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Online reviews: get your business noticed

admin — Fri, 13 May 2011 00:14:40 +0000

Reviews play a vastly important role in today's marketplace. Whether your business is online, offline or somewhere in between, many of your potential customers will seek reviews of your products and services. As regards online retail, the impact that reviews have on creating a purchasing decision is immense - as well as fairly obvious. Users simply don't purchase products with consistently poor reviews, and they flock to the other end of the spectrum with all the confidence that a personal endorsement can engender.

What if your business conducts most of its business offline, though? How do online reviews bring you new customers, shape your business, and ultimately affect affect your bottom line? How can you ensure you're getting good reviews?

Getting to know the review giants

There are hundreds of websites dedicated to reviewing offline businesses of all sorts. From restaurants to contractors, cafes to gift shops, movie theaters to bars and clubs. If someone's paying for a product or service, you can bet they have an opinion on it. Sure, only one in a thousand or less customers are likely to write an online review, but that makes it even more important to ensure each of your customers is a potential "positive review writer." If there's one thing you don't want, it's for your one or two lonely reviews to come from the least satisfied of all your customers.

So who are the major players in terms of online reviews? Google, Yelp! and Citysearch are probably the most important review giants at present. While you can bet plenty more will spring up, you can probably count on these three to be around for quite awhile.

How do online reviews create business?

Many people who use online reviews to make decisions about their patronage are either new to the area, only in the area temporarily, new to whatever product or service they're seeking, or are simply looking for a new friendly spot in their hometown. As may be clear already, reviews can be very helpful in creating new business, or at least in building the potential to create new business.

Google tries to recognize when search terms are place oriented, and returns a special set of results titled "Places for [search terms] near [city]." Try performing a Google search for "Cheap pet stores, Denver, CO" and you'll be able to follow along. The results of these types of searches are listed with an overall rating (out of five stars), as well as a link to all of the place's reviews. You'll notice that Google incorporates reviews from Google users as well as Yelp! users. If you were searching for cheap pet stores in Denver, which link would you click? Probably one with a good rating and at least a few reviews available.

Much like Google, websites like Yelp! and Citysearch let users enter a city as well as search terms. Unlike Google, these websites are dedicated entirely to reviewing local businesses and will only return results for businesses which have already accumulated one or more review. These websites receive incredible amounts of traffic and are widely used for seeking restaurants, night-life and other entertainment, especially in metropolitan areas like Chicago, New York, Boston, San Diego, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, etc. Yelp! is widely used by review writers and deal-hunters alike, and boasted nearly two and a half million reviews at the beginning of 2008.

How can I get my customers to create reviews?

First, choose a primary review website that you'd like to use. You should choose which website to build your review campaign on depending on that website's prevalence in your area and relevance to your business. To research this, simply browse to a few different reviewing websites and search for businesses similar to yours in your area. The website which produces the most results is almost certainly the one with the most traffic for your business type and city combination. Once you've decided which review website to go with, familiarize yourself with the reviewing process so that you can more easily guide your customers to publishing their comments, as well as answer any questions they might have.

Next, ask your customers to create reviews! Place a simple call to action on business cards, place-mats, menus, brochures, tracts, receipts or anything else that your customers come into contact with. Instruct your cashiers, servers, concierges, salespersons or whoever else you employ to engage your customers about reviewing your business online. It's important that you mention it to as many customers as possible, as very, very few will actually follow through - even if they appear willing and interested.

Remember, reviews can help or hurt your business. If you're not active about soliciting them, the chances are that only customers with the most powerful impressions of your business are actually going to submit reviews - and often, that spells trouble. So take an active role and beat your one-in-a-thousand naysayers to the punch: solicit online reviews and build your business.

3 Critical Practices For Creating New Business On The Web

admin — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 23:51:42 +0000

1) Publish Quality Content Your website's content is what connects your users to your products and services. While search engines use a huge array of complicated algorithms to rank websites and create meaningful, relevant connections with users, it's important to remember that their focus is constant. Effectively connecting people with the content they're looking for. The internet is a sweeping network of real people with real needs and priorities, and appealing to your customers - not using cheap tricks meant to play search engine's algorithms - is the real path to success. It's vastly important that your content is as clear, concise and as readable as possible if you're looking to grasp an audience long enough to inspire some interest and create sales. As a vendor, it's your duty to provide products or services that people are willing to pay for, and to communicate effectively with those people about the benefits of your offerings. There are certainly steps that can be taken to ensure your website is properly ranked and parsed by the various search engines, but first and foremost you need clear content that pushes your selling points into the forefront of users' minds. Using direct, no nonsense language, selecting clear, easy to read fonts, and applying meaningful formatting that brings attention to important bits of information within your website are the basic tenets of publishing quality content. 2) Use the tools available to you: While publishing quality content should definitely be your first priority, the SEO "tricks" like keyword counts, META tags, and inbound links are an important part of your overall visibility on the web. Ensuring that your website reflects its content accurately to the automated "spiders" - programs which catalog web content - is a necessary part of gaining search engine ranking. Working with a results-oriented, straightforward SEO professional can help to bring your website to the surface of the internet, giving your potential customers a better chance of reading your content and making a purchasing decision. It's important to remember that while configuring your website to be cataloged properly with the web's search engines is a critical step, it won't help if your potential customers aren't interested in your content. Using the tools available to you - keyword configuration, META tags, inbound links and the like - can be incredibly helpful, but you must first publish quality content. 3) Ask your customers for help: Satisfied customers beget satisfied customers. Asking your happy customers to mention your services on their website or blog can help to push you to the forefront of the competition. Word of mouth works on the internet about the same that it works in real life - it's simply one of the best ways to create new business. And truly satisfied customers are more willing to help promote your services than you might think. Offering discounts on future purchases or other incentives is a great way to get your customers to lend you a hand. A simple "25% off for mentioning us on your blog!" can really work wonders.

Use Social Media as a Supplement, Not a Means to an End, You still need your website

admin — Sat, 29 May 2010 13:57:56 +0000

So you've heard about the social media craze and are ready to focus some of your business resources on a new social media campaign before deciding to make the full-move online huh? Well, you may want to think twice if you plan on making social media the primary vehicle to bring your business online. But why? Isn’t social media “the thing” nowadays? Well, in many ways, YES, but there still are some things you need to be aware of… With social media sites such as Ning suddenly switching to a paid service, Utterz going out of business, and Facebook constantly having privacy issues, you can easily begin to see that social media should by no means be the backbone in which your online campaign is supported. That’s not to say you shouldn’t take advantage of social media, because you should, but you need something besides social media channels if you want to successfully bring your business online. Having One Central Location on the Web There are dozens of social media channels you can use to promote your business online, and the number is growing, so which one do you focus on? The answer: whichever you want, as long as you point them all to one central location: your website. As dreadful as that may sound, especially since a growing number of businesses are using social media as an excuse to NOT have a website, the first place you need to be is YOUR online home. Not Facebook’s, not Twitter’s… but yours, no exceptions. You need a home before you start renting office space. And that’s essentially what your website vs. your social media channels are. Your website is your business’ online home, and social media channels are merely rented space (albeit free rental space). So the bottom line is, create a website before going the social media route, because that’s what people are going to be looking for once you make a positive impression/connection with them on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or any other social media website. What to Include on Your Website If your social media efforts are there to create connections, build trust, and show your potential client base WHO you are and what your business is about, then your website needs to provide straight-forward information on what your business can do for them. As a bare minimum, your website needs to include the following items:

Professional design to give your visitors a good impression.
Friendly, informative introduction on your homepage.
Description of your services, and the BENEFITS of your services.
Contact information; as much as you can provide.

Of course, depending on the nature of your business, you may need more or less than that, but the above list should give you some general guidelines to follow. Maximizing Your Social Media Efforts First and foremost, explore the different social media options you have out there (the options are vast; Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn, the list goes on) and choose ONE. You need to get the hang of using social media to benefit your business before you expand into multiple channels. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a business homepage that has icons for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a plethora of other services only to visit them and see that they aren’t even mildly active on a single one! Don’t spread yourself too thin by signing up for every social media channel you can find. That’s not going to do you any good. What WILL benefit you is if you get the hang of ONE, build up your presence, your network, connections, and establish a good following of people who know and trust you. Then and ONLY then should you consider expanding to other social media channels. This may seem counterintuitive, especially when you see everyone else putting themselves on every known social media site, but I guarantee your results will be much better than theirs. It’s MUCH better to have one strong machine working for you than to have a handful of smaller ones doing absolutely nothing but sitting there. The days where you can merely sign up and be discovered on social media sites are long gone; you must be regularly active or your social media efforts will be wasted. Funnel Into Your Website Once you’ve found a social media channel you want to pursue, you need to set your profile up to funnel your interested prospects to your website. Your social profile should not be the end of their journey; your goal is to drive as many people as you can to your website FROM your profile pages. The best way to do this is to make sure your main description encourages people to visit your website. You can even add a subscribe form to your profile’s sidebar (depending on what service you use) along with an incentive to generate email leads (which in-turn will drive even more people to your website). Then, you just need to focus on being a genuine, helpful member of the community and naturally people who visit your profile and want to know more about what you have to offer will end up on your website. However, if you do NOT have a website, there are lots of other distractions that will keep people away from your business… even if they were interested in finding out more. Social Moods and Mindsets When people are browsing around Facebook (for example), they aren’t in the mood to pick up the phone and call about your service, because they aren’t on Facebook to FIND your business. However, you CAN peak their interest by properly networking with them and funneling them to your website. And as a side benefit, your website also has the opportunity to be linked to from other websites, and even getting picked up by search engines which will result in even more traffic and potential clients for your business. The bottom line is, if you want to take your business online, make your website it’s first stop above any social media channel and you won’t have to worry about what social network is going out of business next.

YouTube Marketing Works

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:46:10 +0000

There are three reasons why a business might decide to use YouTube as part of their overall search engine optimization strategy:

Popular YouTube videos appear at the top of Google search results pages alongside standard website listings so it’s quite easy to understand that if you have a popular video in YouTube, titled with your relevant keywords, then it could get you an extra spot in Google search results alongside your main website. The downside is that this traffic will go straight to YouTube so you have the job of ensuring that the video viewer knows your website address and decides to go and visit it for more information. In a way this isn’t an SEO benefit to your site, more a way of grabbing an extra position and keeping a competitor off of the search results.
If you create several videos and your own keyword branded YouTube channel to house them all, then you can benefit from the placement of a back-link to your main website on your channel page. However, creating YouTube videos just for the benefit of an extra back link to help your search engine optimization probably isn’t a good use of your time and money unless you know you can create a fantastically popular video channel that everybody will link to – and boost the channel’s Google PageRank score.
Google likes YouTube embedded videos in content – don’t ask me why this is, but Google seems to give web pages that hold embedded video content a higher position in the results. Bizarrely this means that you don’t need to create the video but simply embed useful videos that you find relevant to your audience into your website. Of the three reasons for using YouTube with SEO in mind, this is probably the most effective and requires the least amount of effort. Of course the ideal is to combine all three ideas and embed your own YouTube videos into your web pages.

Optimizing your videos within YouTube itself is something quite different but does impact on ‘1’ above – since only a popular video makes its way into the Google results. Therefore you need to consider the following factors when uploading a new video:

Make your video informative, interesting and snappy ( 5 minutes or less).
Give it an optimized title (using your target search terms and website name) e.g. How to save money on car rentals – car-rentals.co.uk.
Optimize your video description. Include keyword based informative content in the description (more info) of your video and link to your website from it – ideally do this in the first line – to appear in the main YouTube descriptor.
Ensure that your keyword tags are relevant and contain most of the search terms you used in your title and description. As with SEO try and avoid keyword stuffing.
On your main website aim to create hyperlinks to your YouTube video URL containing keyword-rich anchor text.
Watermark the video with your URL and use an interesting freeze frame shot.
Create and customize your own YouTube channel using search terms to create a keyword friendly URL. Consider the creation of multiple channels for multiple niches.
YouTube’s internal site search factors in other rules including the video’s rating, total views, how many times the video has been favorite. The age of the video is also a factor because new videos tend to appear more highly to keep YouTube looking fresh.
Ask all your friends to vote and view your video, share it on your Facebook profile page to help with video ranking.
Post your videos towards the end of the week, weekends are YouTube’s busiest days (for a B2C audience anyway).