Twitter users and messages using #tags
Twellow – Directory of Twitter users by category
Social brand index – Directory of public companies
WhoShouldFollow – By adding your user name this API will find people you don’t follow which relate to your Twitter bio.
Just tweet it – Like WeFollow this directory adds you automatically, you just need to update your status.