The irony of online marketing is the fact that a large proportion of people and companies that cautiously adopted the internet as a vital marketing and communication channel, have now thrown discipline and caution to the wind when using this medium.

The immediacy of online media is compelling. For individuals whose psychological profile is one of instant gratification, online is the ultimate panacea for the get-it-done-this-minute marketer. Executing any online activity or communication campaign without careful thought and discipline is not dissimilar to a person with a quick tongue, a hot head and a scant regard for repercussions and reputation.

While I am going to touch on online reputation, I will address it from a broader perspective in terms of the mistakes people make; the mistakes that damage the reputation of your business.

Let's start with the email. Unlike traditional broadcast media, the promotional email is easy and inexpensive to put together and the distribution costs are extremely low. Other than a website, the email is the entry point for most online marketing activities. It is also the area where so many companies let themselves down. Poor grammar and elementary spelling mistakes plague a huge amount of business email. If these companies had to put together a promotional flyer, the design and copy would be methodically thought out and the content carefully proofed before it was dispatched to the printers. Why is this fastidiousness not followed through when people do mail sends?

Subject lines on emails are generally appalling and deserve the cold shoulder that firewalls and recipients give them. Why do you think agencies employ copywriters? A well crafted message and subject line certainly gives you a better than even chance of being read by your intended audience.

I find it equally difficult to understand companies that are pushing out regular mail sends but are not using metrics to analyse the success or failure of any given campaign. Most decent service providers should be providing analytics that transcend the standard bounce report. Reporting and metrics will confirm how successful your subject line and content is. It will also clearly pinpoint effective creative and confirm the relevancy of your message. Don't blow your chances and reputation with a prospective audience by sending out sloppy emails.

One of the most common communication blunders I see almost on a daily basis is inappropriate writing styles in emails and newsletters. Wonderfully creative people are missing the bulk of their market with a style and tone of writing that is not appropriate or just plain patronising. Match your communication with your intended audience. Avoid trying to mimic a 15-year-old gamer when you are in fact a Mac-wielding 30-something creative and you know a Playstation as your work space at the office. There seems to be a total disconnect between the people generating content and creative and the people who actually deliver the message. Online, there are no excuses for not being able to segment your target audience and communicate personally, intelligently and relevantly to those particular audiences.

In fact, ask Sony Playstation about the extremely damaging PR experiment they thought they could pull off at the end of last year. They set up a blog supposedly run by two 'slacker dudes' intent on getting their hands on a Sony Playstation for Christmas. The flog (fake blog) was in fact run by a few smug Sony agency people who thought they could create a clever hitching post to hang their pre-Christmas hype. To cut a long story short, most hardcore gamers are a reasonably intelligent bunch and they spotted the deceit. Yes, Sony did get a lot of traffic, so much so that they had to pull the site down. Unfortunately for Sony, all the unprecedented traffic was completely negative and cost Sony serious loss of credibility and market share. If you want to read more about Sony and the backlash of thousands of angry, spotty teenagers go to: http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2006/12/sony_gets_rippe.html

On the subject of blogs; I generally believe that corporate blogs are totally overrated. If someone is not reading your corporate emails, promotional material, expensive adverts and they are certainly not visiting your website, why on earth would they sit and fritter away precious time on the personal views of Johnny, the wannabe copywriter savant, from the marketing department? For goodness sake, if most companies can't be bothered to even update their website on a regular basis, what is the likelihood of a blog being the torch-bearer of relevant and consistent content, published on a daily basis? All the strict corporate governance and discipline created to uphold the corporate brand is for some quirky reason discarded in the case of this little digital enclave.

My suspicion is that people who have the proclivity for posting a comment on a corporate blog, stand a good chance of being the same people who are disgruntled with some aspect of the company. Sure, censor or quarantine comments before publishing them to the blog, but then you are not being true to the spirit and spontaneity of the blog. A number of large corporates have suffered damaged reputations from poorly controlled and managed blogs. Bloggers beware.

Websites are an extremely important point of contact for prospective customers. If you asked individual companies about their view on the current state of their website, I would hazard a guess that over 80% would say that their websites had out of date content and the website did not reflect the current status of their business.

When a prospective customer visits your website and finds current articles and news showing dates from further back than 2004 and a trail of broken links, it does not create a great impression. Say what you like, confusing navigation and the dead end 'page under construction' messages don't leave a good impression with visitors and you can guess they will move from that sorry website to the competitor. But then again, I will be surprised if the website even knows this, as reporting and analytics are rarely, if ever used. One of the worst offenders of website neglect, are web designers themselves. I have come across countless web designers whose website is 'currently under construction'. Quite frankly you might as well post, 'currently not interested in your business'.

Granted, there are a number of really good websites out there and when you reach the site, it is patently clear that time, thought and effort has gone into making the website a great ambassador for the business. A large number of people surf the web after hours and need to leave enquiries if they are interested in what the website has to offer. Firstly, most companies don't have auto-responders set up, so the individual does not know if their enquiry was received. Besides being professional, a personalised auto-responder message somehow makes the wait for the response a little easier. Most companies don't realise that the visitor's request can be linked to a profile which will allow you to easily ascertain what sections of the website the visitor accessed and the amount of time they spent on each section. Once again, this is very powerful CRM stuff if used. The sad thing is a lot of websites do not even follow up promptly, never mind profile the individual properly before they call. This does not leave a great first impression.

We all hate call centres and the seemingly endless and depressing wait to be connected with a human being. Our resentment is justified, as the greatest offenders of the unhelpful call centre are invariably the very people that are extracting crippling amounts of funds from our bank account on a monthly basis.

What are the alternatives? Post a request or complaint on the perpetrator of your dissatisfactions website.

You have got to be kidding. Whoever built the website forgot to tell the customer service department that this functionality even exists.

Recently, I spent a fair amount of money online to download music from a large local digital music site. The site over-charged me and I posted a query. It took ten days for them to acknowledge my query and then a further 13 days to rectify the problem. Listen with your soul, indeed. Make sure that if you have a service or help facility on your website, that it does exactly that or you will find your company reputation shredded on forums and consumer gripe sites. Online gives the unhappy consumer a long overdue voice.

Finally, a few words on privacy.

Far too many companies do not understand privacy and permission based communication. If you want to outrage someone, mess with their privacy. All of us have precious little space away from the flood of broadcast messages and we all resent unsolicited intrusion in this space. Even though the law is toothless in this particular area, consumers are starting to fight back. While South Africa is way behind in policing spam, consumers are mentally blacklisting products and companies based on their refusal to adhere to privacy issues. Communication is a two way dialogue and the internet is wonderful for achieving this if you combine ethical principles with legal prescriptions. Do not pass on your customers' information to partners and affiliates unless you have explicit permission from them and make sure your staff understand the harsh repercussions for being careless or criminal with customer data.

A few years ago, Eli Lilly cross copied 700 people on a Prozac mailing list, exposing the identities of the individuals on the mailing list. A simple mistake perhaps, but news of this careless execution caused a public relations and legal nightmare. Make sure that your company policies on customer data are water tight otherwise you will open yourself to poor public image and potential legal costs.

The internet is an incredible extension of a business and possibly one of the most accountable marketing channels you will have access to. Use it properly and the rewards will be remarkable; use it carelessly and insensitively and it could prove to be the unravelling of your reputation and business.