Written on March 9, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: book, marketing, seo
Posted by randfish
WARNING: Get ready to read with this one. There aren’t a ton of fun graphics or quick bullet points, but I do promise that if you read through, you’ll feel much more knowledgable about the topic, and likely get more value from organizing, speaking or attending an event.
Over the past
Written on March 2, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Object, book, marketing, searchengineguide
by Mike Moran
When my friend called me, there was a little panic in his voice. He owned a successful, customer-friendly small business, and was generally an easygoing person. But he didn’t know what to do. A long-time and loyal customer alerted him to a savage review of his business on an Internet Yellow Pages site. And so now he was turning to me to find out what he could do about it.
I asked him for the details and he ruefully related the story. When he read the review, he immediately knew who the unhappy client was, recognizing some details in the story. He told me that this client had been impossible, constantly changing her mind about what she wanted with no notice, and although he did his best to satisfy her, at the end he had to tell her that he had done all he could for what he had been paid.
Image via CrunchBase
He would have understood if she had honestly expressed her disappointment in him in the review (even though he felt she was expecting way too much), but what irked him no end was that her review attributed egregious bits of behavior to him that were completely made up from whole cloth. He had objective proof that some of her comments were lies.
This isn’t an isolated case. Although most reviews are factual, and some small businesses have it coming, there’s nothing stopping dissatisfied customers from responding in extreme ways. And the services that post such reviews, such as Yahoo! Yellow Pages and Yelp, don’t want to be in the position of having to discern who’s telling the truth, letting the “wisdom of crowds” sort things out.
So, what’s a small business to do? First, treat your customers well, remembering that they have more power than you think. Encourage your happy customers to post reviews online, so that the wisdom of your crowd is in evidence–that will dilute the power of any one negative review. (Yesterday, I posted some small business social media success stories that you can emulate.) When someone posts a bad review, consider engaging that person online to try to make amends.
Unfortunately, it might require that you develop a thicker skin, because the rudeness of some online reviews might be more than you can bear. One San Francisco bookstore owner was arrested for battery after responding to a Yelp reviewer.
But that’s no reason to accept outright lies. When it clearly goes beyond a difference of opinion, and you can prove you’ve been wronged, go to the review site and plead your case. Show them that it’s a lie and ask them to remove it.
That’s what my friend did, and Yahoo! Yellow Pages, to their credit, did remove the dishonest review. But my friend learned form the situation. Now, he solicits good reviews and he works harder to satisfy even the nut jobs. It’s a different world out there, so make sure you know how to make your way through it.
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Continued here:
What To Do When Reviewers Lie About You
Written on February 28, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: searchengineguide
by Manoj Jasra
Tags: a-little-panic ,data ,div-align ,facebook ,flickr ,jesse-thomas ,manoj-jasra ,media ,million ,Object ,search ,small-business ,spzmu ,users-worldwide ,voice
Written on January 26, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: marketing
Six months after Google said that Apple rejected a Google Voice app for the iPhone (Apple maintained that the app was merely under review, a process which usually takes about a week), Google has finally decided to circumvent the ban. VP of mobile apps engineering Vic Gundotra told the Crunchies Voice would get on the iPhone “one way or another.”
Here’s another: they’re going for a browser-based Google Voice (like the rest of us are using). This option was formerly less viable, but now Google has improved the mobile version of their site for iPhone and Palm Pre users.
The controversy, of course, is that Google Voice allows users to make calls and now send text messages without charge, and without using the minutes in their carrier’s plan.
The New York Times documents the improvements:
Of course, iPhone users were always able to point their mobile Web browser to m.google.com/voice to access their Google Voice accounts. But plenty of things didn’t work right. For example, making calls was a two-step process and the outbound caller ID feature didn’t work, meaning that whoever received the call couldn’t see who was calling, which is one of the more compelling features of Google Voice. [Senior product manager for Google Voice Vincent] Paquet said that all those problems have been solved, and that the new version of Google Voice also offers free text messaging.
Naturally, Google maintains that this isn’t a strike against mobile carriers, just a response to the high demand they’ve had from mobile users with browsers capable of interpreting HTML5.
What do you think? Is this a fourth volley this month in the budding Google/Apple war? How will Apple respond?
Here is the original post:
Google Goes for Browser-based Voice for iPhone
Written on January 20, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Advertising, book, searchengineguide, seo
by Miriam Ellis
Tech reviewers are praising the Nexus One and tech reviewers are bashing the Nexus One. Predictable, of course, but I’d like to bring a different perspective to the rollout of Google’s headlining smart phone.
Are you a sophisticated tech reviewer? I’m sure not. In point of fact, buying the Nexus One yesterday represented my first-ever purchase of a cell phone. I can’t compare the Nexus One to anything else, and I can’t talk to you about Snapdragons and Sim Cards. It’s all new to me, and anyhow, it’s always been my habit to think of how people use technology rather than thinking very hard about how technology is created. If, like me, you are a late adopter of cell phone technology and are just now considering how a smart phone might benefit you and your business, I’m going to show you what I’ve learned to do in a single day with this remarkable device.
I Can Use The Web
This was the big deal for me as a website designer. Connecting to the web from the Nexus One is absolutely simple. We purchased the phone unlocked (meaning we didn’t buy it with the locked T-Mobile contract). However, we discovered that T-Mobile coverage is very strong in our corner of the world and so purchased an unlocked, unlimited T-Mobile service plan that will actually be less expensive than the locked plan over time. I can visit any site I want on the web and am already seeing how badly Mobile design standards are going to be needed as the whole world goes Mobile. I can send emails, visit blogs and forums and do all the stuff I normally do on my laptop. It took me a couple of hours to figure out how to navigate around easily, but I’ve got it down now and I’m really impressed! If being on the web is important to your business, I think the Nexus One will make it easy for you to stay connected to your business affairs no matter where you are.
I Can Use Google Maps
This was the big deal for me as a Local SEO. The Nexus One comes with a connection to Google Maps built right into the main set of icons. Now, I confess, I’m having a little harder time getting acquainted with using Maps as I’m so used to doing on my laptop. The navigation I’m familiar with doesn’t seem to be there, and only some locations can be viewed in StreetView. I need more time to play with this, but Local and Mobile are quickly becoming one and I’m sure I will get the hang of the whole Maps feature with a little more practice. The Nexus One also tracks my location as I’m driving about - really interesting. So far, it knew where I was about 70% of the time. Then, the little blue marker indicating my location seemed to get confused and was placing me and my car a street away from where I actually was. This feature definitely deserves further exploration, as does the phone’s ability to give me directions.
I Can Make Calls
It may seem obvious that a smart phone makes phone calls, but the Nexus One has so many capabilities, this function almost seems like a sideshow. The quality of the calls I have made has seemed remarkably clear to me, both on the sending and receiving ends. The phone has a device which mutes background noise and it appears to work very well. I’m used to cell phone calls that have tons of static and noise. This phone, with T-Mobile coverage, sounds marvelous in my area. I also absolutely love the fact that I can click a phone number on a website, in an ad or email and the phone automatically starts calling the designated party. Phenomenal! It was very easy to begin setting up a list of folks I frequently call and, so far, I’m favorably impressed with this aspect of the Nexus One.
I Can Type
The keyboard is very small, even for my dainty fingers. Turning the phone sideways helps a bit. One has to switch back and forth between keyboards with capital letters, lower case letters and numbers and symbols. After just one day, I’m already starting to feel comfortable with this, but I am typing very, very slowly after a day of use and this feels odd to me - a really fast typist. However, there is a feature of the keyboard that I discovered this morning that ameliorates some of the awkwardness. While you type, a little bar is constantly suggesting to you complete common words that you can click on rather than having to type whole words out, and this is pretty helpful. I also love that the keyboard has a special key for the phrase ‘.com’. Very useful.
I Can Talk To The Phone!
For me, this is the feature that makes the Nexus One like something from the fabled ’space age’ that has been predicted by humans for several generations. There is a little microphone icon that you can press and begin speaking into the phone and the words appear on the screen. Imagine that! However, there is a pretty serious problem with accuracy, and I did an experiment today, using the Voice function to dictate a blog post.
If you click my example, you will immediately see that I ended up with some pretty foolish gibberish. In a 102 word paragraph, the Nexus One misunderstood 12 words. When you add to this the fact that it had no idea how to punctuate what I was saying and was using numbers like ‘1′ instead of writing out the word ‘one’, you end up with text that is far from publication-ready. The meaning of what I was trying to say got totally lost, and while I suppose this might be okay in the world of Text Messaging, this is one spaceship that won’t fly when it comes to important business communications.
Nevertheless, it’s an amazing emergent technology, and I had a blast speaking in the names of local places and businesses, famous people and other phrases and then watching with amazed eyes as the phone brought up accurate results time and again. This technology is going somewhere and it’s thrilling to see the beginnings of it.
I Can Take Pictures
The Nexus One gets high marks from me for the ease of use of the camera which takes very clear pictures. Here’s an example of an un-touched, un-photoshopped image I took very quickly, on a dark grey afternoon while I was out grocery shopping today:
It took me about 2 minutes to figure out how to sort and and delete images in the gallery feature and how to email them to my computer. Super simple and fun! If your business runs a blog and you’ve got a roving reporter, this phone is going to make him a powerhouse when it comes to collecting on-the-spot images to enliven your content.
What Else Can I Do?
I can listen to music, and it sounds okay for coming out of such a tiny device, but to be honest, all I’ve done so far is delete all of the pre-set music out of the phone because it sounded like guys with adenoid trouble torturing washing machines. Google - what was with that music? I’ll find something lovelier to my ears soon. I can see the time, bookmark my favorite places, read news, get weather, and sign into a marketplace where I can download cool apps for the phone. I watched some YouTube videos and they looked astonishingly good. Wow!
I know I can also text message folks, but I haven’t even looked into it yet. Frankly, I have the distinct feeling that my first 24 hours with the Nexus One has just barely touched the tip of the technology iceberg of features present in this pint-sized gadget. Is the Nexus One the right phone for you? Budget, coverage and your location are going to determine the answer to that, and I highly recommend reading Mike Blumenthal’s fantastic guide to choosing a smart phone.
Most importantly, I’m suggesting that you consider the common scenarios of your daily personal and business life. For me, running my business, getting a smart phone is a smart thing to do. Would your business benefit if you were able to browse the web, make calls, send emails and text messages, take photos, find important places locally and turn spoken words into text, no matter where you are? And, don’t forget to ask yourself whether it will become important to your business in the next 5 years that your business’ website renders well on mobile devices. How about mobile-based advertising? That’s ramping up, too. What do you need to be doing to make sure your business is keeping apace with how people live and do business as we enter the second decade of the 21st century? I do believe that Google’s Nexus One is hinting at the answer.
Check out our small business news site.
More here:
24 Hours With Google’s Nexus One
Written on December 11, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: marketing
Google Voice’s transcribe feature pretty much sucks.
How inaccurate is it? Well, see for yourself. Here’s a portion of a voicemail left for me recently:
Now, here’s the transcription according to Google Voice:
“..I’m trying to a 98 so that cool voice can proper with trans with transcribe this message…”
I’m not quite sure what’s more embarrassing for Google Voice:
a) It couldn’t transcribe “enunciate” or,
b) It didn’t even recognize “Google Voice”!!!
Anyway, the feature is still useful to have–especially when you’re busy and not sure if you should listen to the voicemail or not. And, to be fair, Google does recognize that its automated transcription service needs a lot of work. In fact, it’s asking for your help.
You can now “donate” your voicemail for scientific testing:
The messages you donate may be listened to, manually transcribed by us and/or used to gauge transcription improvements over time, but they will never be made public or used for any other purpose than improving the transcription quality.
I’m guessing Tiger Woods won’t be donating any voicemails in the near future. 
Will you give Google your voicemails?
Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!
Excerpt from:
Are Those Google Voices Inside Your Head Making Any Sense?
Tags: based-on-the ,but-the ,general ,google ,improving-the ,marketing ,place-sometime ,rumors ,voice
Written on October 23, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: Advertising, marketing, searchengineguide, seo
by Miriam Ellis
Friend and colleague, Matt McGee, recently published a very fine piece on getting started in SEO. For business owners new to the discipline of search engine optimization, Matt offers very good advice with the voice of experience. And, while this was the main focus of his piece, it is Matt’s comment about hiring SEOs that is generating some of the liveliest feedback on his blog. Matt advises:
Don’t hire anyone who contacts you first. SEO is very much in demand these days. The best and most trusted companies don’t need to spam you with offers of free web site analyses. Delete those emails right away.
Responses have ranged from readers explaining that they feel it’s important to research and contact businesses that might be a good match for their services, to asking why SEO is any different from any other industry that might contact potential clients, to suggesting that only a prestigious SEO like Matt would be doing well enough to comfortably give this kind of advice. As it happens, I support what Matt has said, and I’d like to explain why.
Why Business Owners Shouldn’t Hire Web Services Providers Who Contact Them
I’m broadening my statement to include any type of web service: SEO, website design, SEM, Local SEM, PPC…you name it. If you own a business and are seeking to establish a presence or increase your visibility on the web, I would never advise you to hire a provider who contacts you first, whether via phone or email. Why not?
- Well, it’s not because someone new to SEO, SEM, website design, etc. doesn’t have any talent or skill. Most assuredly not.
- And it’s not because cold calling or cold emailing automatically equates with spam or crooked business practices.
- And it’s not even because unsolicited marketing is something that annoys so many of us.
Rather, these are my 3 reasons why hiring a web services provider who contacts you is probably not your best bet for success.
1. It’s my contention, and this is borne out by the experience of so many folks I know in this business, that the majority of established web services provider’s work comes through referrals from satisfied clients or colleagues or directly via searches on the web for the desired services. One of the commentors on Matt’s blog suggested that cold calling is fine because the SEO may be ‘hungry’ (eager for work and ready to do a good job). My feeling is that hunger is only possible in the absence of established experience.
Established SEOs, Web Designers, Usability Experts, SEMs have to turn down work all the time because there is more demand than they can fulfill. I would say that a hungry SEO is one who has simply yet to establish a satisfied clientele that will refer their own friends, family and associates to him, or who has yet to establish good search engine rankings of his own that bring visitors to his website where the first contact can be made by the client. Only time is going to amass the experience a web services provider needs to be best bet for a client. When you hire someone to strengthen your presence on the web, your business’ success is in their hands and I would advise that you will be better off with a firm with a track record of real past success.
2. It’s important to consider additional scenarios besides the lone and hungry SEO who is cold calling business owners. Telephone marketing can also be the province of very large web services companies who have the staff to run their fingers through the YP calling every business in sight in hopes of picking up contracts. When I think about the welfare of the client, I’m not happy with this scenario either.
In my experience, business owners (especially small business owners) will be best served by forming a long term relationship with a web designer, webmaster, SEO, etc., who will know them by name and come to know their business like the back of their hand. Can you really hope to succeed on the web when you start out as an ‘account’, being treated like a number by a company too large to ever know you by name? I wouldn’t bet on it.
I’ve seen one too many small business owners get burned by $9.99 website builder companies and generic PPC management offers. This scenario stands in sharp contrast to the lucky business owner who manages to hire somebody like Matt McGee to start working for the success of her business. Genuine rapport and a personal investment will develop between provider and owner and I am convinced that the business owner is going to be far better off working with someone whose chief concern is client well being rather than whether his boss will fire his tomorrow for not picking up enough new accounts.
3. I saved this for last, because I see this as applicable much of the time, but surely not all of the time. There are a heck of a lot of rotten spammers and scammers out there who very much do contact business owners with the intention of rooking them. That’s just the truth and I’ve seen it happen. The bad guys can’t rely on a hard-won reputation for providing quality services. Rather, they rely on the naivety of business owners who don’t know the difference between valuable services and ripoff deals.
I will never forget a personal experience with a small business owner - a client who came to us many years ago for website design for his handmade wood toy company. We built him a small, functional, simple little site, solidly grounded in good onpage SEO practices, properly optimized for the keywords that were important to him. For one reason or another, the client lost touch with us, only to show up 6 months later pleading for help.
He had given his credit card number to an ‘SEO company’ who had contacted him, guaranteeing him top 10 Google rankings. Instead, they had stuffed his meta tags, turned his copy into utter nonsense and desecrated his code and run up unapproved charges on his card…and continued to charge his credit card after he had told them they were very much fired. We went in and did damage control on the site, but I still wish the owner had thought to contact us first before handing over the keys to these crooks. Really frustrating.
When a stranger calls or emails you offering you something, please remember that you have no idea who this person is, where they are or what they are up to. I’d love to live in a world where I could trust everyone’s word at face value, but that’s just not the way things are. The health of your business’ web presence is far too important to automatically trust to a person who falls from the sky into your life. If you needed to take the most important person in your life to an exceptional restaurant for an incredibly special occasion, chances are, you’d ask your friends for recommendations on the very best eating place in town. Surely, your success on the web deserves equal thought and care.
The bottom line here is that you should ask your circle of friends and colleagues for referrals when it’s time to hire an SEO, a website designer or marketer. You should visit multiple websites, look at testimonials for credibility, read blogs, visit top industry forums and social media sites to see who is spoken well of and plan to have a real heart-to-heart talk with the person or team you’re considering hiring to see if you can really work with them. If you own the business, the effort needs to be on your part to make that first connection, based upon your research and good sense.
It’s No Shame To Be New
So where does this leave those new to the various web-based work fields? How are you supposed to build up this circle of colleagues who will gladly refer to you, this valued pool of clients who so love what you did for them that they will recommend you to their best friend, this mass of web citations that refer to you as an expert and a good guy?
My advice here is simple. You already know a lot of people. Palore recently estimated that only 1/2 of the small businesses in America currently have websites. This means that some of your friends who run businesses almost assuredly have no website, have never engaged in SEO, Local Search Marketing, PPC or any other web-based efforts. These people can be your first clients, pro bono or at a very modest fee that is commensurate with your present lack of experience. Don’t quit your day job until your aunt refers you to her hairdresser…someone you don’t know but who is about to become your client via referral. When you reach this stage, when you’ve started to build up that gorgeous page of totally legitimate testimonials from business owners in whose lives you’ve made a real difference, you are headed for success.
And, while you’re working for little or no money, make the smart move of identifying where the very best conversations are happening in your industry. Start participating. Ask questions. Offer help when you can. Don’t try to wear bigger boots than you actually own. There is absolutely no shame in being new and there is a ton of room in all the web-based specialties for hard-working, decent, honest, committed people who want to acquire skills and put them to use for others.
I found Matt McGee’s article to be an excellent starting point for thought and discussion, not just about getting started on the web as a business owner, but getting started as the owner of a web services business. Like any other industry in the world, achieving success and maintaining it is going to take time and a lot of hard work. There will be cases and places in which advertising, marketing and maybe even contacting interesting businesses now and again may be indicated, but solidity will best be built on establishing a name for yourself in the business world that makes clients come to you. Think of how proud you will feel achieving this. It’s a worthy goal!
———————
Check out our small business news site.
Originally posted here:
Should You Hire An SEO Who Cold Calls You?
Written on October 12, 2009 by admin
Last week, twenty members of Congress sided with AT&T and asked the Federal Communications Commission to take a good look at Google Voice, because the free telephony service doesn’t allow users to call certain rural numbers. Two days later, Sharon Gillett, chief of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau, sent Google telecom counsel a list of questions about their service.
Aside from the obvious anti-competition motive, AT&T is in a tizzy over Voice because GV really does prevent users from calling certain rural exchanges because the fees for phone companies for calls that end there are up to 100 times those of other areas. Google Telecom Counsel Richard Whitt posted on the Google Public Policy blog:
The reason we restrict calls to certain local phone carriers’ numbers is simple. Not only do they charge exorbitant termination rates for calls, but they also partner with adult sex chat lines and “free” conference calling centers to drive high volumes of traffic. This practice has been called “access stimulation” or “traffic pumping” (clearly by someone with a sense of humor). Google Voice is a free application and we want to keep it that way for all our users — which we could not afford to do if we paid these ludicrously high charges.
Google’s underlying argument is that their service is add-on to existing phone services, not a replacement. They say that they shouldn’t be subject to the same regulations as the phone companies that charge for service and build the infrastructure.
AT&T claims that Google is acting as a telecom (not, as they claim, an application), and should be subject to the same rules and regulations—specifically the neutrality rules. While it’s no surprise to see AT&T and Google on opposite sides of a neutrality battle, the roles they’re cast in this time are at least a little humorous—Google as the one trying to restrict access and AT&T as the fair-minded, open-access alternative.
What do you think? Should Google Voice be subject to the same regulations as other telecos? Or are they splitting hairs when they claim they’re exempt?
Original post:
FCC Eyes Google Voice’s Rural Call Blocking
Tags: a-good-thing- ,free ,google ,google-public ,google-telecom ,local/mobile ,marketing ,network ,same ,service ,voice
Written on July 4, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: book, marketing, seo
Posted by Sam Niccolls
(Note: A tip of the cap goes to Rebecca whose great roundups helped me sift through my feed reader on more than a few Saturday morning. Hopefully my breakdown of the last week in technology and online marketing provides a digestible and similarly entertaining accompaniment to a wonderful 4th of July weekend.)
1) Billy Mays & Product Demonstrability - Jeff Sexton at FutureNow wrote a very interesting article about Billy Mays. The gist of the article is that the late sales icon was more than just a pitchman. And he makes a compelling case. But there’s an additional actionable takeaway to be had from Sexton’s article: demonstrability. You probably don’t sell OxiClean, and you probably don’t have a bad infomercial (hopefully), but you could probably do a better job of demonstrating what your product does. So when you think of ways to improve your landing pages, ask yourself the same question Mays did before he agreed to pitch a product — “How can I demonstrate this?”
2) YouTube Adds Off-site Links to Video Overlays - The video mogul now has “Call-To-Action Overlays” on videos. Publishers can now add direct links, rather than having to make viewers type URLs in manually, which has big impacts for both politicians, marketers, and others with viral video campaigns. Currently YouTube’s “Call-To-Action Overlays” are free, publishers just have to enter their videos into YouTube’s CPC promoted videos program.
Written on June 24, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: marketing
Do you know what tactics your PR team are using in social media?
UK furniture giant Habitat clearly doesn’t and it just cost them a huge reputation blackeye in the Twitter community.
Digital Tip spotted Habitat’s official Twitter account apparently spamming Twitter by placing popular “trending topic” hashtags alongside its own (poorly crafted) tweets.
They even tweeted hashtags used by those protesting the Iranian election, so you can imagine the backlash they’d receive, right?
Well, apparently Habitat was blissfully unaware of the whole scandal. In an open apology letter to the Twitter community, “Claire” from Habitat’s Head Office alluded to the fact the hashtag use had not been approved:
The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat.
Er, yes it was. Unless someone hacked into your Twitter account, you did authorize the use of those hashtags. Whether it was explicit or not, that doesn’t matter. If an employee or outside PR firm had your permission to run the account, then you gave them permission to add hashtags. I’m sorry, but unless you show me a document that explicitly outlines the prevention of this tactic, the buck stops with “Head Office.”
I don’t like to post online reputation management examples just for the sake of it–I’d just add to the noise. So, what can you take away from this?
As I warn my clients, you can’t just jump into social media without taking ownership of the voice. Where’s the transparency in that? Whether you hand the responsibility to an intern or a PR firm, you need to be fully aware of what’s being said and assume full responsibility. If you’re so hands-off that you have no clue what’s being posted on your behalf, it would be better that you just shutdown that social networking profile right this minute.
Your stakeholders want to hear your voice at the other end of the social networking “line.” If you’re faking it, then you’ll get called out. In this case, it appears Habitat has learned that lesson the hard way.
(Hat-tip @Ed)
Originally posted here:
It’s 2009, Do You Know Where Your Twitter Account Is?
Advertising article book business data facebook general google google-adwords google: maps & local google: mobile information internet keywords marketing media microsoft microsoft: bing mobile most news Object online online marketing people post research search search-engine searchengineguide seo service site small-business social social media spzmu street the-search time top news twitter video words yahoo
