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five ways negative reviews can help your online reputation
Posted by simon ashwin On Tuesday 10 Jun 08
It might seem counter-intuitive, but if you want to build a stellar reputation for your business, you should embrace negative reviews. Sure, the more positive reviews you have for your business, the better it looks, but there are some benefits to having some negative ones too.
Andrew Goodman, guest writing for HomeStars, hits the nail on the head:
I was recently a little disconcerted when I visited the American Apparel site, because of the presence of too many glowing, cheerleading reviews of its products. Some simply said "I haven’t tried this yet but I’ll be getting one really soon!" Poring over the various reviews, I actually felt like I’d be more likely to buy the product that had at least one negative or moderate review. Why? Because I wouldn’t be as likely to suspect that the reviews are fake.
Here’s how you can benefit from negative reviews:
- Your need to know. If your products or services are crap, then you need to know about it. It’s better to hear it from your customers–so you can fix it–than never know about it and wonder why your sales suck.
- Build credibility. As Goodman points out, negative reviews add authenticity to your reputation. Consumers are smart–mostly–and they know that if you have 1000 customers, a few will be upset over something. Take a look at the hotel industry. Just about every hotel has a review that mentions dirty sheets, cockroaches, or rude staff. Yet we still stay in hotels. We...
google gets tough on quality
Posted by simon ashwin On Tuesday 10 Jun 08
Advertisers who want to keep their costs down must keep the quality of their landing pages up. Nothing new. But Google recently reiterated their policies on the Inside AdWords blog.
What does Google reward? In both natural and paid search the answer is quality - from a customer point of view. Google rewards landing pages that are easy to navigate and transparent. I will add trust and credibility. Create landing pages and sites that provide a good experience (quality content) for searchers and customers and Google will be happy.
Google was clear about what is not considered quality. They will:
- get rid of squeeze pages designed to collect a name and email
- penalize arbitrage sites that are simply pages of ads
- eliminate sites that knowingly or unknowingly install software (malware)
Google specifically mentioned they discourage “get rich quick” sites, comparison shopping sites, and travel aggregators. This is where affiliates marketers gasp.
Google is serious about the issue. If your landing page gets complaints you could be kicked out of AdWords for those sites. Google also noted that they will no longer warn advertisers of updates, but they will be ongoing.
Affiliate marketers were hit especially hard. They are kings of landing pages. If affiliate marketers or any advertisers hope to survive the Google updates, they must add more content. Simple landing pages that are essentially just another advertisement will be penalized.
Why the changes? Customers are complaining and that could mean losing money. Google makes money...
what is seo and why optimize?
Posted by simon ashwin On Friday 23 May 08
You spent a good deal, worked hard for many days and nights and built a great website, but alas! it doesn’t get enough visitors. There are millions upon millions of pages of web content out there and your website is totally lost in the shuffle, like the proverbial needle in a haystack. When search engines ignore your site, your site becomes non-existent in the cyber world. The real problem with your website is that it failed to harness the most cost-effective and powerful Internet marketing strategy: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)!
Search Engine Optimization is the process of making your site appear at the top of search engine results for your domain-specific keywords and phrases. The higher your website ranks in the results of Google, Yahoo, MSN etc., the greater the chance that your site will be visited by many, which in turn would skyrocket your sales.
Simply put, Search Engine Optimization is about making your website visible on search engines. Its commercial purpose is to be the first to hit a customer base effectively.
Why Optimize for Search Engines
Everyday, millions of people search the web to find out what they look for. If your website doesn’t come up top in the results, you lose your business to your competitors. SEO is important not only because it brings lots of visitors to your website, but also because it helps to increase the return on investment, if harnessed properly. Say for example, you have a website that...
7 tricks to viral marketing
Posted by simon ashwin On Sunday 18 May 08
Viral marketing (word-of-mouth marketing) is a really cool thing. Just think about it… instead of spending an insane amount of money on newspapers ads, TV commercials or banner ads, you spent nothing - and let your fans do all the work for you.
With viral marketing, your campaigns will suddenly get a life of its own - and start to spread like a virus. Everyone want to see it, and when they do, they all want to share it.
It is immensely powerful, usually having 500-1000 times greater impact than what you get from regular advertisements.
But how?
There are a lot of tricks to viral marketing. Here are 7 important ones:
1. Make people feel something
The most important trick of all is to create a very strong emotion. You need to have an opinion, to express an idea with commitment and dedication. You want people to:
- be filled with love or hate.
- be very happy or insanely angry
- be an idiot or a genius
- be deeply compassionate or an egoistic bitch
You want people’s blood to be pumping of excitement.
Forget neutral, trying to please everyone, supporting several target groups or any of the many ways to be unbiased. Viral marketing is 100% about emotions.
2. Do something unexpected
This one explains itself. If you want people to notice you campaign, you have to do something different - something unexpected. Forget about trying to promote your products as just being great - everybody does that. Forget...
who really reads websites?
Posted by simon ashwin On Thursday 08 May 08
The reality is that we read very little online; we might look at a lot, but that doesn’t mean we’re reading.
There are two reasons for this:
1. Most websites are difficult to read.
2. Most website content is irrelevant for the requirements of those trying to read it.
There a direct correlation between the success of a website and its readability and relevance; if people can’t read your website, they can’t you’re your website. Subsequently, businesses should focus on improving these factors, and can do so with relatively little effort.
Not only will users read your website, but it will leave a very strong impression with them; we all remember and respect websites we like and this will say a lot about you.
Making content readable
We read content on-screen very differently to how we read content off-screen. This is a reflection not only of the very nature of a screen, but our habits and tendencies as users of the web.
We read only that content that looks easily digestible and quickly read; it has to look easy because users have utterly no patience or energy to work for a website. If content looks in any way tiring, it is all over.
We cannot read paragraphs and paragraphs of text as if it were a page from the printer. While this might appear the most straightforward way to layout our content, it is represents arguably the most worst layout approach of all. Even websites such as news websites where...
a guide to using flickr for brand and traffic building
Posted by simon ashwin On Tuesday 29 Apr 08
Flickr is a social photography website which allows you to upload and share your pictures with friends and family, registered Flickr users as well as the general internet audience.
Like its closest rival Photobucket, Flickr functions as an image host but its main attraction lies in the social sharing of images with a large community of the interested viewers.
Many amateur and professional photographers use Flickr to showcase their work in return for constructive criticisms from others. Bloggers are also avid users of Flickr because it helps them to save on bandwidth while providing image backup in the unlikely scenario that all their files are wiped out from their servers.
Flickr’s built-in social features, strong user community and growing mind share has transformed it into a viable platform for marketing your website or business. Some bloggers like Barry Schwartz and Matt McGee have written about how Flickr can be used to drive traffic to your website or online business.
Why Should I Use Flickr for my Website?
According to HitWise, Flickr is currently the #2 photography website in the U.S, UK and Australia, while holding a U.S marketshare of 38%. While it still trails Photobucket in all three markets, Flickr’s global presence means that it possibly has a greater market share in various other countries.
Flickr’s recent integration within Yahoo! Image Search meant that Flickr pictures will be displayed when anyone uses...
can social networking and blogs enhance the travel purchase experience
Posted by simon ashwin On Sunday 20 Apr 08
If you're as demanding a consumer as I am, you're probably somewhat disappointed with the state of online travel content - data that can make a huge difference in the level of enjoyment you experience with your holiday. Because of its extensive database of user reviews, I think TripAdvisor is the best site for such content. However, while TripAdvisor does help, I see two limitations with its approach.
First, it can take a while to sort through all of the material to find something useful and of course you may not have the time or the patience to do the research. Even if you do the research, you may resist placing trust in the content found on TripAdvisor. Professionally written 3rd party content from such providers as Fodor's or Frommers partly addresses the credibility issue, but the biggest limitation with this type of content is that they rarely go out on a limb to actually have an opinion on an attraction, hotel, restaurant, etc. User reviews don't solve the issue completely either because you will often find widely divergent opinions and you don't know the people writing them. Bottom line: I have a hard time placing stock in someone's opinion if I don't know him or her.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not knocking TripAdvisor. It IS helpful and it seems to be playing a role in the growth of online travel (why else would IAC/Expedia buy the company?). But as a...
first priority: get the basics right
Posted by simon ashwin On Wednesday 16 Apr 08
I was asked by an Australian government tourism body client last week if Facebook was an option for marketing its Destination. My client had read about Facebook– over one million Australians are members of Facebook – and particularly, of how some businesses had successfully utilised Facebook to market and communicate with customers. The viral nature of Facebook – friends referring friends – means that relevant or entertaining content can reach a very large audient, very quickly.
Facebook reflects the growth in online communities, and the marked shift in the nature and sophistication of how we are now using the Internet; as users, we can now participate in, and shape our websites, versus the very unidirectional relationship we had with websites only a few years ago where all we could do was read and download. Some refer to this as the “one-to-one” web.
So is Facebook the next marketing channel for my tourism client?
For the time being, the answer is no.
The issue is that while Facebook can wield remarkable marketing results for businesses that understand how to effectively utilise Facebook, Facebook should be a low priority when compared to the other online activities and investments businesses should make.
If I had to order these priorities, number one would be ensuring that the business’ website was the best it could be, number two would be optimising the website for search engines and pretty much last would be tackling Facebook.
The point being that it makes no sense to dabble in...
digital marketing elements
Posted by simon ashwin On Wednesday 02 Apr 08
The Many Forms of Digital Marketing:
1) Corporate Domain
This has been a standard since the late 90s, nearly every company, mom and pop boutique now has a web presence. The primary purpose of this is to provide the public with information about your company, it’s products, and anything else they may need. Corporate websites often compose of several features that are listed below.
A) Corporate Site
Large to small companies have established a websites around their brand, the content is around marketing products, support, and corporate information. Despite the massive efforts to perfect the corporate website, much of the content is irrelevant as prospects shy away from marketing content and start to use social media.
B) Portal Strategy
Widely popular in the late 90s this strategy was intended to serve up all user information on one page, and keep users on one’s domain. A few well known portals now exist such as MyYahoo which is a form of a feedreader. Most modern marketers realize that content is now distributed.
C) Microsites for Segmentation
Typically deployed around new product launches or campaign focuses, or specific market segments, these often short term websites are used for calling specific attraction. They typically have a unique URL and are tied to an integrate campaign. See Microsoft’s Origami microsite. Caution: some companies overly deploy these microsites and end up with a distributed and unfocused web strategy.
D) Interactive Web Marketing
The web is more than a ‘read only’ medium, unlike other...
tourism and travel in the digital era
Posted by simon ashwin On Friday 28 Mar 08
Even more so than the publishing and automotive industry, it’s the travel and tourism sector that’s been most affected by the expediential growth of the internet.
In particular, its Web 2.0 trends such as user generated content, communities of travelers, interactive experiences and Facebook Applications that are changing the way in which consumers’ research, plan and transact their travel experiences.
While developing a digital strategy for a travel client, I stumbled upon a statistic – over a quarter of all US travel related sales will be made online. That’s led to a huge shift in every aspect of running an organisation within the travel and tourism industry.
At a recent seminar, Travel & Tourism in the Digital Age, (staged by the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) at the KPMG Auditorium in Sydney), about eighty industry leaders and members attended to listen to four speakers, in what I believe was a good insight into the ways in which the web, technology and the travel industry are merging.
Some of the key challenges that are facing the sector are;
1. User empowerment
2. Users seem to be working it out faster than many businesses
3. Lack of industry and overall business knowledge to help guide travel businesses: worst still, lots of hype.
4. Retail discounters like wotif.com.au
5. Unbranded discount travel
It’s obvious that key players in the travel and tourism industries are taking the lead with tackling these challenges - and those that don’t...
the business of social networking
Posted by simon ashwin On Monday 24 Mar 08
You’ve probably noticed a new buzz in the office. The watercooler is looking unloved and your staff seem to be happily spending more time on their PCs.
Has everyone stopped gossiping and decided hard work is the new rock’n'roll?
It’s unlikely. It’s much more likely that yet another office has fallen under the spell of social networking. You might have even overheard so-and-so saying they ‘Facebooked’ someone the other night.
But what does all this noise about social media and web 2.0 mean for your business?
It’s not just a short-lived craze but potentially something that will have a longer-term impact on how you interact with your staff.The increasing popularity of social network sites such as Bebo and Facebook - both growing at a rate of knots - shouldn’t be ignored. If one member of staff creates a profile for themselves it won’t be long before there’s five more, and then 10 and then whole departments. And once all your staff are interacting online you’ll suddenly find you’re going to have to sign up too.
It’s not just a short-lived craze but potentially something that will have a longer-term impact on how you interact with your staff.
Employees have always had lives outside work but social networks are breaking down the barriers that separate these different threads. Private lives are going public - which means the relationship between employer and employee is changing, becoming more informal, more intimate.
This means it’s important to be open-minded. Exploits that might previously have only been tittered about in the...
7 essential tips: building a strong social media profile
Posted by simon ashwin On Wednesday 12 Mar 08
If you’re a new or not yet established brand, how should you use social media to build a reputation for yourself?
Apart from making sure your product/website is relevant to the social media channel, it is also useful to participate in social media communities as an end-user or brand representative.
What are some qualities which contribute to the growth and eventual popularity of a social media profile? Assuming that you aren’t a niche celebrity and don’t have a well-established brand name, what characteristics of your profile should you develop for maximum social media presence?
To uncover these factors, let’s take a look at social news communities, sites which allow their users to have editorial control over the popularity/visibility of content. Although I’m using social news as an example, note that the points I make apply to other social media channels such as networks, forums, blogs as well.
This article is not just for end-users or webmasters but businesses who want to learn how to start using social media to develop a stronger online reputation.
How to Build a Popular Social Media Profile: 7 Helpful Characteristics
These characteristics are no secret and they apply to both new social media users as well as already popular brands seeking to leverage the exposure that social media gives.
In my opinion, here are the 7 characteristics of a successful social media profile:
1. Strong Profile Visibility: Developing Brand Recognition
A good social media profile is...
what is web3.0?
Posted by simon ashwin On Wednesday 05 Mar 08
Lately I've been seeing a number of articles describing Web 3.0. Is Web 3.0 just another buzz word fueling the pundits and press or does it have some substance? One fallacy that is perpetuated by buzz words such as Web 2.0, 3.0 is the impression that the introduction of new technologies and approaches happens all at once negating prior technologies. In reality technology change is evolutionary. For example adding an improved consumer UI using AJAX or Flash to a Travel 1.0 platform may change aspects of the application to be more engaging, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the software is Travel 2.0 throughout its underlying code.
So what is Web 3.0?
A common mantra expressed around Web 3.0 is that software will be more pervasive, faster and cheaper to deploy. Web 3.0 applications will understand the semantics of Web sites enabling new levels of machine-to-machine communication. Personalization will filter information to deliver information that is more relevant to the consumer delivered on the device of there choice. Information itself will be dynamically generated reflecting the needs of the supplier to sell perishable inventory. With the travel industry still struggling to integrate Web 2.0 features and functionality (e.g. user generated content, new UIs using AJAX or Flash) the arrival of Web 3.0 will likely take some time to manifest itself in travel applications.
five ways to go green with your website
Posted by simon ashwin On Saturday 01 Mar 08
Earth Day and other initiatives build awareness of how we can work to save resources, reduce waste, and recycle what is already in use. As you build and develop your company’s website, here are some ideas to ‘Go Green’:
1. Offer email sign-ups as an alternative to traditional mailings. Give Customers an option on how they receive sale notices, coupons and special offers. A registration for email notices that would replace paper snail mail is a winning solution for both the company and the customer.
2. Report Green programs in your industry. No one knows your industry better than you, so who better to report on what is happening in the areas of reduction and recycling initiatives? This reinforces the brand as a thought leader and builds customer loyalty.3. Partner Up. Many companies now have philanthropic partnerships and Green solutions in place – or building. Feature these on your website. A paper supplier can provide information on the work it does with a tree farm, bringing possible customer donations to the same good works. Matching schemes and other support should be showcased.
4. Give Green Options. Customers are becoming more and more savvy about Earth-friendly products, so highlighting them on your website or even on a microsite can be a smart tactic. Products made with recycled material like recycled paper, or produced in a responsible manner can all be big draws.
5. Link It. Providing links to Green initiatives is a lo-cost and straightforward way to highlight a company’s stance. For...
building a website marketing plan
Posted by simon ashwin On Tuesday 19 Feb 08
Once you’ve invested and built a website, do you have a plan to keep it fresh? To continue its development to the company’s goals?
A website marketing plan is your roadmap to long-term success. It’s a highly detailed, well-researched document that sets goals, provides directions, and defines the website’s strategy over time.
A Website Marketing Plan should dovetail into a company’s overall marketing plan. Online marketing is most effective when it operates in concert with offline marketing. Voice, look & feel,and message should be consistent across all media.
As part of the whole, the Website Marketing Plan has a narrower focus. It is concerned with developing strategies and tactics related to 3 major objectives:1. Define and Meet Company Goals for the Website.
The website is a tool that can answer any number of needs. These need to be distinctly called out. For example, the website should provide current information on products and services to existing clients. It should provide the arena for sweepstakes or raffles in partnership with overall brand advertising campaigns. Perhaps it should also be a point of sale for certain items. Or it should generate sales leads, build demographic information on customers, etc.2. Identify Website Marketing Strategies.
This breaks down into two ways. The first is in promotion of the site to the Internet at large. How will the website’s existence and advantages be communicated to customers? This should include details about Pay Per Click (PPC) and SEO strategies and other marketing avenues. What are...
facebook and opensocial
Posted by simon ashwin On Monday 11 Feb 08
Wondering if you should use your Facebook Application on Google’s OpenSocial? With OpenSocial being used by Myspace, Bebo and Yahoo, many are wondering if the same applications should be leveraged on both.
The answer is a qualified yes.
The audiences of Facebook and OpenSocial have core similarities. This means that the application that was developed for the Facebook population may find some success in OpenSocial.
But it’s not a one-size-fits-all proposition. The two platforms attract similar demographics, yes. But ones with different affinities. Digging under the surface to understand these differences will pay dividends at the back end.
For example, regular Facebook users are most likely to use Twitter, buy clothing online at cause-related sites like ThreadlessNoMore, and tend not to branch out onto other social networks. OpenSocial users, on the other hand, trend more towards using Skype and Meebo, buy clothing online at upscale retailers like Abercrombie, and use multiple applications to provide personalized profile information.
Launching an application built for Facebook and the Facebook community onto the OpenSocial platform shouldn’t be done cold. To build success, take the time to work with the development team to consider the different audiences and technical structures. A few minor tweaks may be all that’s needed to rocket the application into a whole second universe.
why travel mash-ups are important
Posted by simon ashwin On Saturday 02 Feb 08
As much as the Online Tracel Agencies (OTAs) may position themselves as a one-stop shops for travel planning and booking, the reality is that no single site can make this claim. With the introduction of over 30+ travel sites over the past 2 years, travel content on the Web has never been more fragmented. Sites that provide travel blogs, itinerary sharing and rating systems abound.
The future of destination content should include a mash-up of multiple sites such as the recent by American Express regarding their travel mash-up of Travel & Leisure, American Express Publishing and Lonely Planet. In my view consumers would flock to mash-up sites that combine multiple reviews from Trip Advisor, IGOUGO and others, organized around a single hotel search.
Obviously copyright issues may be an obstacle, but if the review sites benefit financially through referral income, they may be willing to provide the individual ratings. The same needs to be true for itinerary sharing sites, multiple samples from Realtravel and Gusto! would be beneficial. Mash-ups are here to stay and will continue to play a major role in online travel.
should you build a corporate blog
Posted by simon ashwin On Wednesday 30 Jan 08
A corporate blog can be an effective marketing device. While all blogs provide a venue for quick publishing and water cooler-type dialogue, there are two major kinds. Each provides very different benefits to your organization.
An external blog, which is accessible to the Internet, is a powerful public relations tool. Infused with corporate flavour yet more informal than a press release, the information published in this setting builds brand authority.
Many external blogs have taken the place of published newsletters companies historically would provide their regular and prospective customers. The blogs often provide information on company offerings and initiatives, give valuable advice, and reinforce the company’s identity.
An internal blog is available only on a company intranet to employees and, optionally, selected associates. Often this is a platform for thought leaders to share their vision. It can also be a forum for corporate evangelists or experts to talk about the business of your business.
There are also CEO blogs, which are available both internally and externally. These caught the wave of popularity coming out of the technology sector and are often vectored to that same audience. In areas outside the geek-set, PR groups struggle to quantify the benefit of a CEO Blog unless that person’s personality and knowledge in their field are largely identified with the company’s value.
The pitfalls of blogs are inherent to any kind of publishing. Despite the immediacy of it, the content should be vetted as carefully as it would be...
why you should optimize your site for rss
Posted by simon ashwin On Tuesday 22 Jan 08
Like a newspaper or magazine gathers articles for readers, Internet denizens have taken to using programs that collect dynamic content of their favourite sites. This allows them to do create a single page that scans a list of websites to either previews fresh content or even provide entire articles.
It’s possible because of RSS feeds. RSS is an acronym with several definitions: Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, or a variation on one of those. The bottom line is that RSS is a text format pulled from a site’s XML.
In activating your website with a RSS feed, you’ve made the content in that feed available to syndication. Just like columns can appear in several newspapers, this makes the articles and blogs you publish available be viewed by any number of aggregators.
This is an easy and customer-friendly way to let customers know that there is fresh content on your site. While email-notification also does this, more and more readers have become overwhelmed by their email inboxes and look to their RSS aggregators for this information.
However, activating an RSS feed is not as simple as it seems. Many automated RSS feeds simply default to publishing the first sentences of new content, which may not give a good insight to the blog. And publishing entire articles leaves a website open for a tactic called ‘scraping’. This happens when competitors plagiarize articles to other blogs. It’s detrimental in many ways, perhaps the worst being...
google analytics
Posted by simon ashwin On Saturday 19 Jan 08
Ever wondered how your company’s website fares against others in your industry? Google Analytics, a free service offered by Google, can provide detailed statistics about your website – including industry benchmarking that tells you exactly how your website compares.
Google Analytics is a tool that was launched in 2005. The detailed, and free, reporting package was an immediate and phenomenal hit. Faced with an overwhelming demand, Google had to slow down registrations to invitation-only until mid-2006 until it expanded its infrastructure to handle the load.
There are over 80 reports in the Google Analytics package. Included is data on how people found a site and how they explore it. This includes tracking visitors through the exploration of the site, how long they stay, and an analysis of where they came from.
From a commercial perspective, some of the most critical data is how the site compares to others in the same field. This goes beyond surface data like hit counts to reports on conversions (sales), ad performance, and lead generation (email registrations).
This is powerful information for marketing and sales teams, especially when applied to Google AdWords campaigns. Google Analytics is fully integrated with AdWords and illustrates which keywords are really working and which ones are not working for the site.
In understanding how your website is performing compared to others, opting-in to Google Analytics benchmarking feature will enable reports on your site's performance against comparables, and metrics on how your niche compares...
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- web 2.0
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