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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The old ad manager was very archaic and impeding. The front page of the interface screen had all of your campaigns laid out with the title of each ad displayed. If you are only handling one campaign, it was simple to use, but with multiple campaigns with multiple ads in each, it was a pain in the a** to say the least. The old interface made it difficult to analyze the data in the campaigns and time consuming to sift through each campaign to find exactly what you were looking for.

Now, the new ads manager has made some strides and good improvements. First off, the front page lays out all of your campaigns without the ads. You can macro-manage each campaign from this front screen, and if you want to go into the nuts and bolts, you can click into the campaign to make changes. The daily budget and spend is right there on the front page as well, though my dates are off (must be a bug). You can also search for an individual ad easily with a search box located on the left sidebar. All of these are nice upgrades and happy to see they removed the cumbersome home page that was with the old ads manager.

There is a still a ways to go for Facebook. They did not make any changes to their reporting and believe this will be their next step. Also, I would like the ability to hide paused ads (have the same issue with Adwords). I like to pause my ads but not delete them for CTR reasons, however, I don’t want to have to look at them on a daily basis.

Overall, I am happy with the changes and believe the right steps are being taken to help out us internet marketing managers who are in these screens for hours on end on a daily basis.

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From the report:

“According to sources familiar with the situation–Twitter is in advanced talks with Microsoft and Google separately about striking data-mining deals, in which the companies would license a full feed from the microblogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines.”

The power of real-time search is becoming known, and the titans of the search engines are trying to get into the space before they are left behind. Users are increasingly enjoying the fact that they can jump onto Twitter to find exactly what is going on–right now. Google and Microsoft’s search algorithms, at this moment, do not have the capacity to offer a solution to its customer that matches what Twitter can provide. They are obviously taking the old business mindset of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

A deal  like this between these groups does not seem extraordinary to the average everyday Joe. Sure, there are business deals all the time,  however, IMO, this is huge.

The search engine giants are realizing the move by its user base to other platforms, most notably real-time search with Twitter. Not to mention, Facebook and Microsoft’s deal some time back to provide Bing search results in Facebook’s search engine. All of these deals back up my notion about how companies need to embrace social media.You need to get you and your company out there in these platforms to be found.

If Google and Microsoft are realizing it, shouldn’t you?

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Wrong.

Many companies complete this first step in their web presence but that is where they stop. They do not take that next initiative to list their business with Yelp, get a Facebook fan page, or claim their Google business listing, and this is a mistake.

I believe many companies are afraid of these sites because of the negative reviews they may receive. Well, get over it. People will talk negatively about your business on or offline, and knowing what they are saying allows you to take a pro-active approach and overcome the negative reviews. Turn a negative into a positive if you will.

There are many advantages to jumping into the social media sphere and I will name just a few of them for you here:

• SEO for Social Media Sites– The search engine optimization on many social sites is excellent. They have an immense popularity behind them and have great rankings, which enables your business to be found.
• Trusted Referrals–I think any business owner would tell you that the best referrals are ones from past customers and friends. Social media allows people to recommend a service or product or “become a fan” of a service or product. When people see that their friends like something, they are that more likely to buy since it is coming from a trusted and reliable source. This can’t happen with a search engine or PPC marketing campaigns.
• Social Media is the New Search Engine–Not only is it becoming the new search engine for real-time results, but also is the new search engine when Google or Bing fails or the user is looking for a second option. People are increasingly turning to Yelp, Twitter, Facebook and many others to find relevant results, and, at the same time, getting feedback from past customers.

When people are going online to look for a business, which over 70% of us are now doing, they are not solely turning to a Google or Bing result, but increasingly seeing what social sites have to say. As mobile search continues to increase, people will count even more on social sites that have embraced the world of apps. Do you think somebody with an iphone is going to search for a restaurant via a Yelp app or open their lap top, log onto the internet, put in a google search and see what comes up?

Jump on the bandwagon of Social Media for your business before it leaves you behind.

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“I don’t have time to do Twitter.”
“I don’t have time to do Facebook.”
“Who has time to do that?”

Think again. These excuses are just that–excuses. Twitter and Facebook, along with other social networks, actually save you time and can make you a more productive individual.

For example, call ten of your friends to see what they are up to. How long is each conversation going to take? 10 minutes?

If you are lucky, most will probably take longer, but for the sake of argument, lets say it took 10 minutes a person.

10 people X 10 minutes = 100 minutes or 1 hour and 40 minutes

Now, go onto your Facebook or Twitter account and check your friends status updates. How long did that take? 2 minutes?

Looks like you just saved 1 hour and 38 minutes out of your day. Sounds like to me you do have time to Twitter or Facebook. I understand that you do not get the personal touch of speaking with somebody on the phone, but it does save you that precious time.

Here is another example. Let’s say you and your spouse are looking to go out for the night and your babysitter just canceled. How would you get a new one? Let me guess, you have to call around and try and find yourself a new one. How long does that take? 30 minutes, an hour?

Why don’t you put a post onto your Facebook or Twitter account asking for a good recommendation on babysitter tonight? How long did that take 30 seconds?

These are just a couple of personal examples of how Twitter and Facebook can be used to save you time. People shouldn’t be so afraid to change, and they should embrace some of these new technologies that have become apart of millions of people’s lives.

Sometimes change can be good and make you more productive.

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We have been hired in the past and present to help brand individuals online, to put them on the cybermap. Think about it for a second, would you pay $1,000, $2,000, or $100,000 to promote yourself in your career that will take you from one rung on the professional ladder to a much higher–more profitable–rung? What happens if you branded yourself on the web and took yourself from being a manager in your industry to an executive, would it be worth it?

I know you are sitting there and asking, “But, I am unknown and do not have the persona of Ashton Kutcher, this doesn’t apply to me?”

Oh contraire, I believe “regular” folks can achieve what they are looking for by promoting themselves on the web and showcasing their talents in their specific field. Think about it once again. What better resume to show a potential employer than a successful Blog, Facebook fan page or Twitter following that you have generated in your particular industry. If you have carved yourself out as the platform on the web for your field, who wouldn’t want to hire you.

How can you brand yourself?

Here are 3 quick first steps to take when beginning to take yourself online:

1. Find a niche and start a blog.

• The #1 problem for individuals when they want to promote themselves online is they want to talk about everything in their lives. One day they write about pink elephants and the next nuclear physics. Before taking the leap onto the web, find out what you know and what you want to write about. Be specific and specialize, and most importantly, write passionately about it. The better your content, the more you specialize, the more likely people will read, like, and link to your blog post. Getting links to your blog is the cornerstone to being successful, and these links only come with rich content that people find intriguing.

2. Promote yourself. Attend conferences and follow other Blogs in your niche and make comments.

• If you have the ability to be a speaker at a conference, do it. Promote your blog when you do and people will write about it and start following you. For those who are not quite to that level, follow others in your niche. Comment on their blogs with thought provoking insight and chances are their followers will check you out as well.

3. Social Networking

• Nothing spreads faster than social networks. Keeping your fans up to date via Twitter or Facebook will spread your message virally. You want to open up your brand to as many people and platforms as possible and nothing is bigger than the major social networks. Stop resisting change and embrace it.

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For those of you who don’t know what SEO means, SEO stands for search engine optimization, or in layman’s terms, the holy grail to get your site ranked higher within the search engine Goliaths of Google and Bing. Ensuring that your site is SEO friendly, can be the difference in blowing up your business like Puff Daddy in a rap video or tanking faster than Brittney Spears’ career.

What I have outlined for you here are 5 of the most common mistakes I see with Small and Medium-Size Businesses:

1. Poor CMS (Content Management System)

A number of CMS’s have very poor SEO capabilities. For example, they do not create title tags, headings, anchor text and/or search friendly URLs. At the same time, after the developer has turned the website over,  these CMS’s are very difficult for the “non-computer geek” to add new content in the future, thus leaving the business at the mercy of the web developer who has now disappeared.

We use and advise our clients to use a CMS called WordPress. We have found WordPress to be extremely easy to add future content for small and medium businesses, while having a great SEO architecture already built into the site.

2. Flash Sites

Although flash sites are aesthetically pleasing, they are horrible to a search engine. Essentially, flash sites to a Google or Bing search engine look like just an image and the content that is on the page is not read. If the search engine is just seeing an image, they are not going to give your site authority for it to be ranked higher within the search engine—translation, flash sites es no bueno.

3. Thin Content Pages

Your website is your #1 promotional tool for your business, shout it out and explain to the world what you do. Create pages with rich content and not just an image. Thin content pages are looked at as low-quality pages by the search engines, and thus, affect your search rankings.

4. Poor Use of Anchor Text

A number of clients I see use “read more” or “click here” links. Not a good idea. Linking within your content pages is called anchor texts and they help to tell the search engines what the page you are linking to is all about. If you are putting “read more”, then the search engine thinks that next page is about…Read More.

5. No Promotion After the Site is Up

This is probably the most important of all of the mistakes. Many businesses think the job is done once their website is launched. Clients think that now that they have a website, time to see the clients walk through my door. No chance! Now is the time to let people know who you are. Get on the social media channels and express yourself and promote your website. Advertise online through the endless platforms that are available. The more people that know about your website,   the better the chance they will link to you (increases your SEO rankings) and the better the chance they will be a customer–$$$.

If you have any questions or would like to talk with us in more detail, please feel free to

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