It’s July: Is Your Traffic Down?
Maybe your business is down as well, just a bit. All of our client traffic, mostly restaurants, is down on average between 8-10% the week of June 27 - 4th of July.
Haven’t Been Here in Awhile
You know, you’re not supposed to write something like that on your “business blog”. It’s supposed to be “snappy”, “smart” and “business-ee”. But I’ve been telling my clients for two years to be themselves on their blogs, yet I find it hard to do here myself. So to that end, I’m back.
It’s finally summer here in Seattle! I have a lot of work to do, so instead of vacation on my mind, I have work.
If completed, I believe we have the best system to de-leverage our clients from traditional advertising and into a new realm of a solid and healthy presence online - comments responded to, articles and user reviews engaged and ‘optimized’, profiles not only established where most aren’t, but optimized as well. Additional advertising is great where it works, but the first thing a local business should do is take the bull by the horns and manage and “own” their current state of affairs and presence online with a stern and honest hand. That’s what we do in the case that you or a client doesn’t have the time and / or expertise. I say if my mother had a restaurant and I was giving her advice for her online management, this is absolutely the first thing I would do - what Buzz Online Media does - and I still believe that. It’s absolutely true - 100%.
More thoughts later.
Details, details, details…
Buzz Online Media is currently looking for a Web Copy Writer. This person has, what we think is the fun job of ghost writing Twitter accounts, helping formulate user review responses, manually track, monitor and respond to client content online (Citations, citations, citations!!!) and to generally interact with our clients content online in a way that gives our clients an edge over their competitors.
So we put an ad on Craigslist looking for a few copy writers. It’s AMAZING the things that come across ones desk…
We are looking for someone who is grounded, together, consitent, hard working, critical with details, hard working, on top of it…works hard, etc. And our ad says so. And we get the following, which can be used, inversely, as a list of things NOT to do when responding to job posts online:
1. Email addresses addressed as, for example: “tillman, j”
What’s wrong with this? One, it’s not a full name. Two, it’s lower cased. It’s like “Ah, I’m too lazy to capitalize my own name”. Now, for a personal account, do what you may, but for a “professional” account or an email account you’re going to respond to job postings for, do the following: “John Doe”
2. This was hilarious and irritating at the same time. Is there a word that combines those two emotions? Email header: “holfentein, jack”. “Jack” writes me a nice intro email with some “pop” and I get to the bottom and it’s signed “Simon Holfentein”
What’s wrong? Again, not capitalized. But more hilaritating is the fact that this person either has deeper issues that we shouldn’t go into here, or they are sending a professional response from another account, or in this particular case, have two names. I actually responded “Who is this, Jack or Simon”. “Oh, I have two names…yeah, sorry about that, people get confused.” Um…yeah they do! I mean, really? So no, SimonJack, we will not be interviewing you. You need to pick a name…pick ONE. It’s one thing if the email was “James Raymond” and they signed their email “Jamie” (NO experience doing this:) But…Simon and Jack isn’t even CLOSE!
3. No response to the email other than an attached document / resume. No, don’t do this. It’s borderline hostile. I know your busy and I figure your’re responding to a lot of job postings, but at least indicate you’ve read the job description and that you have an onus of interest in actually capturing the opportunity.
4. This is a copy writer position. You wouldn’t believe the misspellings and grammatical errors I’m getting. People, it pretty much comes down to correcting the red lines in Word…it’s just too simple to get it right to not get it right these days. (Accept when you’re ‘blogging’:)
That’s about it from this round of emails…I’m sure there will be more to report.
Increase in Seattle Parking Meters Bad for Small Business
The more hassle imposed for people to park and pay money for services via small business = bad. More hassle = bad for small business. More hassle imposed by city = bad…for small business…in my opinion. This article agrees:
http://www.blockbeta.com/blog/2009/9/14/seattle-parking-meters-bad-for-small-business.html
King 5 Seattle Killing Me With Their Login / Website
I love King 5. I’d love nothing more than to see them succeed. In representing my clients, I try and help them generate the most qualified traffic to their small businesses around the Puget Sound.
Recently a few customers have pointed out that The Best of King 5 “Western Washington” is now up and going at:
http://best.king5.com/contests/best-of-western-washington/4749
In trying to sign up to vote for your favorite restaurant they have you:
1. Put in your full name, email, personal information, password and your phone number.
2. Then you have to go to your email address and verify the account.
3. Then you have to write a review as to why you like the business your voting for.
The owner of the restaurant I was working with got so exacerbated at the process that he gave up, laughing when he got to the point where they actually asked him for his phone number (required field). And he really wants to win! He’s motivated - but not that motivated.
I’m wondering how many passive users were willing to go through this tedious sign up process? How many users is King 5 missing out on? And considering how much of a footprint King 5 has in the marketplace on Television with both content and reporting why have they chosen to have such a lack luster website? It has a 6/10 Google Page Rank - so the website is getting some traffic, but something tells me someone at King 5 or Belo is missing a huge opportunity…
What am I not getting? Is it easy for you to vote for your favorite business at Best of King 5? Can you find Best of King 5 online? Let me know what you think
New Google Local Stats
Wow. Google Local / Google Maps just launched some AMAZING new stats for their local businesses. It encapsulates far more activity consistent with what is actually going on, so now istead of seeing two numbers, and two numbers only we see graphs, historical data and other data points that although VERY easy to read and understand, give us far more nuance and understanding of what is actually going on with your local listing on Google Maps / Google Local.
Old Google Local: two numbers: Impressions and Views.
New Google Local:
1. Impressions:
2. Actions
a. clicks
b. click for driving directions
c. clicks to your website
3. Top search queries
4. Where driving directions requests came from
This is just beautiful. Pure and simple.
Local Business and The Video Opportunity: Why Local Business Should Use Video
Here is a great article - or should I say ‘an article’ - regarding the virtues of using video to engage customers here at Conversation Agent.
Now, I should definitely be doing a video blog post here, but it’s early in the morning, I’ve yet to shower (the virtues of having a home office) and I need to bang this blog post out before getting onto more serious matters of the day, like client and account work, including editing their videos.
Now onto the point: if you’re a local business, consdider buying a small video camera and start doing videos of everything. By everything I mean respond to user reviews, introduce you and your team, show your kitchen and how you make your favorite dishes, talk about the products you source or the services you provide - and do it over video, post it to YouTube and your blog, talk about those video responses to your customers in person and online via Yelp, Citysearch etc and start to engage a wider array of customers and “potential customers” using your real you - a real you that can only come out via video.
A surprising number of businesses don’t use this. The barrier to entry is so, so low now you really should consider it a part of your “mix” from here on out.
What do you think? Have you seen any cool examples of local business using videos to engage their customers?
User Review Management:
It’s amazing to me that so many restaurant owners get crazy mad at user reviews online yet do so little about them.
I can understand. Restaurant owners (and all local business owners) work so hard, day in and day out, on so many aspects of their business. One thing they do know is food and to hear some ‘guy’ talk about their restaurant who clearly doesn’t know what they are talking about is frustrating. Worse yet, when you see insanely off base reviews with a one star rating, what else are you going to think than “competitor”? It’s a tough field of play - publicly displayed user reviews that is.
But to not pay attention and manage and address these reviews is insane. Some people writing reviews about your business may be idiots, but actually most of these people are sincere. Most of the reviews are 3+ out of 5 stars i.e. positive. And most aren’t written by competitors or recently ‘released’ employees.
Here are some tips on managing your user reviews online:
1. Respond. Pure and simple. There are a ton of ways to respond, but overall be authentic, have a backbone and set the record straight when necessary, apologize if necessary, own it if you came up short or don’t know exactly what happened, and overall, just be professional. Have some fun. Have a bit of a sense of humor and just reach out a bit - make a connection. These people just want to be heard and recognized for the most part. You have no idea how many people will change their horrendous reviews or give you another chance. You’ll be amazed. And if not “amazed” at least pleasantly surprised.
2. Say thanks! So many people miss the importance of responding to 4 and 5 star user reviews. They figure they’ll just get back to the 1 and 2 star reviews. If you had to choose, and you don’t (respond to all), respond to your fans. This takes someone from a fan to an ambassador of your brand and restaurant offline. This gets the word of mouth from the ephemeral “online” world to the offline, very real, on the street word of mouth world we all so love and understand. This translates into conversations that happen all the time: “so and so got back to me at such and such restaurant and was so nice to me about writing a great review. It was great - I’ll definitely be going back - it is a great restaurant.” See, they had a great experience in the first place - make it an even better experience with a nice follow up reply and they’ll talk about you - that is for certain!
3. Rate the positive reviews about your business as helpful “yes” on Google Maps or “funny” or “useful” on Yelp. This helps ascend your good reviews into various searches. It’s online PR. It can only help and it takes close to no time. Yes, it’s a bit “schilly” but you know, if it’s helpful, it’s helpful and if it’s not, it’s not. Who knows better than you?
4. Read the user review guidelines on Yelp, Citysearch, Trip Advisor, Zagat, Google Local Maps, Live MSN and Yahoo. If your reviews tend to be close, or clearly break these guidelines, stick up for yourself and send an email to these properties requeseting a review of the user review. Most of them will take these considerations very seriously. You not agreeing with the review does not suffice. It has to infringe on the rules set forth by these sites (racial comments, language, pesonal attacks, etc).
5. Start your own blog and respond to these user reviews on your blog.
These are just a few suggestions. What have you done to manage your user reviews? What success stories can you share?
Twitter Tips: @replies…Include a Piece of the Previous Conversation
Twitter Tips abound, some more obvious than others.
One thing that I don’t really get: doing @replies with no indication of the previous or relevant aspect of the original “conversation” or comment.
Be courteous and polite - be useful - include a brief summary or indication of what you are @replying to in your “tweet”. This makes you more useful and it makes everyone a part of the “conversation”
Example Tweet: @jamesatbuzz tweets “Love @pagliaccipizza and looking forward to their free comedy night - Pagliacci Pizza: http://www.pagliacci.com/events/index.html
A terrible @reply: none at all. Just not replying, especially as a business, is a no no, but more than that, it’s a lost opportunity. It’s like going to a social gathering or cocktail party and not socializing. What’s the point?
A not so good @reply. @pagliaccipizza replies “Thanks @jamesatbuzz - see you there!”
Your timeline / followers only see your reply and undless their following both of you (rare) and see in their timeline both posts and make the connection over a period of time (very rare) it’s not as relevant as it could be. They don’t know what you’re talking about.
Recommended: Either RT (Re-tweet) the original tweet and say “thanks” or reply with something like:
@pagliaccipizza: “Thanks @jamesatbuzz for recommending our free comedy night every first Monday of the month at our Capitol Hill location: http://bit.ly/TvMyU
The recommended reply 1. has a link (always recommended) and 2. insights your readers as to what you’re replying to and 3. results in all of your followers, or at least the ones that see your tweet, knowing details about an event or feature of your business they otherwise didn’t know about.
What do you think? Have you been off put by all the @replies that flood your stream, not knowing what they entail?
(new feature of Twitter: unless your following both people, the settings automatically pre populate that you won’t see the @reply to people you aren’t following.)
Google Ad Words for Local Business
It is my opinion that Google Ad Words is a tremendously under utilized weapon in the “war on” great positioning on Google. I’m not sure it’s a “war on” but you understand what I’m saying, and if you don’t…let me know in the comments. Restaurants, bars, salons, hotels, shops, etc in Seattle, the Pacific Northwest, New York and LA (where our current clients reside) - and Columbus, OH - often ask: how do we get better positioning on “key” keyword terms we don’t currently show up for? BTW: 100% of our clients show up page 1 of their respective category and cuisine types, but there are ‘tail’ terms and ‘tangential’ terms these clients also want to show up under. GOOGLE AD WORDS is the answer (sorry for shouting). There are many keywords that are ‘tail’ terms that have zero competition (no bids) and start off at $0.05. You can get your feet wet with a $100 - $200 cap per month and really make an impression, pun intended.
Here is a great video that serves as an introduction to Google Ad Words auction. You bid on the keywords, so there is no arbitrary set price and your only competition is the previous high bid. You can set amazingly targeted ramifications and track it through Google Analtyics.
Check out this video from Google’s “Chief Economist”:
What type of success have you had with your local business using Google Ad Words?
