2010 Full of Promise
Posted by admin in Social Media on January 5th, 2010
Its been some time since I last posted anything. Not being a very good social media specialist now am I. Its good to take a break every once in a while. It lets you collect your thoughts and take a new approach at small business solutions and just about anything else.
2010 is already turning out to be a positive, over last year and we’re only 4 days into it! This is great news for everyone. Just having a positive attitude can be up lifting and move people in the right direction. I was at a bar several weeks ago listening to a local band play and was fortunate enough to get introduced to the Sammy Steele Band.
Why is this important on my blog you ask? Because, as I stood around with everyone else listening to this band play I came to the realization that, we in America are something special and extra ordinary. You see, despite the fact we just went thru the biggest financial crisis since the ‘Great Depression’ I saw a lot of positive attitudes and good ol’ fashioned American spirit.
Maybe it was the music, maybe it was the beer, but thats why I waited several weeks to write this. There is talk of hope and optimism in the air, not just hear but I’m hearing it everywhere. At that show that night the music was a mix of Bruce Springsteen meets American Country. It was good ol’ fashioned American music without the twang! It gave me a sense of pride to be an American, despite our economic situation. It gave me a sense of motivation to continue to excel and continue to working hard for my dreams. Realizing we may be down but not out is what will drive all of us to succeed in 2010.
With that being said, may all of my clients have a prosperous 2010. Set you standards high, raise the bar and continue on with that American spirit that makes us a step above.
Open Transparency
Posted by admin in Automotive, Web Design, Web Solutions on November 21st, 2009
I recently read 2 great books. “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis and “Free – the future of a radical price” by Chris Anderson and they have given me many fresh ideas on web based marketing strategies for my clients.
One thing that was itching at me the whole time I was reading these books was the importance of transparency and how it relates to your website.
When you compare automotive web solutions companies look at what the company has to offer and how transparent are they with providing you raw data (analytics or web traffic). We review the information with our clients so they can make informed decisions. We even educate them on the importance of any data they may not be familiar with.
After speaking with a few client and discussing how some vendors just won’t open up and discuss numbers I began to wonder why. The truth is either the person on the other end doesn’t completely understand the numbers or the vendor has something to hide. This shows little attention to some of the most important details as well as a lazy attitude of care toward your client.
Fresh Input will be transparent with you and discuss with you the importance of such numbers as bounce rate, pageviews, pages per visit & time on website. We are recently delighted to see yet another one of our clients double the amount of visitors to the website, increase their pageviews by 190% as well as increase the time of their visitors from a 3 minute avg. to a nearly 5 minute avg.
Yelp – Take #2
Posted by admin in Social Media on September 25th, 2009
I just got off the phone with ‘Sam’ from Yelp. He comes across as pushy but I know he is probably a young guy that is just passionate about the Yelp website. Unfortunately he wanted to sit and debate with me over why I think Yelp is no longer worth visiting. He did not want to listen to the end user telling him how I felt. He wanted to talk about how great Yelp is and where it’s heading and how they are better than CitySearch, etc. I had to practically yell over him to get him to stop. Enough of the madness. Yelp believes that it is doing its community a favor by removing many reviews (based on what Sam told me). Their so called filter will automatically detect which ones to keep up and which reviews to take down.
I no longer contribute to Yelp, and I would suggest you don’t either.
I tried to communicate to Sam that I felt like I was wasting my time if Yelp did not want to consider my voice just as important as everyone else’s when I wrote reviews. Have written several reviews and not having them show up made me feel like I was not important. I wanted to know where those reviews went. After all I spent my time and energy writing them.
Yelp is not an open community like you might think. It is not social like you may think. If Yelp is going to police their reviews and services they should do a better job at making sure more people’s voices are heard. The users who spend time and energy writing and being a part of Yelp (therefor making Yelp what it is) deserve to have their 2 cents heard. I don’t think abusive language needs to be showcased on the website and do think that hateful or abusive language should be removed, but I don’t think the current policy Yelp has in place is going to work.
When Yelp decides to make the Yelp community a truly social and open community and have most of its reviews involved in the conversation I will participate once again. But as long as reviews are not being given their due credit, Yelp has found 1 less customer and with the ability to communicate that and my reasoning behind it across the internet they should take notice of what the end users think more closely.
More Yelp Contraversy can be found here.
Yelp – Not Living Up to Expectation
Posted by admin in Social Media on September 20th, 2009
I have been on Yelp and have written several reviews over the past several months. Some good, some not so good but I have found that it can be a powerful tool. I have promoted the website to my clients and recommend that they have some involvement with the website from a business stand point. With automotive dealers it seems that many times the angry customer is the only one online writing about how bad their experience was with a dealership. So in an effort to help my dealers I have assisted them in being more pro-active with their happy customers and getting them to write how well their experience with the dealership went. This has begun to work.
Unfortunately Yelp has decided that it will not show all of the reviews for a particular business. They obviously haven’t considered the time and effort it takes for an individual to write something (good or bad) about a company. Well this is my 2 star rating for Yelp. Yelp needs to wake up because I do not like the fact that I have spent my time to go online and write something about a company, only to find that it is not showing up on Yelp. Yelp has not made any consideration for its user community by clearly coming up with a review method that makes no sense.
What I am talking about is that I myself have written some reviews and I know for a fact I have written one about one of my auto dealers (after purchasing a vehicle from them).This particular client has had 15+ reviews. I know this because I help them track this. Yelp is only indicating 5 reviews. Well, what happened to the other 10+ reviews? It’s like they just disappeared. There is no rhyme or reason to which reviews they have decided to attach to this particular business.
This got me wondering, why am I wasting my time writing reviews on Yelp if they aren’t going to even show up? Why am I going to work at writing to let other customers know how good or bad a company is if Yelp has no regard for what I am doing a) for the community at large and b) for Yelp. By creating this community Yelp has to realize people don’t want to feel like they have wasted their time writing a review only to have it not show up. Yelp needs to realize that people expect to see reviews on many different customers providing information not just a handful. Yelp need to realize that people will not be using Yelp once they find out their reviews are not showing up. This is left me feeling like Yelp doesn’t care about everyone’s point of view, only the one’s Yelp has decided are important.
Based on this experience I feel that this method of picking and choosing reviews really undermines the meaning of Social Media. Yelp is suppose to be an online community where a lot of social interaction takes place. While it may accomplish this, I believe that if the Yelp community gets wind of their practices of not showcasing all reviews but picking and choosing which reviews it wants to display, the Yelp community may get quite upset. As it stands right now Yelp is a waste of time. Don’t buy into writing reviews only to find out Yelp has considered them of no value and therefore not displaying them.
When Yelp decides to change this practice I will begin participating in that community again. Until then I will write poor reviews on Yelp and why it is not worth the time to take out of your day to write a review with them.
The Capitalization of Social Media
Posted by admin in Social Media on September 8th, 2009
I came across this web article about Birmingham City University of the U.K. offering a degree in Social Media. Really? If you ask me this just sounds like a way to ploy money out peoples hands. I can see value in educating people on Social Media but to turn it into a 4 year degree program. Come on.
What’s that going to cost someone? I’ve got to imagine several thousand at the least. Take your money and save it people. Buy yourself a computer, plop yourself down in front of a computer for hours, days, weeks at a time. Once you’ve gotten your seat on (cyclists know this term very well) then you can keep plugging away behind the screen, digging and digging and digging.
I don’t think people need to be caught up in getting a degree in Social Media, they just need passion and a drive to learn on their own. You see you can learn everything you need to know for FREE, online. Oh my did I say FREE? Yes, that’s right you can educate yourself for FREE by reading articles, postings online and being a part of the conversation. That will make you a professional more than any schooling ever will.
That last sentence kind of reminds me of going to college and be inspired and wowed by the whole education thing. Yah, I got my degree and then I met the real world. Let me just give you a peace of advice, where education and reality meet up are worlds apart. Go buy yourself a Mac and a good 21+ inch monitor. Pay for that Comcast bill and spend some time behind the computer, online, engaging with the world via the Blogs, Facebooks and Twitters. That is social media. That’s where you will learn.
I won’t dispel buying books either. There are some very note worthy characters out there that have a lot to offer. Here are a few recommendations:
“What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis
“Twitter Power” by Joel Comm
“FREE” by Chris Anderson
Cost of reading this article, FREE, cost of interacting with people online in blogs, facebook & Twitter, FREE, educating yourself online and becoming a Social Media guru, Priceless.