O'Reilly Media - Another Brand Management Example

I've been talking a lot recently about companies that do not manage their brand online, and wind up getting negative information posted about them on blogs, Twitter, forums, etc. Today's example comes from a new source, however - from the eyes of the dissatisified customer. Because all to often we may feel for the company that gets the bad review and think, "why can't these bloggers just keep it to themselves?" Until one realizes that with some companies, if they adamantly refuse to listen to their disgruntled customers, blogging and tweeting about them angrily may be the only way you hear from them again. Ironically, this brings us to O'Reilly Media - presenters of conferences, publishers of Internet books and magazines, and all-around swell people. I was registered for one of their, "Social Media Boot Camps," and would have left this coming Monday to attend. It has since been canceled. This is not what I'm angry about. This means I now have a useless ticket to San Jose. This is also not what I'm angry about. I have been told a refund of my money is being worked out, but have heard nothing back from them all day. Strangely, even this is not what I'm angry about. I only found out the thing was canceled because I called them, and wanted to verify my information. Had I not done that, I would have hopped on a plane and shown up to their meeting place, only to look around forlorn and sad that I had no bootcamp waiting for me. Even this is not what made me angry. What makes me angry - what absolutely steams me - is that these are supposed to be social media professionals, and they are letting a vocal, angry customer like me slide like this? I was absolutely brutal with them on Twitter today, even calling out their Twitter persona by name. There has been no response. There have been no e-mails, no phone calls... and these people purport to know social? They cannot even keep a handle on their own Twitter account, to say nothing of monitoring for their own name. Frankly, any company like that I would NOT recommend a seminar with, and am actually fairly relieved that I won't be subjected to whatever they think is social. Don't give O'Reilly Media any of your money. That's all they appear to want from any of us. And if anyone ever writes a blog post like this about YOUR company, I'd get in touch with them kind of quickly. (Hint hint!)

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)

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