Last time we talked about getting local reviews; but what if they’re not always positive?

The fact of the matter is…everyone gets a bad review at one time or another. Something out of the ordinary happened, and something went horribly wrong. It happens to even the best of businesses.

So maybe you have a bad review or two under your belt. How you respond is what counts.

You have two choices.

1. Face it head on. Leave a comment right after the review and humbly apologize for their bad experience, then offer them a free night stay or a free product for their trouble. (And if they take you up on your offer, make it the best experience they’ve ever had.)
2. If you don’t feel comfortable responding publicly, a lot of review sites give you the option to contact the person directly.

One of three things could happen.

1. Worst case scenario, the person won’t respond and won’t remove the review. Think of the benefit though: you just publicly showed potential customers that your business isn’t about to let a bad experience happen.
2. The person might take you up on your offer, and then remove their negative review.
3. Or the best case scenario (and it has happened)? The customer replaces their negative review with a positive one, pointing out that a mistake was made and a bad experience had; but this organization did everything in their power to make it right.

Next time, we’ll talk about how to measure your success using Google Local Business Center.

See the entire guide here.

Nicki Hicks
Sometimes a negative is a positive

Photo by httpoldmaisonblogspotcom

Last time, we finished submitting locations to Google Local Business Center. Once you receive that precious little letter from Google, input the PIN number into your Local Business Center account…and you’re good to go!

Now what?

Some factors have changed in local ranking, some have not. The fact that more positive reviews help you rank better still certainly holds true today. Sure, you could just start writing reviews about your own business, but if we’ve learned anything, it’s Google is smart - so get ‘em from your customers.

How to get reviews

Different industries are going to have different barriers to acquiring local reviews. That said, there are a few different strategies – from the obvious, to a little more out of the box.

Ask

That’s simple enough, right? Think of some of your customers who had a great experience with you and contact them. Ask if they’d be kind enough to give you a review on Google Maps – or even their favorite review site. Hey, you’ll even give them one too!

Make it easy

I’m going to use a hotel as an example here, as this technique wouldn’t work for every organization. Start by setting up a computer specifically for reviews – in a hotel, perhaps at the check-in desk. Bookmark Google Maps, and after the customer checks out, ask if they’d take just a few moments to give you a review.

Or, perhaps your company already sends out monthly postcards or mailers to customers. Why not include a line at the bottom asking them to give you a review – just make sure you include the link!

Likewise, are you running an email campaign? Include a link in the bottom to your Google Maps listing, your Yelp profile, your Yellow Pages listing – whichever you want to improve. (Remember that Google Maps actually pulls reviews from a number of sites, not just their own.)

Post a sign

You’ve probably stepped into a local shop or restaurant and seen the Yelp stickers on the door. If that’s not an incentive to go to Yelp and leave a review – or at least check out what other people said – I don’t know what is.

Give them an incentive

Speaking of incentives, why not give customers a reason to help you out? Whether you offer a percentage or money off your product, free shipping, or free samples; it will be money well spent.

Obviously these tactics aim to get you positive reviews - but next time we’ll talk about what happens if you get an (eek!) bad review.

See the entire guide here.

Nicki Hicks
Local Reviewer

Photo by ropobby

With local search and reviews becoming so important, I pressure my clients who differentiate based on location to take it seriously.  Recently, as I was having this conversation with one such client, he asked me: “Well, if this local search stuff is so important, then why am I not running out and posting great reviews for my site; and bad ones for my competition?”  Great question.  And it quite honestly caught me off guard.  My response is multi-faceted:

It can come back to bite you in the butt…

…if you’re dishonest about it.  Search engines (or review sites) aren’t stupid, and neither are your customers for that matter.  Every review site I’ve seen requires you to create an account in order to post a comment.  Each user’s profile displays the amount of time they’ve been a member.  When a person has only been apart of one of these sites for a few days and suddenly begins posting reviews (maybe rave ones for their own site and negative reviews for competition), it serves as a red flag for both other users and the site itself.

A Yelp forum thread from a few months ago discusses this topic as it applies to Yelp, but can relate to any local review site.  Participants seemed to go back and forth about the morality of posting reviews for your own company, both with good points.  I think the consensus is…

Honesty is the best policy.

Posting your own review doesn’t have to be a bad thing, especially if you’re trying to get your name out there.  As long are you are up front and honest with both your connection to the company (owner, employee, consultant, etc.) and your true feelings about the company, other consumers can take or leave what you have to say.  The person reading it can take your biases (positive or negative) into account and form their own opinions.

Case in point, a review of flyte by Rich:

If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Remember Mom telling you that?  I suggest staying away from negatively reviewing competitors altogether.  No one likes to see one company slam another; if I remember correctly, competitor review commercials (think of most cleaning product ads) have among the lowest response rate from customers of all the possible marketing tactics.  Plus, there’s no need to give others negative reviews – especially if they don’t deserve them.  Worry about keeping your own reviews positive instead.

Nicki Hicks
Why not? Give yourself a pat on the back.

Moderator: Jeffrey K. Rohrs, Vice President, Marketing, Exact Target

Speaker: Nikki Fielding

• Have a consistent, core brand message
• Each channel should be appropriate for what it is: video vs. images vs. content vs. PPC
• Push LinkedIn more

Speaker: Simon Heseltine, Director of Search, Serengeti Communications

• What are people saying about your brand? (tweetbeep – alerts when people talk about your company, Google Alerts, Technoarti/RSS Feeds, Digg, Wikipedia – history page, YouTube, Flickr)
• What did people USED to say about your brand?

Speaker: Michael Jensen, Co-founder, SoloSEO

• Local reputation: Yelp; local: maps, SERP, apps, etc.)
• Get customers to review you online! (motivation: coupon, discount, free gift, etc.)
• Have customers leave a review right at your location – may result in link/recommendation
• Respond to critical reviews
• Pluribo: reviewing eBay products

Other Speaker: Jordan Glogau, Partner, Internet Reputation Management

NOTE: These notes are the major points of the presentations, and do not include every point the presenter made.

Moderator: Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Speaker: Mike Blummental, Partner, Blumenthals

• Huge growth for Google Maps – catching up to MapQuest
• Google maps is seen over a wide variety of devices (SMS, Smartphones, etc.)
• Check for your site in Google Local, Yahoo Local, niche local sites
• The “new” PageRank: location prominent score: explicit anchor text, score of website, number of links referring to the business, highest rank of linking site, NOT PR score)

Speaker: Tony Wright, CEO/Founder, Wright IMC

• Consumer reviews/local business links: Yelp, Angie’s List, Zillow, ServiceMagic, CitySearch
• Local reviews can make/break business
• Set up alerts: Google, Twitter

Speaker: Craig Greenfield, Director, Local Search, Performics

• Businesses with multiple locations: each location should have its own page, with main URL having sitemap for spiders

Speaker: Steve Espinosa, Director of Product Development, eLocal Listing

• Set up local profiles on sites
• A/B Testing is key
• Looking to the future: local listings w/ customized profile
• 5 star reviews are incredibly powerful
• Helpful to have keyword in business name
• Helpful resources: InsiderPages, Open List, Google coupons, Meetup
• When submitting at Google Maps, link videos – adds web reference
• Phone tracking through Google: pretend to make an audio campaign, “call reporting”, track phone numbers!

Q & A

• People are still ignoring modifiers (above regular google ten pack)
• H card format for Local
• Keep check with local reviews
• Google TV – distribution onto TV
• Synergize site with local listings
• Submit to Google
• Other speaker: Eric Stein, Director, Local Markets, Google

NOTE: These notes are the major points of the presentations, and do not include every point the presenter made.