by Conor 
How much is a Yelp review worth to your business? The price of your core product? A free meal? A discounted session?
Yelp Example
This summer I posted a review of a restaurant Katie and I visited while on a road trip. The restaurant/farmer’s market was a bit too dirty for our tastes and we did not even stay to eat. I posted the review on Yelp giving it only 2 stars (out of 5) and a full explanation of the flies we saw on the food.
Well, interestingly enough, I’ve had frequent contact with the restaurant ever since.
Initially, they apologized for the cleanliness and explained some basic reason of why it was so dirty that day. For that, I posted an update on my review about this contact, and raised my star rating from a 2 to a 3.
Afterward, we had a little bit of back and forth with me mentioning I would swing by on my next trip.
Then, last week, I received another message on Yelp from the owner, explaining that they had cleaned up the restaurant thoroughly and asking if I could remove the review. Apparently my Yelp review was showing up under a Google search for their restaurant and was clearly hurting business.
“Hey I think we’ve been over punished for a hot summer day…when the employees left the door open. It is really hurting us more than you probably intended. If you concur would you be willing to remove the review…it comes up in abbreviated form when one does a search for [our company].
The store is clean the food is healthy..what else can I say…
.have you ever been on a picnic and had such a problem? Sometimes nature can not be controlled, as much as we try. Thanks…and generally I accept the critic but I feel it has served it’s purpose and my sense of shame is overwhelming me and thus I beg you to remove said review.”
While proud to see my impact, I have been more impressed with the restaurants active management of their online presence. I removed my review and let the owner know I would be up to visit and see the cleaner setup in the Spring.
Interestingly, though, I did hesitate to remove my review. For one, I have not been back to the restaurant to see the improvements. Even more so, though, I do not feel I was sold hard enough on the owner being sorry. I felt my review was actually worth something at this point. Something was missing.
Well, sure enough, after removing my view, I got another message back with exactly what I was subconsciously seeking:
“thanks!
please email when you might be coming up and we will treat you to lunch and a tour of our place, and the farm if you have time.”
Reactive Web Presence Management
The point is, your small business web presence has value. Most businesses spend money proactively to manage their web presence – building a website or setting up a Facebook page – but far fewer manage it reactively. Even the reactive web presence management needs improvement, however. It should be treated as an all out customer service position.
Reactive web presence management is a powerful approach for companies going forward. A value can already be placed on the customers review. On Yelp for instance, how far down the list of Top Sushi restaurants in LA does that 1 star rating drop you? How much more business does being at the top of that list generate? Twitter feedback can be studied similarly.
One strategy we discussed last week for reactive web presence management revolves around the potential of Foursquare, Google Latitude, or whatever location based social media tool really takes off. Foursquare, I’ve heard, is considering teaming up with local businesses to offer rewards to those “mayors” who visit their shops most often. This is an incredible opportunity for small businesses to react online to customers who are already showing their support for your product.
There are small business reactive and proactive opportunities growing out of new online technologies and established web platforms all over the place. The next important leap will be in placing an accurate value on the cost and benefits of that management. Only time will tell how long it takes to educate small businesses on this value.
*Also posted on GreenTaxi
by Conor
The difference between advertising back then (”offline”) and now (”online) is the ability to prove the results of an advertising campaign.
Back then, a business would pay an advertising firm and if sales went up, the advertising firm got some of the credit.
Now, a business pays an advertising firm when they get sales (or leads).
Back then, an advertising firm would make estimates about how many people saw that businesses ads.
Now, the business can know the exact numbers of how many people see the ads, how many people interact with the ads, and how many people complete an action that the ad intended, such as filling out a form.
Back then, a businesses advertisement would run for a fixed time for testing, often as long as a season or year.
Now, an advertising firm can react daily to change and improve ads. Ads that work get shown more and ads that do not work get turned off immediately.
The difference is that a business can now prove that it makes more money in profits than the expense of the ad campaign.
It is time for your business to move into the Now.
by Michael 
Marketing & Advertising are increasingly shifting online. This is important to you because most likely you work for, help run, or on some level are engaged in a business. Whether it is a large multi-national corporation or a small mom & pop corner shop, the same elements are applied.
Marketing and Advertising are essentially lead generation, or better yet “action” generation tools. There is always an intended action regardless of what kind of marketing or advertising is taking place. Sometimes that action is obvious like a person calling a number, purchasing a product or service, or filling out a form or email. Other times the action is less direct, but someone at some point is spending money, and therefore there is a desired result which is this “action”. As these fields increasingly move online, these “actions” become easier to measure as a whole.
The Basics of the Marketing & Advertising process online
The internet is really one huge “action” network, and it is increasingly moving in that direction. Everything online can be tracked, assorted, analyzed, marketed to, measured, and tested, which previously was impossible. The beauty of the internet is that this allows us to adapt in real-time. We can now, almost immediately, see the results of our marketing and advertising initiatives {actions} and begin to optimize these results.
There are too many aspects of marketing and advertising online to discuss in this post in great detail, however I will go ahead and breakdown the basics of what goes into a well run advertisement. Again, many of these steps can be applied to both a large corporation or a small local business, because in the end almost all actions happen at a local level, even if it is a multi-national marketing campaign. So the following steps should be used in all advertising campaigns online if you want to optimize your results and make money.
Step 1. Identify your desired action. (product sale, phone call, email capture, video view, etc.)
Step 2. Identify your desired geographic location to target for each specific action.
Step 3. Identify your target market using very specific demographics (Facebook demographics – age, gender, interests, etc)
Step 4. Identify what your targeted audience is looking for with Keyword Groups (i.e. Search Engine Keyword Searches)
*Note – advertising platforms focus on different things. For instance Facebook & LinkedIn are examples of ad platforms where you can target very specific demographics, whereas Google and other Search Engines focus more on user intent.
Step 5. Create your Ads based on Steps 1-4. (Notice this should always be plural. One of the biggest advantages of the internet is the ability to test ads against each other to see which are most successful)
Step 6. When you create your ads on certain platforms (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) assign the keyword group you created (step 4) to the ads you created (step 5)
Step 7. The destination of your Ad should link the consumer to a ‘landing page’ designed to initiate the desired action. Landing Pages are pages on a website that are designed to convert an action. I would argue that all webpages should be viewed as a landing page. (Landing Pages that match the advertisement copy and keywords have much higher success rates). In other words, if you send your traffic to a page that matches your ad, your conversion numbers will increase.
Step 8. Split test all individual variables against each other (this may take some time depending upon the volume of traffic). This includes ad copy, keywords, landing pages, ad targeting, etc.
Step 9. Analyze. Make appropriate changes. Repeat.
If you take this step by step approach to marketing, and continue to measure the results, make changes, and repeat, you will slowly but surely optimize your campaigns. This will mean your dollar spent will go further ,therefore increasing your ROI on this campaign. As a business owner or employee you can gain incredible insight into what drives people to these certain actions. This can help your Business in countless other ways aside from achieving the desired results from a specific marketing/advertising campaign.
by Jaime 
Have you ever heard of reputation management? Are you actively engaging in reputation management? As a business, if you are answering no to these questions, you should start embracing reputation management.
In today’s social media and internet world, stats for online reviews are impressive: 86% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase. Yes, a whopping 86%. That is an eye-dropping number, therefore making online reviews something you have to be on top of (good or bad) for your business and an integral component to any marketing or SEO strategy.
So how should you handle these reviews?
Positive reviews:
The internet is extremely viral. We have all seen that funny youtube video get passed on to us via email or Facebook. Next thing you know it seems like everybody in the world has seen it. When you receive positive reviews, engage them and pass them along in all the social aspects of the web. Don’t just be happy with it on one site, but use it with your company’s marketing, publicize it through twitter, and showcase it on your company’s Facebook page.
Also, don’t be afraid to ask your consumers for positive feedback on the web. It can’t hurt to ask and you will be surprised by how many people will do. Believe it or not, people love to write positive things about companies and share with their friends their experience. Encourage them to do it about your business.
Negative reviews:
Lets be honest, you are not going to get 100% positive reviews all of the time, unless you are Neptune Local of course…Companies get too worked up with negative reviews and compound the problem. First step is to take a deep breath and work to turn the negative into a positive. If the negative review is 1 out of 130 positive reviews, then you have to assume that majority of people will not look negatively toward your business and still go ahead and make that purchase.
But, if you are seeing a common theme in the negative reviews or they are more common, then put on your customer service hat and try and fix the issues. Offer up solutions and make the changes known on the review site, therefore future visitors will know that the “problems” have been solved.
Summary
Reputation management can make or break a business, particularly on the local level, and the best plan is to be proactive versus reactive. It is always much easier to reduce the chances of something damaging happening, then to have to reverse the damage.
