Why Publishers Don’t Like Apps

The future of media on mobile devices isn’t with applications but with the Web.

MONDAY, MAY 7, 2012    BY JASON PONTIN

1. Consistency is EVERYTHING. Make sure the name of the company, address, telephone number, and website are exactly the same in every single instance. We’re talking about detail down to whether or not you have a comma before the Inc. or not. While both would show up in a search, “Refreshweb and Co.” and “Refreshweb and Company” would be different listings on a review site. It’s important to work on merging duplicate listings into just one correct one and getting errors fixed.

2. Don’t Game the System. The algorithms for big review sites are incredibly sophisticated and complex. They can track all kinds of things, and the odds of you getting way more penalty than reward are very high. Reviews will come in eventually for most businesses. It sends up flags when reviews come in from the same IP address, when they’re really high or low ratings, when a user is new or hasn’t reviewed a lot or has reviewed a lot in a very brief period of time. They know all the shortcuts to look stellar and the review site’s reputation depends entirely on their ability to keep out biased and fake reviews. Not gaming the system also applies to the ToS agreements that you really should read. Did you know that soliciting reviews is prohibited on most? That doing it can get you barred from being listed or have all your great reviews removed? There are ways to encourage reviews with window stickers and such. Offering a promo for someone who brings in a printed out review is not one of those good ways. People will inevitably mention it in a review, and you’ll pay the price. One of my favorite salons lost almost a decade of great reviews for soliciting that way.

3. Resistance is Futile. You don’t get a say in whether or not your company gets reviewed. Any user can add a review for a company and speak their mind. Ignoring what people are saying for fear of negative feedback only means spending more time making the mistakes that are costing you customers. People are smart enough to spot a grumpy person who likes to complain and not give too much weight to their words. However, if several people are having the same issue with a company and it goes unaddressed, you can bet that it will cost you both reputation and profits.

4. Where Did That Review Go? Because a review site’s reputation depends on people trusting them to have unbiased reviews, from time to time reviews are filtered out. Usually it’s because they’re either one star or five star, or the user or business being reviewed is new, or a combination of both. Yelp is notorious for this, much to the frustration of business owners. They do hold the filtered reviews in reserve, and they may be put back in place if they are determined to be trustworthy over time. Yelp’s explanation of their filtering process is here.

5. You’ve Gotta Be Patient. The process of claiming or populating a business’ listings and verifying them is time consuming, and it can take over a month for them to be approved and live. Waiting for a body of reviews to build up takes even longer. If you have a problem, like bad reviews for a company with a similar name, it can take what seems like forever for customer service to get it off your page. It’s important to set client expectations correctly and help them understand that this is a small but important piece of the whole strategy.

6. Is This Right for You? Reviews aren’t the right thing for every business, especially in B2B. Testimonials are better suited for that space. Be realistic about what to expect and what level of management reviews are going to require. Some businesses will rarely get a review and should check their listings occasionally, while a hip new restaurant or bar may get dozens a week and need to have a manager who checks them daily to respond to problems and issues on the fly. Dealing with high volume and volatile reviews requires a lot of diplomacy, patience, and wisdom. Make sure that the person dealing with them on a day to day basis knows how to look for and summarize useful feedback (positive and negative), and that they are empowered to make bad situations right when a review brings it to their attention. Yelp has great tools to let businesses respond to bad reviews (which you should do by private message, btw). It’s always nice when customers see a bad review updated to a higher rating when the business has gone out of their way to make things right. Don’t underestimate the value of redeeming a bad situation or your reviewers’ understanding that people make mistakes sometimes.

Take time to check out all the new toys, but be sure to read thoroughly…Facebook both gives and takes away. For example, they will not allow a call to action in your Profile photo. But they will now let you pin a picture to the top for up to a week.

81% of B2B Marketers find online marketing moderately to extremely challenging

Read more: http://budurl.com/B2BMarketers

Well, who wouldn’t be challenged? There’s SEO and PPC. There’s managing the Twitterverse, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, blogging, plus monitoring your competitors and their key employees on all of the above. And on all the industry blogs and newsletters. Not to mention PR, trade shows, analyst meetings, branding and collateral, you know, the normal day-to-day marketing responsibilities.

Site optimization remains the most cost-effective marketing budget line item. Since ongoing SEO efforts and Google Analytics interpretation is so tough and so time-consuming, that’s an area you might want to look at outsourcing. It’s not as challenging if you have some help!

John Rasco

So, it was a pleasant surprise this past week to be super busy working on proposals and projects. I think some consistently positive economic news has generated a little confidence in the executive ranks, emboldening marketing folks to get going. Clients are now talking about branding and complete site redesigns, not just tweaks. That’s what we like to hear!

We always kick off the new year by looking at year-over-year stats for our clients, using Google Analytics to provide visual reinforcement for the gains of the past year. We’re really enjoying some of the bells and whistles in the new GA interface…one of the best is persistent dates and comparisons, which made these YOY comparisons a snap. (Googlers, please get busy on restoring email and PDF exports…our clients rely on getting these!)

Some of the new energy in the search marketing world is coming from Google+ and the emphasis on social search in their current direction. This should not have a significant impact on B2B marketers at present, but it’s a trend to watch. By all means, set up a Google+ page for your business, and learn about Circles, which is the clever organizational tool they’re using to help you filter your communications. Social marketing, whether it’s PR or your blog or now Google+, is creating links for your site in the biosphere of relationships and interconnectedness…your site needs to be an active part of the community
of your industry.

The continuing tweaks Google is making to the Panda release of their indexing shows more emphasis on freshness, on a positive user experience (especially page load times and engagement), and on quality. Sites with lots of ads at the top of the page are seeing their rankings go down. After all, a site visitor wants to see your content, not a bunch of AdWords ads. It’s always good when Google reinforces the message of quality…we’ve always been about quality content and thoughtful site architecture, so our clients’ rankings remain remarkably consistent, through change after change in the mighty Google algorithm.

The start of the year is a good time to revisit your web strategy. Have you opened up your site to mobile users? Are you migrating from Flash to HTML5, to the benefit of all those visitors using iPads or iPhones? How are you doing with your rankings? Are you missing opportunities because you’ve been complacent about reaching all the people searching? A fresh analysis of the Total Available Search Market™ right now can open up new possibilities for growth…and drive a brilliant 2012.

John Rasco

In an election year, I’m sorry to have to point out that the next version of this article is 12 long months away, leaving us only a few interim bright spots to enjoy: the Darwin awards, international Talk Like a Pirate day, and maybe your birthday. Oh, and don’t forget your anniversary!

Well, there’s also all the small victories of successful search marketing programs…and resurrecting the blog begins the process of improving our website’s relevance and boosting our own rankings. Marketers everywhere should resolve to add content as often as possible, as a simple, low cost way to stay in front of the “voters” who assist your financial race to the top.

RefreshWeb wishes you all a wonderful 2012.

Having worked in and run advertising agencies, one thing I miss about our focus on the research and analysis side of search marketing is the loss of having graphic designers as part of the team. Elliance has a portfolio which says they get to work with universities as a major segment of their practice, so they have a core clientele of really smart people. They also work in manufacturing (Rust Belt, after all), and with non-profits. They love storytelling, and create complete solutions. They look like really intelligent, passionate, educated marketers. And they’re also doing search marketing. Personally, I’d really like it if they were here in Austin. Professionally, I’m glad they’re very far away.

Part of the mix is a series of weekly infographics, with a focus on search marketing. Here’s a complete story in a single image…nice work, guys, and thanks for sharing.

An article in the new Fast Company explains that there is typically little, if any, accountability demanded of social media. And it’s interesting, in terms of actual prospects coming to your site, that the top metric most marketers are using is click-throughs, which shows you the dependence of marketing pros on paid search. While we understand the utility (and handy reporting) of PPC, we’d like to see lead gen and ROI as equally important.

After all, when you’re paying for clicks, and reporting click-throughs without disclosing bounce rates and time on the site, there’s very little real accountability. Since traffic is a direct effect of site optimization, we’re very glad to see that in the #2 position…because marketing drives traffic, and search marketing does it at less expense than any other medium.

Social media is an incredibly powerful thing with deep reserves of potential. There are most definitely people out there who have serious skills in utilizing it effectively to bring in revenue, strengthen brands, and respond to customers with agility. What so many people don’t seem to get is that those people aren’t social media experts – they’re marketing experts who use social media as one of their vehicles. If they weren’t marketing experts in the first place, they wouldn’t be able to do a thing with social media. It takes time, effort, failure, learning from mistakes and successes, and more effort to be an expert.

I’m not saying that people who say they’re Social Media Experts are malicious. Some are. Most of them are marketing people making themselves and their skillset more accessible to the people looking for it. Heck, I’ve been called one (which is funny to me), though it’s not a title I’d give myself. Do you need a social media expert as part of your marketing team? Maybe. But they had darn well better be a partner and advocate of the larger marketing strategy. How can they be effective if they aren’t on board with the vision, the message, the voice, and customer service? They absolutely must be honest about what to expect. A Facebook fan page will not be your salvation. Meeting up with your customers where they are and in ways that engage them will do wonders. That right there? That is a truly valuable asset to the team.

Really enjoyed this clever, thought-provoking video. Kind of like a TED Talk, only animated!