Every now and then I heard Ronald van der Aart talk about his book in a radio interview: '#FAIL – dealing with criticism on the internet'. So I was curious. Is that book any good? I have read it, reviewed it and my opinion is: yes. It is something.
It is a smoothly written, easy-to-read 'study' book that can be of great use to people who deal with PR and communication in practice. But it would also not be out of place as a book for training courses. No theoretical blah blah with many models, but practical tools that everyone, from advisor at a large corporate to the small SME around the corner, can apply tomorrow.
The writer
Van der Aart has earned his spurs in the business of (online) reputation management (ORM): he was PR manager at the Amsterdam Arena stadium at the time of the ' grass mat affair', set up and organized the first social customer service team in the Netherlands at UPC as director of corporate communications and has been an independent PR consultant for years now under the name RepMen . That he does this successfully is evident from the results of PR for his own book .
Online escalation thermometer
#FAIL is logically structured and each chapter, however short and clear, ends with a summary. Handy for people who don't want to read the whole book - although I find the cases that are treated in each chapter in a tasty and extensive way a very valuable addition, from which you learn a lot.
We start with a bit of history: the rise of criticism on the internet. From the consumer association via TROS Radar and the Vakantieman to Geenstijl.nl and Youp's T-Mobile affair . Van der Aart then divides the complainants – somewhat stereotypically, as he himself indicates – into types of complainants, each of whom has their own reason to complain and requires a different approach.
He continues with a self-invented model to classify the nature and extent of online complaints: the online escalation thermometer , which describes 5 negative and 5 positive categories of criticism. Great to classify everything and measure it against the ruler. We love checklists.
A few points of criticism
Van der Aart discusses in some detail where people complain online (blogs, forums, review sites, etc.). In my opinion, it is unnecessary to devote an entire chapter to this, certainly for the professionals among us. According to quotes from Van der Aart's colleagues at the beginning of the book, the book is suitable for both PR consultants and the small SME around the corner, but in my opinion this chapter is mainly for the latter group - for people who read the book and do not have much knowledge of the internet and/or communication. But of course, as a professional you can simply skip this chapter.
What follows is an explanation and a definition of online reputation management (ORM) and how you can use this instrument to tackle criticism on the internet. Using 7P's, he presents a step-by-step plan for how you can set this up. Here it suddenly feels somewhat contradictory and for the first time I get the feeling that the book could have been structured differently; wouldn't it have been better to start with this? After all, this book is mainly about what ORM is, why you should and can do it yourself, and only then is it useful to know what types of complainers you can distinguish and how to deal with them.
why-reputation-managementWebcare also gets its own chapter, rightly so in my opinion because it receives so much attention. At the same time, however, ORM and webcare are often lumped together and only large organizations separate them (often ORM and webcare are even done by different departments). This fact, namely how this is organized in different types of organizations (and what is/isn't useful about that), remains underexposed in my opinion.
Fortunately, Van der Aart continues in a very practical way with a manual for responding in practice, a chapter in which he explains (the selection of) online monitoring and webcare tools and how he sees the future of criticism on the internet. The last chapter seems to have received little attention; in my opinion, there is more to say about the future of criticism on the internet and the issues that play a role in it, than the fragmentation of social networks and innovations such as Google Glass or 4G. Van der Aart certainly has a vision on this, which is not well expressed in this chapter.
What I also really missed, despite being a word thinker myself, were illustrations. The online escalation thermometer, the 7P's, ZEKEP, all nice abbreviations and practical tools that can be worked out very nicely in a model or other visual aid. They often make it easier to remember. Moreover, the book would have become visually more attractive.
On the reading list
All in all, a pleasantly readable book in which you are presented with the entire spectrum of online reputation management in bite-sized chunks. Practical tools for both the professional and the 'amateur', whereby neither group needs to feel underestimated. The descriptive chapter titles allow you to read only those chapters that are useful to you, but you will miss a number of very amusing and clearly told cases.
mindmap book FAIL Ronald van der Aart
And finally; for the visual thinkers among us I have made a mind map of sri lanka mobile phone number list the book. Click on the image above for a larger view.
fail to deal with criticism