Internet Marketing - Paul Fleming - Paul Fleming - Flemo: Between Sydney, Philadelphia and the World Wide Web

I’ve been hearing a lot of business owners griping about review websites like Yelp (you should know my opinion of those jokers) and the slew of others. Foursquare offers the ability to post comments about a place you visit (or don’t visit). Target also offers the ability to rate and comment in fact, I would suggest that most large retailers offer the opportunity to have your say. So business owners see these and if there’s a negative one, will freak out and try everything they can to get rid of it or satisfy that complainer with a coupon or something. I have a feeling though, that’s it’s probably not a good idea to do either (handing out coupons for negative reviews may well generate more negative reviews).

Most savvy Internet users are quite aware of the percentages when it comes to reviews. First of all, they know that there is no way to qualify these individuals (unless they follow them) so taking the opinion of Debbie Downer will probably have you going nowhere. Secondly, many competitors have taken to slamming their competition on these places, again without qualification other than they are competitors. Third, a lot of people are idiots, especially online. Back in the day it was comments on Digg and now it’s YouTube but essentially you get the sense that under the veil of anonymity, people are pretty content blurting out without much thought.

What you should be looking at though are the percentages. If you’re seeing a couple of poor service reviews out of several hundred, chances are these folks were either Debbie’s or just got unlucky. It’s probably not going be a worthwhile exercise criticizing your staff based on those percentages as it will most likely not sway a persons opinion about trying your place. Generally if you get enough reviews, even your competitors won’t be able to keep up posting negative ones on your listings and while I have suggested that ‘a lot’ people are idiots, it actually only feels that way and more often than not, these folks are the minority and most are reasonable, good people. People who read reviews generally get a sense for what’s going on.

Now if you are seeing bad percentages, it is time to take stock. What are people’s issues, where are the problem areas. This can actually be a great opportunity to address it based on a focus group that you don’t even have to pay.

While I don’t really “do” Social Media, I’m a fan of it and see great benefits to it. One thing I keep seeing is the issue of Social Media ROI, or businesses trying to determine if Social Media is “worth it”. To me, and as we’ve mentioned in the past, that doesn’t seem to be the main point here but since we’re in the Internet Marketing business, there needs to be some consideration in this area.

Something I do understand is Search Marketing which has its own set of justification requirements, some of which carry over to measuring Social. Fortunately, to a certain extent, Search is a much easier activity to demonstrate value even though questions still arise and the gap that exists with the data is still problematic. So I understand Social Media to be an even tougher challenge. In thinking about the “proof” that many ask of Social Media Marketing, even if you’re just dipping your toes into this brave new world, I can see a few key areas that you should pay attention to.

Listen – this has to be the primary reason for adopting social media for your business. We’ve spoken about this before, and since it’s not a huge time investment for us its a no-brainer. Set yourself up with a simple company name search in Twitter, get your Google Alerts going and you’re underway.

Analytics – you knew I’d bring this one up. At the very least measure traffic. While not directly able to justify your campaign, it should be one indicator of its effectiveness. I assume you’ve set up your goals and possibly your funnels; if you have you’ll be able to determine who converted and where they came from.

Engagement – definitely a tough one to track. I’ve seen folks set up a basic database system that simply outlines social mentions, comments, feedback, DM’s, whatever. Can also be easily done on an Excel spreadsheet. I imagine it’s got to be pretty painful to keep track of but the conversation is one of the great benefits of participating in a Social Media Marketing campaign.

Brand - While I don’t really want to get into this area due to its poor measurement ability, I can see the benefits of using Social Media to enhance your brand and image. I have to think that the number of social mentions can be a contributor. If you’re a small company and can regularly discuss your activities with the customer service reps to help determine if there has been a reduction in complaint calls or the like, one should probably look to your online activities as possibly being a reason for this.

So while the contents of this post are uneducated and based solely on my own experiences (hey I didn’t even consult with our Social Media expert), the main point here is to think about some form of measurement. I still don’t think that “proof” should be the overall goal here but like most marketing activities an objective or outcome must be part of the strategy.

Here’s a video of a recent trip up to New York to visit a client. Thanks to Drew Hood of Throwing Light for both accompanying us and putting this together.

I’ve been a longtime Yelper, since its inception actually and was happy to be part of a system that grew quickly and demonstrated a new way of thinking for people and businesses. Even taking into account the “masses are asses” and fake reviews, you could always get a sense for a place based on majority. I’d often read a few posts before making a dining choice and then happily post mine once all was said and done. A pleasant little arrangement I thought.

Then I started noticing things. I didn’t really give it a great deal of concern but I discovered that several of my reviews weren’t showing up. At first I thought it might have been at the request of the establishment I had reviewed but some were negative and some were positive so that didn’t make sense. I had also by this stage, been running a couple of paid client yelp accounts (against my wishes mind you) and I asked to remove some negative reviews which they didn’t do so I figured that wasn’t the case. (FWIW I didn’t really want them to remove them, I was merely probing). So it turns out to be Yelp’s review filter that is responsible for the disappearing reviews. OK well I’m sure they’ll be working on that problem (it still exists).

So earlier I told you that I took over management of a couple of sponsored accounts, the ones that just allow you to do a little more with your account like add a slideshow and special announcements and directly contact reviewers and it didn’t take long for me to realize these were next to useless, especially considering the $300 – $750 they were charging. There’s also the option where your ad will appear on other listings which is ridiculously based on impressions rather than clicks and as such, was a lot more expensive. I also learned that the clients were locked into an annual agreement so we had to wait until it ran out. The results were very ordinary too. One of the accounts averaged 15 visitors to the website from Yelp with 0 conversions, the other did generate a good amount of traffic to their site but about the same as before the “sponsored” account making their $3600 a pretty poor investment.

And now the latest is that I’ve been watching a client listing lose good reviews due to the “review filter” to be told that they didn’t feel the reviews to be genuine and meanwhile a competitor quite obviously has his own review (including his picture and name) on his own listing. It was flagged a while ago but it’s still there. One can only suspect they are paying for the privilege?

So I’ve gone cold on the service. They keep talking about transparency and changing options but I’m pretty much boycotting it and think they’ve screwed the pooch by not listening to the community earlier and creating some pretty ridiculous options for customers and businesses. I’m backing UrbanSpoon right now.