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Bad Press or No Press?

By: Nola Redd
Submitted: 2007-01-17 12:35:42
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It seems that Ascot Realty in Buford, Georgia is having more than a little bad luck. First, a Buford family reports in the Gwinnett Daily Online that the company destroyed their landscaped yard on July 20th. Two days later, the same paper reports that the frame of a house fell after a violent rain storm.

I came across the second story in a news feed on my Merchant Circle web site. Further investigation turned up the story of the fallen home.

I did the same thing I always do when someone forwards me an email about a dying child collecting greeting cards or a pair of hunters whose dog sank their truck on the ice - I looked around online. (For emails I tend to check out Snopes.com or UrbanLegend.com, something I wish everyone would do.) What I found was quite interesting. I found - nothing.

I found nothing on any other site, including Ascot Realty's. One of the pictures from the Gwinnett Daily Online - a news source I confess to knowing nothing about - claimed to come from the local ABC affiliate WSB TV Channel 2 Action News Atlanta.

Now, I'm not accusing anyone of making anything up. But with only a single source making the claim - and one that, interestingly, showed up "just minutes following the incident," per their own words - I'm not taking anything at face value.

What I am accusing Ascot Realty of is laxness. After I wrote a previous blog entry on an individual's online credibility, I suppose I should have followed it with a company warning (I'm sure Ascot Realty is a big reader of my blog). As business owners, we have to monitor what is said about our business, especially on the internet, where information can reach millions and keep reaching them for months on end.

What should Ascot have done? I would recommend creating a page off of their home page that explains their view. I can understand not wanting a prospective buyer to stumble in and change their minds. However, they could create a single stand-alone page that would come up in response to the controversy. They could create a blog that would, among other things, allow them to resond to these accusations. They could take some form of action to respond to the negative publicity other than ducking and hoping it all goes away.

Personally, I am interested in hearing what the deal is with Ascot. Although we are out of town right now, I intend to give them a call post-vacation and find out what their version of the truth is.

Or perhaps they will beat me to the punch. Perhaps someone from their community will respond to my blog - after all, it is going out on the 'net and will soon become searchable. I invite them to give their version of the truth here, as well as asking anyone with more information to discuss the subject.

Nola Redd maintains a small business blog for her Atlanta-based low voltage wiring company, Redd Infinity. She invites people to respond to this article in her blog. She is also an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Creative Writing.

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