Last week we published a guide on how to monitor Google Places reviews, Web updates, and content changes. It was well-received by our readers, so we’d like to build on the post and share info this time on tools for online reviews monitoring and management. Hopefully, this list will help you track online reviews of your brand, product, establishment, service, or business – and enhance your reputation as more customers talk about you on Google Places, Yelp, online directories, local business listings, and social media sites. Or, if you’ve used any of the online reputation management tools below, do let us know by leaving a comment below and sharing with us your experience. ReviewPush Texas-based ReviewPush markets itself as an “online review management tool for small to large businesses”. It offers a dashboard for monitoring / tracking reviews, protecting your brand and reputation, engaging with customers, and enhancing product offerings and promotions (such as coupons). ReviewPush features include: Continuous social – Read the full article
There are ways to monitor changes and updates to your favorite websites, blogs, social networks, classifieds, and local business listings (including Google Places pages) – without having to watch the Web 24/7 or pressing the Refresh button every minute. And while RSS is today’s most popular way of syndicating content automatically, not all websites have it. (And not all users prefer it.) That’s where this list comes in: to be able keep up with what’s happening (in real-time) on any place across the entire Web; to monitor what customers and competitors alike are doing and saying; and to listen and respond to reviews and feedback as they are generated. Here are some of today’s best tools for monitoring changes to any website. Page2RSS Page2RSS is a free service that lets you create feeds for web pages you wish to follow or monitor – pages, specifically, that are static or don’t offer any RSS/Atom feeds. Page2RSS also serves as a way – Read the full article
According to a study by Forrester Research, 71 percent of online shoppers read customer reviews before making a purchase decision. That’s close to three out of every four! Enough for us to have to seriously take this insight, one that serves as yet another proof that, when it comes to winning new customers (and bringing in new business) a satisfied customer or a loyal fan just might be your most potent sales rep. Oh, and it’s also probably a good idea to start soliciting customer reviews and testimonials. Why? More than techniques to manage your online reputation, reviews and testimonials can act as the worms that bait the fish. (Worms: a funny word to describe that which persuades shoppers to buy and mere visitors to become customers.) Need advice on soliciting – and maximizing the potency of – customer reviews and testimonials? Here’s a quick guide: Soliciting Reviews Ask for it. Your customers may never know that you want their – Read the full article
Social media is the phenomenon of this century, and along with huge advances in mobile technology, the Internet has changed our lives beyond compare in an amazingly short time. The tipping point is approaching where more business will be done online (than offline), and companies will have to quickly adapt to these new markets or suffer the consequences. However, along with these vast new markets come some downsides. The free and almost instant communication social media brings means that good ideas can spread quickly – but conversely bad reviews can just as quickly spread and ruin a business. The anonymity it affords means that people are no longer afraid of saying what they think, or going over the top. In the leisure industry, prime examples are review sites, the biggest of which is undoubtedly TripAdvisor. There are few other sites that rely so heavily on good reviews for their continued business, so here are some interesting ideas adopted by some – Read the full article
A big part of running a successful business is making sure that everyone knows about it. Unfortunately, though, that can be a lot easier said than done! If you want to make your business more visible, tap into the power of social media marketing and take advantage of these expert tips: Offer specials to your social media contacts If people know that they’re going to get extra discounts and perks by “liking” you on Facebook or following you on Twitter, they’re going to do it! And, in return, they’ll give you things that you would have a real hard time getting otherwise, like solid word-of-mouth advertising and repeat business. Show people that you’re genuinely excited A big problem that people have in social media marketing is posting something because they feel like they “have to”. Guess what? That lack of enthusiasm shines through, and it’s not a good way to get people talking about your business. Instead, make sure that – Read the full article
You’ve spent a great deal of time and effort optimizing your website for the search engines. Why? Because a stellar search ranking is how you’re going to get visitors and ultimately, customers. SEO has been pegged as the most important – and only – way to cultivate traffic. Your SEO tactics have been successful, and you’re among the top results for your keywords. And then comes a curveball. Siri and Her Effect on SEO and Local Search For millions of Apple iPhone 4S users, and there are more of them every day, your SEO won’t matter. Meet Siri. She’s a clever little witch, and you’re going to have to reassess your current SEO tactics if you hope to please her. And please her you must, because iPhone users rely on her. Instead of opening a search engine and manually typing keywords, they’re just going to ask Siri to find them what they’re looking for. And Siri, being the intelligent voice – Read the full article
Yesterday Yahoo! Site Explorer decided to retire from business. It has left many amateur SEOs, and some professional SEOs too, at a bit of a loss. Many SEOs and agencies have been using the back link service in Yahoo! Site Explorer to monitor, analyse, and generally try to copy the link building actions of their competitors. As someone who has been involved in SEO for over 5 years (not so much by choice but by necessity) I have used Yahoo! extensively, and seen my competitors use it against me, too! I manage several sites across various niches, and some of my sites do interlink with each other, wherever a connection really does benefit a reader. I have seen people leave comments on all my blogs, and doing so in the order of Yahoo! backlinks for my main website. SEO Stalkers are gonna have a harder time I have also seen the same people leave comments on other blogs where I – Read the full article
Magento is an ecommerce script which is said to be more authoritative for ecommerce and was developed by Varien. Magento uses Zend PHP and MYSQL databases and is said to be an open source program. It is said to be more flexible in nature along with the modular structure and is totally capable of being scaled and also possesses a vast range of management options which most of the users of magento are fond of. Magento is more superior in nature and presents your products in a very powerful manner. You can create your products catalog easily and also manage it. Varien previously worked with osCommerce and they intended to diverge osCommerce but then decided to redraft and rephrase it and hence it resulted in the formation of Magento. Magento was started to develop in 2007 and in the month of august in the same year, a public beta version was announced and in 2010, Magento mobile was made available – Read the full article
