While some shoppers may be lining up at JCPenney stores this Friday at 4 a.m., this holiday season retailers are lining up to entice shoppers — online.

There already have been many pre-Black Friday deals this month to get shoppers in the buying mood. Tweets are being sent, Facebook pages are being updated to encourage interactivity, and the latest commercials are showing up on YouTube sites right away. In addition, many retailers are posting their Black Friday ads online to provide consumers a sneak peek of the deals that await — marking a shift from the tradition of not being able to see Black Friday ads until the actual day.

While all of this is resulting in relentless attention to price, Target still is focusing on its reputation. The retailer is promoting its speediness, service and relaxed return policy to give itself an edge with customers.

By using the Internet, retailers are engaging with consumers even more and providing them the choice to shop any way that they want to as well as plan out their Black Friday visits. Whether retailers focus on price or reputation, in the end, it’s the consumers who will be the winners in this year’s Black Friday battle.

What is your reputation worth?

Ask this question to Carrie Prejean, Tom Petters, Bernie Madoff or Michael Phelps and you might get some different yet profound answers. It is not difficult to identify those individuals who have damaged their reputation. For companies, those that understand the importance of managing reputation are often the most successful.

Often, a split-second decision can ruin a reputation forever. For celebrities attacks on reputation can mean losing endorsements. For a company it can mean the loss of millions in profits. Even a country’s reputation can be damaged by a single action. If it is so easy to ruin a reputation what is the value of protecting it?

EBay understands the importance of protecting its reputation. To provide customers the best experience online, EBay allows buyers to rate their online shopping experience. Potential sellers looking to push something online, that have poor ratings, will get overlooked because of their bad reputation. Isolating sellers with poor reputations in fact boosts EBay’s reputation as a place where people can get good customer service.

Putting a dollar value on a good name can be difficult, but it is better for a company to protect its reputation rather than try to clean up after its mistakes. Are you doing everything you can to protect your company’s reputation?

Reputation already damaged? Healing takes time.

If your reputation is already damaged the only thing that will heal it is time. However, there are three things you can do to begin to improve your reputation.

1. Apologize. If you messed up admit it. Say you are sorry to your employees, clients and customers. Let your stakeholders know that you were in the wrong, but that you are working to resolve the situation.
2. Improve. Don’t make the same mistake twice. Change your behavior and perform the way you are expected to perform
3. Maximize performance. Act the way you should have acted every day. Be patient and do good work and over time your reputation will improve.

If the bad reputation is a result of rumors find out who started the rumors. Be direct and honest. At the end of the day performance will hopefully outweigh any lies.

At PubCon this week, Google guru, Matt Cutts, has shared that there is a substantial rally cry to add page load as a factor in how websites are ranked (see article at Search Engine Land). We have been saying this for years from a usability standpoint. Google agrees with us that a site that loads faster is a better user experience and that is why it wants to include it in the ranking algorithm. That is interesting…Google has always said that it wants relevant results (Google says this is, “…defined by co-founder Larry Page as something that, “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.”") Now Google wants to better its results again by adding good usability to its relevant results. Way to go, Google!

What are your thoughts on adding this new ranking factor to the algorithm? Are there any other factors you would like Google to think about?

Last week’s stack of generally uninteresting vendor mail included an “IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTICE” from a company in a southern MN, near my home town.  Feeling some sense of intrigue and obligation I decided to read before filing in the plastic bin at my feet.  Turns out some folks won a settlement against Yahoo! relating to Sponsored Search and Content Match ad placement.  They claim the terms of service were violated when Yahoo! allowed these ads to be displayed on spyware, domain parking pages, pop-ups/unders, and typosquatting sites.  Naughty naughty!  After years of litigation, millions of pages and hundreds of GB of documentation provided by Yahoo!, testimony from both sides, and all that shtuff, a settlement was reached.

So, what does this mean for all involved?  Here’s the breakdown.

• General public – Yahoo! agreed to develop an “Ad Placement Option” (name subject to change blah blah blah), whereby customers can specify that ads purchased may only be displayed on Yahoo! owned properties or “Premium” distribution partners.  The timetable for the launch of this new option is “as early as the first quarter of 2010, but in no event later than September 30, 2010″, and they agree to maintain the option for at least two years from the launch … or (almost forgot about this part) until the agreement with Microsoft is finalized.  So, in theory, and legally, it may never materialize.  Yahoo! also agreed to post more information about where ads may appear on the Traffic Quality portion of it’s site.
• Class Members still in business – nothing in particular.  It’s not about the money though, it’s the principle.
• Class Members out of business – a $20 refund – the cost of a stamp.  Yahoo! indeed.
• Class Representatives – these three (also referred to as “several”, not the more precise “few”, in the IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTICE) will be awarded $10,000 each.
• Class Counsel – $4,170,000 plus expenses totaling about $100,000.  Remember, it’s not just about the money.  It’s about the principal and the resulting interest, dividends, and taxes.
• Yahoo! – total estimated outlay is $4.3 million plus the $20 payments to class members now out of business.

Learn more about the case and the settlement at www.inreyahoosettlement.com.

It’s been said by many people in the public relations industry that the press release is dead. In fact, the press release is NOT dead. Today, a well written press release may be more important than ever. The reason? SEO.

That’s right, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a phrase that may be new to some, but it should be on every PR person’s radar. SEO is how people, reporters specifically, find your Web site.

Being a pragmatist I understand that not everyone cares about SEO, so let me put it in context. A recent Ragan Communications and PollStream survey found that 49 percent of the poll’s 401 respondents believe press releases are “as useful as ever.” In fact, in many cases press releases are required for investor relations by the SEC’s notification rules.

So understanding that roughly half of the PR population thinks the press release is here to stay and that there are good reasons for using press releases, wouldn’t it make sense that PR professionals would learn how to incorporate SEO into our releases? There are many tips to optimize your press release to ensure that reporters find your release.

SEO can make the content of your web pages more relevant, more attractive and more easily read by search engines. Think about it…in your use of the Internet how often do you use a search engine…Monthly? Weekly? Multiple times a day? You can bet that reporters use search engines as often or more than you, so make sure you are targeting them with each release.

As if to prove the point that SEO is important PRSA is hosting a seminar on the Secrets of Search Engine Optimization on November 17. Check out PRSA.org for more information.

Great post by Adam Kleinberg at iMedia.

1) Mass collaboration is powering the new economy
Companies are taking advantage of a new collaborative world to foster innovation and grow their enterprises.

2) Constant connectivity in an on-demand world
I’m wired almost every minute of every day and so are your customers and prospects. People expect you as a company to be “on” 24/7.

3) Globalization: Making the world a smaller place
Technology has made geography irrelevant. Businesses around the world are doing business with one another and will continue to do so.

4) Pervasive distrust in big corporations
The impending financial doom this country faced a year ago had a tremendous impact on consumer confidence in America, but even greater damage was done to consumer trust.

5) A global sense of urgency to fix the problems of a modern world
Being green is a minimum standard.

5 marketing megatrends you can’t ignore