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

If you own a restaurant or cafe, chances are you probably dislike review websites, even if you achieve great results. Unfortunately it’s mostly because the reviews that stand out aren’t necessarily the glowing referrals praising your every dish and move, but more likely the 1 star complainers who didn’t like the person sitting next to them and decided to slam your store for letting said person in. The Internet has provided a playground for the “masses are assess” mentality where people who are completely unqualified, have been given the power to voice their lack of qualification for others to hear. Still, that’s not to say that all reviews are useless rants of drivel, in fact some can really offer excellent tips that may actually help your business.

Remember the days when people would offer you feedback by coming to your counter and suggesting that your coffee was excellent but the mugs were awkward to use? Well people don’t seem to do that anymore in fact, they are far more likely to go to Yelp and write it out for everyone to see, which is why you need to be looking there as well. Now, I’m not actually suggesting that you listen to all the reviews (in fact I’d probably consider maybe 1%, if that) but in doing so, you may get a sense of what your customers a saying. Maybe you’ll pick up on a trend. If everyone is complaining about the same thing, you may well have an issue to address. That’s why you should be trawling.

So where to go and what to do. Here are some tips:

Yelp – Probably one of the more popular review websites. Many suggest that recent changes are impacting their numbers and there are stats to support it but it still has a huge user base and you should find a number of useful reviews of your place (hopefully).
Chowhound – one of the better review websites. While they have a smaller user base, they tend to be more knowledgeable than other sites.
GAYOT (pronounced guy-OH) – I find the website to be pretty awkward to get around and the ads are a bit much but they have a decent amount of reviews that you may need to check out.
CitySearch – this one always surprises me mostly out of the fact that people actually use it. Generally not a great deal of insight but they do have numbers.
TripAdvisor – a slick site with a huge volume of reviewers. Less about locals and more about travelers.
Urban Spoon – this fairly new player seems to have really benefited from having one of the more interesting iPhone apps and continues to be highly mobile.

Other notables include www.opentable.com, www.menupages.com, www.menuism.com, www.boorah.com, www.frommers.com

Quickly becoming essential tools that help to monitor chatter online is twitter which allows you to add the name of your restaurant as a search and then check regularly to see if people are talking about you. Google Alerts can also provide some info mostly when someone posts a blog about you.
And finally, the latest trends are pointing towards foursquare and gowalla as being new players in this space.

Even if you’re not using Social Media as part of your marketing mix, you really should be paying attention to it as quite often, potential visitors may be swayed by these reviewers, like it or not.

I noticed that Google Maps had an additional feature at the start of the month that I simply shrugged off as an April Fools gag but several days later and it’s still there. The 3D Goggles view shows an icon indicating a figure with and without glasses.

Clicking on the icon gives you the typical blurry appearance with blue/red shadows. Certainly without the 3D glasses, the image looks pretty bad and I haven’t had a pair of 3D glasses to check the view but I can’t really see massive use for this feature and continue to treat it as an extended April Fools gag.

No 3D Goggles

With 3D Googles View Selected

I’m a road tripper. I was raised watching a couple of blokes cruising around Australia in a Land Rover and couldn’t wait to do that. When I was 12, my family set out on a road trip around Australia and after 3 and a bit months, we returned and I wanted to do it again the next week.

When I first got my drivers license I drove my mates up the NSW north coast and back…just because. So I think every year since then, I’ve managed 2 or 3 solid roadies a year, up and down, side to side, into the middle and back. The I went to the States and did it there and have traversed the country some 6 times with additional jaunts into both Canada and Mexico since arriving some 14 years ago. I really don’t care who I go with (unless they are really annoying and I mean really annoying) or where I go but most of the latter ones have been with my long-suffering-not-overly-enthusiastic-about-boring-road-trips wife who is far more interested in getting there than the journey to there. I am often left to my own devices in the car while she catches up on some sleep which also gives me a chance to rock along to a few tunes that are not necessarily her favorites – the soundtrack being an especially important element to a good roadie. I’ll take this opportunity to share with you a classic road trip tune which will no doubt be unfamiliar to anyone outside of Oz and that’s Cold Chisel. This is Bow River.

While Chisel weren’t my favourite favourites, they were up there and always remind me of home.

So I finally talked the missus into a week road trip up to Byron Bay last week which is most certainly one of my all time top spots in the world and I had a mate living up there plus a couple of other mates flying up to join us. Plus, this would be my 3 year-old’s first road trip (yes that means I haven’t been on a roadie for at least 3 years) so it was time for his official initiation and what better than a North Coast tour.

While I know a road trip is not for everyone, for me, it offers a lot of benefits.

The Cleanse - I think this is more and more relevant and I’m not sure about you guys, but most folks I know and myself included, have so many things going on that it’s really tough to switch off. I used to be a genius at it but now I suck. The ‘always on’ mentality really has become problematic for a lot of folks and while I’ve decided to try and battle against it a bit, I don’t think it’s really an option (I appreciate the fact that it allows me to work from home) but I’m aiming towards a better work/life balance. So I’m on a road trip, I do have my blackberry but connection is spotty and interruptions are minimal (somehow Ernie is the only one who can figure out how to reach me).

The Perspective – When you stare at a computer screen 8+ hours a day and also some weekends, one does end up with a big ugly set of blinders. When I come home and talk with my mates, they wonder what I’m talking about with the tweets and the SEO and the Adwords which reminds me that there is life outside of Internet Marketing. Then when you take a road trip and you talk to someone and they don’t even have a mobile phone, you’re reminded even more that there is still a brave new world of reluctant tech adopters. So I’ve found a little bit of clarity.

The Resolve – With all this time out on the open road, you get a unique opportunity to really think. Sometimes that might not be a good thing;) but in general, with all this new perspective you’ve got some new ideas to work through. I’ve personally been looking to shake things up for a while now and had made a decision to make a move professionally and this decision has been solidified following my recent roadie.

Oh the final destination Byron Bay? Beautiful.

Recently been using Jimojo Hotspot Internet at a hotel in Byron Bay and gotta say, it’s pretty painful stuff. To start with, we’re talking about 0.43 Mbs download speeds and 0.03 Mbs upload speed so not much faster than dialup and all for the princely sum of just over $10/day. It’s frustrating, and any attempt to contact them seems to go unnoticed. Amazingly, for how important Internet Connections are these days, these guys get a big FAIL from Flemo for their poor connection and their even worse handling of the situation. This would certainly make me think twice about which hotel to stay at in the future.