Suture Express Lies Then Bids to Hide Truth

It seems almost too crazy to be real that a company seeking to enter the online marketplace would do so with such lack of foresight, and with such recklessness to try and scam their SEO. It is true, and they even offered to pay for the removal of the blog post and presented a contract favoring Suture Express and their CEO Ed Kuklenski. This really does not look like a formula that will set well with social media. After all, social media is the public, and not just a bunch of no-name, no-count losers with nothing better to do with their time than sit at a computer and play games. Suture Express’ CFO Brian Forsythe, CEO Ed Kuklenski, and their new consulting firm is learning this all the hard way, but make no mistake … they are learning it.

The recent article titled Suture Express Lies, Then Bids to Hide Truth has all the appearance of a re-introduction of Suture Express to social media like a snowball to a big hill. It is early to tell what may happen, but it seems many would agree it is time for them to start getting things straight before it rolls much further. It appears from Suture Express’ actions that they may think social media is within their control. Realizing that public opinion … often a scrutinizing public opinion, is what controls reputations, is a good lesson to learn early, before the snowball-effect. Taking such a bad leap out of the gate is a fast way to find out who is in control … the public.

Keeping an eye on others’ use of Twitter is such a simple thing to do, but then, sometimes the simplest of tasks are the ones that remain overlooked.

If you don’t monitor your social media channels carefully, you are only getting a very small piece of the potential value. So, here is just a small tip to help you:

Add a search for every employee (or friend, and etcetera)!

Sure, you can create groups using Twitter, and the many available 3rd party applications like Seesmic and TweetDeck to help you monitor others’ communications. This is a good way to measure what they are saying, but what about keeping an eye on things people send to them as a separate monitor altogether?

Maybe an employee is not following up with a question from a potential customer, or maybe somebody is sending them angry tweets. If they do not respond, you may never know about it. If I am the guy in charge of monitoring social media, I want to know this information. More importantly, it can provide a more interactive way to communicate as a group. Most larger or social media savvy companies know this, but I still find many companies and individuals who overlook the possibilities.

Let’s say for example somebody sends something to your employee (or boss, friend, or etcetera) but you know they will not be able to answer for a little while. Wouldn’t you be the greatest if you responded with assistance?

You don’t have to make it complicated!

There are a lot of services focused on Twitter searches, such as Monitter, and of course Twitter’s advanced search. There is a Web application for nearly anything you want to do with Twitter. In this case, you do not have to sign up, log in, or anything so difficult at all.

Here is an example search for a company I like, so I will use their blog contributors. If I want to keep an eye on what people are saying to HubSpot, I simply add a search to my desktop application (I use Seesmic) that looks like this:

OR @bhalligan OR @prashantkaw OR @onstartups OR @mvolpe OR @shaxxon OR @rickburnes OR @pc4media OR @repcor OR @jeannehopkins OR @pamelump

Note that the search begins with “OR” and it continues with “OR @username”. The limit is 140 characters, but of course you can add multiple searches.

Since I am already using my desktop application, it is a handy place to save and monitor the search. You can also save the search on Twitter’s Website if you don’t use a desktop application.