The new Google SideWiki could potentially be a Public Relations nightmare for companies. In most cases I suspect that management are not even aware of its existence, let alone it’s potential for harm.
The new sidebar pictured below works on the same principles as Wikipedia – thus the name. While the site owners entry will be on top, it allows any registered Google user to write comments attached to your site.
Google Side-Wiki on Recruitment Agencies Ireland. A useful tool for web surfers or a potential PR disaster?
Did I just say anybody? Yes I did. Would you allow everybody in the world to write content on your site? Not in a million years. But now they can do just that. In fact users can comment on every single page of your site. They can have different comments on different pages.
The age old adage of word of mouth working better for bad news than good news holds true here. Treat a customer badly and you may well pay the price. Only instead of the customer bad mouthing you to just friends, family and colleagues, they can now (if they feel aggrieved enough) denounce your services to the world. On your very own website.
It doesn’t stop there either. What about your competitors? Do you trust them not to write disparaging comments about your company? That would be bad enough anywhere, but to have those same comments attached to your own website would be highly embarrassing.
So what can you do about it?
- Get acquainted with Google Sidewiki. Get the Google toolbar. To view a wiki entry for a web page, just click on the sidewiki button on the google toolbar.
- Get your own comments in first. A site owner (your google account must be associated with the website – webmaster tools validation) can make a wiki entry that will stay on top of all other comments. This entry can be made to show up for all pages on the site. This is particularly useful since most of us have dynamic websites.
- Make your own comments lengthy. Surfers are lazy. We hate scrolling any more than we have to. Do not put in just two lines in your own wiki entry. Make it long enough to ensure scrolling is necessary. Thus it takes effort to reach the other comments, leaving you more control over what people read.
- Subscribe to the comments RSS feed. This will not work in outlook, so you will have to use another RSS reader. This should really be at number one in this list. You need to know what people are saying about you. By subscribing to the RSS feed you will know every time a new comment is posted. (As an aside here, I am assuming that you are also using Google Alerts to let you know every time your company is mentioned on the Web.)
- Submit a removal request. If you do become the victim of unwarranted abuse through sidewiki, then you can request that the comment be removed. Think before doing this though. A well handled response can sometimes work better from a PR point of view than having the comment deleted. After all, if somebody has gone to the trouble of writing damaging material attached to your site, then when they find it deleted they could be encouraged to write the same information elsewhere. Tackling it at source may be a better option.
It’s not all bad news though. People can write nice things too. It doesn’t have to be a PR nightmare.
