Let me begin by going over a few of the changes highlighted in Greg Sterling’s article:

• Google Places pages are now being replaced with Google+ Local.
• Zagat reviews (acquired in 2011) are now integrated into Google+ Local pages.
• Google+ Local pages are being used across Google’s channels (Google+, Maps, etc.).
• And our Google+ circles will now influence how our results are filtered.

Changes for Consumers

So in a nutshell, Google is expanding the capability of their Place pages and offering users a more personalized experience.  We will no longer have to offer our experience with a business on a one to five scale with all of the factors taken into account.  Google’s new rating system separates factors.  For example, restaurants are rated in three categories: Food, Decor, and Service.  Each category is on a scale of zero to three.  This offers a much more versatile platform for reviews.  Imagine all the places you frequent where the decor is awful and service is not that great, but you come back time after time because of the incredible food.  With Yelp, a place like that might get a three star rating, but with Google+ Local it could get a three for food and a one for decor and service.  This is going to help consumers understand what a restaurant is all about better than other review services have.

These changes are going to make the experience more personalized as well.  By integrating our Google+ circles, Google can filter results to show what our friends, colleagues, family, or any other circle thinks about a place.  What if I create a circle that contains all of my foodie friends?  Google can now return results which I know have been vetted by my foodie friends whose opinions I value.

Changes for Businesses

Businesses that currently manage their Google Place page are not going to see any drastic changes on the back end, according to Google.  However, Google is looking forward to rolling out additional changes that will help businesses be more social with their customers.  This is something that Google has been lacking; businesses have not been able to be social like they are on Twitter and Facebook.  With this change, perhaps Google+ will be able to make some gains on its rivals in the social network sphere as businesses begin to populate Google+ with content that is worthwhile for users.

The biggest thing for businesses is that Google+ Local pages are going to be indexed.  The potential SEO benefits are significant and businesses that take advantage will surely be rewarded.  Businesses that do not become social on the network will be missing a huge opportunity to improve their rankings on SERPS.  After all, don’t you think that Google will rank a social business that has reviews from people in your circles higher than one that does not embrace the change?  Businesses, especially small and local brands, need to claim their space and learn to use it, or hire someone to teach them.

This is just the beginning in changes we are going to be seeing.  Foursquare is also shaking up the game by releasing a new version of their app today.  I cannot wait to see what’s possible on that front.  Let your voice be heard in the comment section join the conversation.  Consumers, how do you feel about the way Google is shaking up the web?  And businesses, are you going to embrace this change?

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CNSLT.in provides customers with a channel to voice frustration, and allows restaurant staff to resolve problems quickly before the damage can spread over social networks and review sites.  With CNSLT.in, restaurant staff will know of a problem before the customer leaves the table instead of waiting to see a one-star review on Yelp or before that customer can tell their friends to avoid the restaurant.

Even the most customer-centric restaurants focused on service will have a handful of customers that do not leave feeling completely satisfied.  It’s the nature of the business.  The key is to catch the problems and resolve them early before damage can be done.  Most customers with a complaint do not voice their opinion because they feel it is not worth the effort and will instead just stop visiting the restaurant.  CNSLT.in solves that problem by offering an incredibly easy way for customers to provide feedback that alerts staff quickly.

The Power of Resolution

After customers register complaints, almost 70% of those customers will give a business another shot if the complaint is resolved.  Furthermore, over 95% of customers will come back if the complain is resolved quickly.  In terms of customer retention, it pays to take care of dissatisfaction quickly.  People appreciate being treated with respect and feeling that they are important to the business.

Controlling Negative Word of Mouth

Complaints must also be taken care of to avoid the harmful effects of negative word of mouth.  If a complaint is resolved, the customer will tell an average of five people about the great treatment they received.  On the other hand, the average dissatisfied customer will gripe to eleven people!

These figures only account for actual conversations between people and leaves out social media and review sites.  With the growing power of consumers thanks to sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon, word of mouth is no longer a conversation among friends, it is public information that lives on indefinitely.  Today, one negative review can influence people for as long as your business exists.

According to a study by Michael Luca of the Harvard Business School, improving your Yelp score by one star will result in a boost of 5-9% in revenue.  Your online reputation and your bottom line are inextricably linked.  Take care of your online reputation and protect your restaurant’s ability to be financially healthy.

It is CNSLT.in’s goal to minimize the chances of your establishment receiving a negative review while simultaneously improving the likelihood of your loyal patrons changing into brand evangelists across all online social networks.

Contact us today for a free demo!

A chef is faced with a huge number of ingredients – and a near-unlimited number of ways to combine and prepare those ingredients. For a beginner, these variables are overwhelming. However, the flexibility it affords an experienced chef allows them to craft a dish ideally suited to their customer.

Similarly, a seasoned marketer can successfully maneuver tools and techniques to directly reach the customer.

In a recent talk at the Mashable Media Summit (2011), Michael Lazerow, founder and CEO of Buddy Media, discusses how to how to spread your content across social networks more effectively. His main points emphasize my analogy:

1. Setup and optimize your social presences

2. Socialize all content to eliminate dead ends

3. Use social to make money today

Certainly, setting up an online presence on Facebook is important. However, Facebook is not the catch-all answer to online social advertising. All businesses and individuals must focus on channels where their consumers are most active – which means, first of all, determining where those customers are active.

It follows that most businesses should listen before launching a campaign, so they can determine (i) where their customers are active, (ii) what their customers are saying, and (iii) how they can address their customers’ needs. Only after determining this can a business, or an agency on behalf of a business, successfully run an online social marketing campaign.

Regardless of the marketing mix, any channel used to promote a brand should be free of dead ends. A dead end is the when a user completes a task and nothing happens. It is vital that brands convert actions and turn them into free viral clicks. Encourage and even reward shares on Facebook, tweets on Twitter, submissions to StunbleUpon, votes on Reddit/Digg, etc.

As Lazerow demonstrated, the proven tactic of converting dead ends into free viral clicks can result in a massive number of impressions (3.5mm) and a significant amount of savings compared with pay-per-click ads ($43,000).

These viral clicks aren’t just for visibility – search engines like Google also take them into account when ranking links.

And finally, make sure the ingredients of the marketing mix complement each another. Eliminating silos will ensure a singular voice for your campaign and increase the value of each impression on a potential customer.

As the Talmud states, “Three things are good in little measure and evil in large: yeast, salt, and hesitation.” Luckily, when used correctly, salt is savory and so is Facebook.

As James Beard said, “Where would we be without salt?”

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Restaurants are especially bombarded by new ways to market their establishment. Group buying platforms and mobile payment systems are only a couple of the recent trends that have exploded in popularity.

Alas, the popularity of trends does not imply a popularity of methods. Thus the growth of the “Splinternet” – technology and channel fragmentation caused by the availability of multiple tools used for the same end-goal. User and business dissatisfaction is the result.

Between the hundreds of user-review websites and online ordering platforms, the mandate to build a positive online presence and engage customers across social networks becomes more and more unwieldy for restaurants who feel left-behind before they even open their doors for business. The most basic step – designing and developing a simple website – poses a significant challenge!

Unfortunately, things are going to get worse before they get better. With so many marketing channels to manage and daily responsibilities, managers have great difficulty keeping up with new technologies. For example, the introduction of iOS5 and the personal assistant Siri is predicted to have an enormous impact on visibility for restaurants.

How are potential customers going to find you? Well, now with a simple question:

“Where can I get a slice of pizza?”

Traditional search engine results were populated based on specific metrics, which could be semi-controlled by search engine optimization and pay-per-click. The results from Siri are – at this stage – far less transparent.

Worse, social media is now influencing search rankings. How many times has your pizza-joint’s webpage been shared on Facebook or re-tweeted on Twitter? What about your new Google+ Business Page for your 5-star steak house? Do you even have one? Even more importantly, what are past patrons saying on Yelp? Are they leaving positive reviews?

Not only are search results being ranked by their social relevancy and popularity, but some mobile applications and convenience systems (e.g. Siri) are only delivering the top result from one of the many channels (i.e. Yelp’s best reviewed restaurant located closest to you at the time of inquiry).  What if you don’t manage your Yelp page and only focus on garnering a reputation on TripAdvisor? Siri may ignore you entirely.

The consequence of all of these changes is that utilizing your time wisely is essential.

It’s important to know where to focus your energy: what customer segment frequents which channel. If your target audience is primarily active on Yelp and refuses to order from anywhere other than Seamless Web you will have a much larger return by focusing a majority of your time on those two channels.

But for now, where do you start? It remains early days, and I am eager to hear what you think of all this. Share your stories below and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

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Social CRM began in consumer facing businesses, but has already migrated up a bit upstream. My goal in this post is to teach you how investing a bit of time each day can provide new opportunities for customer retention and acquisition, rather than a waste of time.

Virtual networking can easily become an insular activity. There is an interior froth that consists of people who think they are extremely well connected, followed, and even influential. But then there are real people, who live in a physical world.

By insular, I also mean the individual’s obsession with vanity. You might be quick to scan over your own profile, activity, and mentions multiple times a day, for long periods of time. If this is you, or if you understand what I mean, then you should PLAN your networking.

What goal will your personal communications strategy achieve, then how will you take steps every day/week to follow through?

You must do several things to make this happen:

- Understand the networks you’re on, or that you should be on (Professional vs. Social).
- Differentiate who to reach on which networks, and how to use those networks accordingly.
- Lastly, take a look at the commercial goals you are representing. Do you like your company?

Build your network with fervor. The more direct connections you obtain today, the more widespread you’ll be able to search for the right person when the time comes. Never forget, however, that online connections should represent those you make in real life. Online profiles (and the networks they live on) are great as a means to investigate new inroads, as well as to follow up.

Relationships happen over time. If you don’t like your company, then to be building connections should force you to re-evaluate where you stand in your career, because these will be connections that are tied with you personally, and no longer on behalf of the institution. Your personal brand will showcase each new connection you build.

Either get out before “they make you” network on their behalf, or if you like where you are, then get going with a calculated networking plan.

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Just this weekend Erik Schonfeld, co-editor of TechCrunch, publicly posted his complaints towards American Airlines to his staggering 31,000 followers on Twitter and over 2 million monthly readers on TechCrunch com. As Eric clearly states, he “consider[ed] it a minor miracle that the plane [was] actually in the air.”

“After two cancelled flights on this trip alone, a seat without a cushion, and some trouble counting the number of people on the plane which made us return to the gate a second time after another minor problem, I’ve lost count of how many errors American Airlines has now made in this comedy that is my travels. Oh, and @AmericanAir also managed to prove that it is an utterly toothless marketing arm of American which fails when it comes to providing actual customer service.”

I personally believe social media is a real-time PR tool to enhance a brand’s reputation and engage consumers – whether they are brand evangelists, potential customers or ill-hearted after a recent experience with a company’s product/service. I, like Eric, recently had some poor experiences myself with a boutique hotel in upstate New York – little do they know when you search their name online, my rant pops up first; that cannot be helping their business!

Both large and small businesses need to harness the power of listening, analyzing data and reacting. Virgin America showed a great understanding of utilizing these tools when it tweeted to Eric, in response to his frustration with their competitor, “As always, we look forward to having you onboard!”

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NM Incite survey reveals likelihood to share positive/negative sentiment.

On a macro level, cross-pollination is rampant between global users, across countries in Asia and throughout the rest of the world. This means that users are communicating not only with family, friends and neighbors nearby, but with consumers across the globe. In many cases, this is due to existing relationships that really span these geographies. In most cases, however, there is just a natural tendency for humans in one designated marketing area (for instance, Japan) to refer to users in any other country for information.

Another macro trend found in Asia is that most consumer access comes from mobile devices. This is an important consideration for brands and small businesses alike.

Within Asia, social media usage varies widely from one country to the next. In Korea, for instance, users are most inclined to share positive experiences. On the other hand, users in China are most likely to share negative experiences with a product or brand. Other discrepancies include where social media is accessed: Vietnam had the highest percentage of internet users accessing social media at work, while Japan had the lowest.

Notably in China, the largest source of social media content was seen in blogs and bulletin board systems. The two largest social networking sites, RenRen and Kaixin001, are still in the maturing stages of improving user experience and user base. Moreover, “grassroots” celebrities were more popular online than were national celebrities, such as Yao Ming. With information stemming from so many unique sources, coupled with the finding that users rely primarily on user reviews and feedback for purchasing decisions, companies must find ways to listen and apply new understandings of online sentiment.

Click here to view a webinar of the findings by NM Incite.

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So what do you do? Minor tweaks with an educated guess as to which handle to turn, and which way? Or do you venture large adjustments to get the answer very quickly? These are incredibly different strategies, but might tell a lot about you as a small business owner.

What would say more is whether your decide to change anything at all (a warm enough shower isn’t all that bad). Ok, the metaphor doesn’t extend too far beyond that. The point, however, is that many business owners become complacent in their operations, their marketing strategy or lack thereof, and in their potential for growth.

If you don’t have the means to redesign the entire bathroom, start with some small decisions that will at least enhance the experience that is your brand. Allowing your customers to communicate the experience that they enjoy is especially productive.

Often times this process can be captured in social media. Yes, Facebook just passed 600,000,000 members. Are you necessarily trying to sell to all of them? Focus on your customers and ask them what they think about your brand. Thing is, don’t be so obvious about it. You need to choose the right media channel(s), and in a clever, effective fashion. Let your customers tell you because they want to do so.

Social media will amplify small tweaks, whether hot or cold.

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I found out quickly; the only worthwhile interviews I ever had, when looking for a job, were when I had been referred by a “friend-of-a-friend.”  As the saying goes, it’s not what you know, but rather who you know.  To help the Facebook generation get a head start, a new startup launched tomorrow:  In the Door is yet another job board aggregator, but it meshes available job openings across the online hiring landscape with the individuals connected in your social graph.  Though it isn’t yet entirely robust, it will show you opportunities where you may know someone on the inside.  Finally! Professional networking is on autopilot!

It is important to leverage this new tool, In the Door, but don’t stop there.  The best likelihood for finding new opportunities is through reaching out and meeting new people.  As individuals, we are embedded in social graphs – meaning it is difficult to deliver oneself from unemployment or other economic disparages, simply because better opportunities aren’t necessarily being created within an immediate universe of connections.  According to social theory, the most important source of new knowledge is through “weak” connections, such as “friends-of-friends.”  It takes active networking to seek out these individuals, to find new information, and to gain access to new opportunities.  Invest your time in speaking with professionals in your desired field(s), and always ask for someone else they recommend you speak with next.  Doing so will expand your network exponentially, hopefully placing you on the doorstep of the right opportunity.

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