New07 Blog Reviews » Business

Nestle, Palm Oil and Social Media, Oh My!

cgseo — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:20:53 +0000

By now it’s no secret Nestle is having some issues with their social media, one of the most talked about is their Fan Page fiasco. Greenpeace began the process with a report on Sinar Mas (whom Nestle used) harvesting palm oil , which is having a direct impact on the rainforest and orangutan populations . In March of this year, Greenpeace released a video depicting a man “taking a break” by biting into an orangutan’s finger (the video might be squeamish to some). Nestle promptly had it removed from YouTube, but it didn’t stop Greenpeace from posting it on Vimeo where it went viral. From there Greenpeace supporters flooded Nestle’s Fan Page and well, here we are today. Recently the dust is starting to settle, a little anyway, but there is still a lot to learn from what’s happened. I had the opportunity to talk with Marketing Pilgrim’s Frank Reed, about a few things to take away from what’s happened and how to prevent bad PR getting the best of you online. How did Nestle ruin their online reputation? Were they even ruined? In this day and age I wonder if it is possible to totally ruin your online reputation. People have short memories and are generally forgiving. In the case of Nestle there will be many who learn of Nestle’s efforts to make the palm oil situation right but the apparent unwillingness of many of the social media “protesters” to let them tell their story could actually end up working in Nestle’s favor. What could Nestle have avoided and did any warning signs appear before hand that could have alerted them to remain cautious? Well, if Nestle was aware of what their supplier was doing then they certainly were moving forward at their own risk. It would have made a great story for Nestle if they had identified the issue, ended the relationship then told their story. Whenever it looks like you have been “found out” there will be a price to pay in the online space. When are some constructive ways to respond to negative comments? Stay on message and don’t truly engage. Many negative commenters are looking for a fight. Stay on message. Keep telling the message that is moving toward a resolution and don’t “take the bait” to get into a shouting match. You’ll lose. Should people respond to every negative comment they receive be it on Facebook or other outlet? And if a negative comment is received should the comments be deleted? You should never delete negative comments unless they are truly defamatory to you or another or are obscene. Hopefully, you have put a clear policy together and made it available to participants as to what would cause a comment to be removed. If not you will look suspicious in removing anything from a platform that is intended to be open and conversational. Nestle did say that any pictures of their doctored logo would be removed. As for every negative comment being handled? Probably good to acknowledge the comments though and ask if they are willing to engage offline. If it starts to look like a “flame-fest” it is good to bow out gracefully and call for reasonable discourse. You are the site / brand owner after all and it is your turf so you can make the rules. Most people will see a reasonable attempt to handle an unreasonable person enough effort to seem genuine. Would you advise a dose of ‘reverse SEO’ for the negative comments? Reverse SEO can have a negative connotation especially if your problems and the responses from your audience re-warranted. What companies should be doing, however, is creating as many different outlets of information for the engines to “feed on” about the brand thus making it less likely for other results to float near the top. Google has a commitment to balanced results though so you better make your alternative offerings strong. Is it too late for Nestle? Should they just start over from scratch? It looks like their Facebook page is wrecked for now but this furor should die down especially if they have attended to the issue completely. The trouble with their Facebook page is that it has become a place where others are grousing about issues that aren’t even related to Nestle thus possibly killing any chance for that particular iteration of their Facebook presence to recover. They should consider a “do over” on that one area but once again this tactic will have its supporters and detractors as well. What are your top 5 things people/businesses can do to avoid having their reputation damaged online? 1. Keep their noses clean. Do good business and problems will be few. 2. Handle yourself professionally. No matter how bad the attack it should never warrant you dropping to the attacker’s level. It cheapens your image. 3. Provide many options for the engines with a variety of mediums like YouTube, blogs, alternate sites for specific data. 4. Be transparent. Admitting an issue will do much more good than harm. Covering it up and getting defensive though? Bad move. 5.Take the action that allows you to sleep at the end of the day knowing you did the best you could to be open, honest, transparent and available. Each situation will define these actions differently but work the moral compass angle. Frank Reed is the owner of FT Internet Marketing, Inc ( www.frankthinking.com ) that provides Internet marketing, social media, online reputation and copywriting services to the SME (small to medium enterprise) market. Frank is a daily contributor to Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim and writes weekly for Mike Moran’s Biznology Blog . He does other stuff too so give him a call. Three days after this interview Nestle has posted an open letter to Greenpeace . It seems they are starting to move, or appear to, in the right direction. In addition Nestle has also created a second Fan Page , which seems to be geared more towards the United States audience in order to move away from the mess on their original page. And a third Fan Page which seems to be focusing more on their care to the community and environment. I’d like to ask you the reader, your thoughts on the new release from Nestle and what do you think these new Fan Pages will do for them? Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Nestle, Palm Oil and Social Media, Oh

Advanced SEO Requires Good Analytics Information

cgseo — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:00:13 +0000

Good quality analytics (such as Google Analytics or another paid analytics software packages) provides good and very useful information. If you pay attention to it you could very quickly increase the overall efficiency of your website. You just have to look at the numbers and list to what they tell you. The proof is in the pudding as they say and if you ignore your analytics information you could be missing out on a great deal of potential business and traffic. Here are some basic areas for you to review in order to find any holes in your website and to help you decipher data that you learn from your analytics: Conversions: In case you don’t know, a conversion is a completed action on your website, such as lead, sign up, sale, etc. The most important factor (I think) to learn from your analytics software is the conversion data. Understanding and learning about how and where you conversions come from can help you make much more educated and better SEO, PPC and Social Media marketing decisions. I can’t tell you how many people I still speak to think that the best goal for an SEO campaign is rankings or positioning. Sorry to break it to you, but it is not. Increasing conversions (and visitor growth) should be the starting goal(s) of your SEO and search marketing efforts. I won’t get too deep into that as that is not the main point of this post J Bounce Rate: Whether you are looking at this overall or down to a single page if your bounce rate is really high try to figure out what is turning people off from that web page. It could be a variety of things depending on your business so take a deep look at your page. Is it too much info? Or a lack of info? Do you have too many ads on that specific page? It could also be a combination of all these items. It might just be that your page needs to have a serious over haul. Bounce rates vary for each client and industry but understanding what yours is and try to improve your bounce rate is very important. Visitors: When you start to really get into advanced SEO techniques you will need to understand even more so where all of your visitors are coming from. Visitor quality is just as important as visitor growth. You never want to rely on just one stream of traffic because if that stream dries up so does your business. You have to understand where your traffic is coming from because often times it might be from an area that you least expected it to come from. Analytics information allows you to find new locations along with locations of where you might be able to place yourself to find new traffic. Keywords: Analytics information will tell you what keywords your website traffic is using to find your website. This is a potential to really open things up for you as you grow your business online. As new keywords develop you can capitalize by finding new variations on those specific keywords and using them throughout your website. You have to look at your analytics information very closely otherwise you won’t find those windows of opportunity to help improve your SEO and overall search marketing efforts. Analytics keeps your approach to marketing your website efficient and smooth. It is all about finding opportunities that could already exist right in front of you. Data and information that you can get from your analytics allows you to find those areas where you can really maximize your efforts in the online world. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Advanced SEO Requires Good Analytics

Google Maps Search Suggest Available in More Languages

cgseo — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:05:42 +0000

Recently Google put up an experimental search suggest feature for Google Maps to make it faster and more accurate to find places, businesses and points of interest as you type your search. But this was only available for Google Maps in Germany, China, Hong Kong and most recently Taiwan. But now, Google has just made this search suggest feature on Google Maps to 10 more domains and 8 additional languages, including on maps.google.com. Suggest for Google Maps was built on locally relevant stock of knowledge to get the most useful suggestions depending on where you are zoomed into Google Map. In addition, Suggest for Google Maps also give you additional information including business addresses to help you find and select the best and most exact business or location that you may be looking for. If you’re anywhere in these regions - China, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, United States, United Kingdom, you can now use the said feature. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Maps Search Suggest Available in More

Local Business Marketing – The Known Future

cgseo — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:46:21 +0000

The Internet has turned into a great local business marketing tool in the past couple of years. While local businesses have not yet adopted these tools into their marketing strategies, the technologies are moving forward with or without them. The convergence of Search, Social Media and Mobile Marketing is bringing business information with products and services into the hands of the local consumers. Having had Internet business experience for the past 16 years, I can tell you that this is probably one of the few times where we can put all the local business marketing puzzle pieces together and see what marketing tools we have available over the next 2 – 3 years. Let’s review each one so we can see how the come together. Local Business Listings In short these are the interactive yellow pages of the Internet. Interactive because as a business owner you can update and manage these listings at search engines, social communities, 411 web sites, GPS/Mapping websites and basic business directories. They are also interactive because consumers can post their experience they had with your business, products or services. In order to get started you need to claim, update, monitor and manage these listings at multiple local listing websites. Don’t have the time resources? Don’t worry, there are companies that provide local business listing management services. Local Business Listing Marketing vs. Data Services As a business you will want to seek out companies that provide the marketing services. The companies that provide basic data services only push your information out, but they do not help you protect your listing from being hijacked or for that matter manage your listings for marketing purposes with various types of content like coupons, events, QR codes, consumer reviews, coupons and citations. The marketing services have a higher cost to them than the data services, because the marketing services are more effective and do more for your business. Consumer Reviews This will be the first time that most local businesses dependent upon the local consumer for their revenue will need to manage their public relations. Consumer Reviews are not just about other consumers seeing the information, but too many negative reviews will adversely impact your website ranking position in search results. This is no longer about just consumers posting their frustrations to a website or blog, but directly into your local listing. As a business you will need to closely monitor these reviews and also begin to engage customers that have positive experiences to post their information as well. Local Listing Coupons and Mobile Coupons The Local business listing gives the business the opportunity of posting their coupons, offers, and discounts. They are then available for consumers to find through web searches and through their mobile devices. While this is not available through all local listing websites or available for free, this is in no uncertain terms the demise of the traditional coupons. Events If you promote your business then you will want to use the Events promotion tool within Local Business Listings. You can include Specials, Events, New Products, general News, pretty much any alert you which to make the local consumers aware of so they can find it through a web search or a mobile search. QR Codes These small square bar codes will allow you to program them for consumer to scan using their mobile devices. The code will then do whatever is programmed to them. For example, a coupon, discount, offer, event, website link. You can also use them on business cards, websites, traditional ads, store window, and much more. Citations This tends to add a level of complication for most businesses. If you’re familiar with the idea of inbound links, this is very similar only this time is not necessarily just about a link, but your company name, address, city, state, zip, phone and many other aspects that are related to what is known as HCards to include your longitude and latitude of your business address. Because this is a combination of marketing and technical expertise you may wish to get someone to help you with this item. Hyperlocal Websites that are hyperlocal give a local business the opportunity of highlight targeted advertising and marketing to geography and demographic. While these websites are not as prominent for this purpose yet, this will change and needs to be planned for in 2011 and beyond. Having had Internet business experience for the past 16 years, I can tell you that that geographic marketing is the direction of our immediate future. Hopefully I was able to portray to you some of the known components of local business marketing and how this local business marketing tool can be used to reach the local consumers. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Local Business Marketing – The Known

Winner of the Search & Social Spring Summit Grand Prize

cgseo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:12:52 +0000

With the conference being a little over a week away, we are stoked about the 80 degree weather that we foresee for the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit . While listening to Todd Malicoat from Market Motive speak, you might even get a chance to see Loren Baker jumping for joy as he sees dolphins swimming by our conference hall. On April 15, 2010, we closed our VIP Contest and have finally gotten a winner. Congratulations to David Alecock for winning the Grand Prize to the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit! David has won a complimentary pass to attend the conference, complimentary airfare, a free hotel stay at the Doubletree Guest Suites and $500 in cold hard cash! David will be able to leave with business connections in affiliate marketing, social media marketing, online reputation management, paid search and search engine optimization. He will learn outsourcing secrets on how to grow his business and spend the rest of his life on the beach. For the speaker lineup and the schedule of the two-day event, please go here . Also remember to book your stay at the Doubletree Guest Suites for a special rate of $109/night valid until Friday, April 23, 2010. The 2010 Search & Social Awards will be coming soon. We will let you know when you can vote for your favorite blog and hear the winners announced at the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Winner of the Search & Social Spring Summit Grand

Optimizing Your AdWords Campaigns

cgseo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Pay per click advertising is a form of marketing with major benefits. It differs from other methods of marketing in its ability to allow advertisers and marketers to measure and analyze the results of their techniques, to refine and optimize them to increase ROI beyond almost anything possible in the offline marketing world. Google AdWords is currently the prominent pay per click resource available today. Learning some of the ways to optimize your AdWords campaigns can cut costs while keeping conversions up in several ways. Here are four ways to refine your AdWords campaign to see where money spent is producing the best return and to adjust settings to maximize return on investment. 1. The Segment option. This is one of the newest additions to AdWords. The Segment option is available within your Campaigns, Ad Groups and Keywords tabs. Within each, the options are different, but allow for viewing of your results in specific ways of measurement. This can include breaking into specific units of time, such as weeks or days of the week. By viewing your data this way you can discover what weeks are most active for a seasonal market, as well as information such as which days of the week are most prone to getting better conversion rates. By knowing this data, you can reduce costs where your conversions are more expensive, increase bids where you are seeing better conversion rates, and in all these ways increase ROI. 2. A-B Split Testing for ads. This can be one of the most effective means of increasing CTR for your ad groups. Have two or three ads active for each ad group. After a number of clicks (ideally at least 20 clicks on each ad), choose the better performing ad. Replace the more poorly performing ad with a different ad copy. Repeat the whole operation to find which advertisement will produce the best CTR or the best conversion rate. Doing this can often improve your CTR by a factor of 2 or more, and a higher CTR improves Quality Score as well as increasing lead generation. To get an accurate reading for proper A-B split testing, make sure your campaign setting for Ad Delivery-> Rotation is set to “Rotate: Show ads more evenly”. 3. Remarketing with the Audiences tab. This is an element of AdWords that works only for the Content Network. When the Audiences tab is enabled, you can create remarketing lists to target specific visitors to your site. By placing code on specific pages within your site, a cookie is put on all users who visit these pages. Then when they visit other sites with similar targeted themes, a very relevant ad is shown to these users to give them motivation to return to your site to make a purchase or opt-in. This works by reaching out to visitors who had visited your site previously and displayed some kind of interest in that market. Often this remarketing approach can increase conversions by contacting people who have an established interest in your products and reconnecting with them. 4. Changing advertising frequency/rate settings. Advertising can be adjusted in AdWords to not just advertise for certain days and hours of each day, but the amount for CPC can be adjusted to raise or lower bidding rates for certain days and hours. The setting is within each Campaign settings area, under Advanced settings-> Schedule and choosing Ad Scheduling, the selecting “Bid Adjustment” inside the scheduling option. After doing research for performance for specific days within your campaign you can make changes to cut costs and increase ROI nicely. For example, after viewing that you are getting little or no conversions on certain days of the week, you can pause these days with this setting. In the same way, any days that have better conversion rates can have an increased bid amount to maximize CTR for those days. This can all help improve business results for your AdWords campaign. By knowing about and using these different options within AdWords you can greatly improve your pay per click results. AdWords optimization is a definite way to increase ROI and open additional opportunities to expand your marketing methods. Properly using these techniques can cut costs, increase profits, and help you make the most out of this powerful tool. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Optimizing Your AdWords

Facebook: What, Why, Who, How?

cgseo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:00:26 +0000

I’ve noticed more and more Facebook Fan Pages popping up and it’s great. Fan Pages are a great way to connect with people, build your credibility and ultimately generate leads and grow your business. The problem is most people are making one BIG mistake when it comes to their pages. More on that in a minute. First let me give you an overview on what I’m going to talk about today…. What Are Fan Pages? Why Are They Important? Who Can Build A Fan Page Who Should Build A Fan Page The “Big Mistake” So Many People Are Making How To Build A Good Fan Page What Are Facebook Fan

Google Increases Government Lobbying by 57%, with $1.4 M in Q1

cgseo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:25:04 +0000

In Q1 2010, Google spent $1.4 million in lobbying money with the federal government bodies, which was an increase of 57% over $880,000 from Q1 2009. With the company having interests far beyond search, I’m expecting this lobbying spend to climb even more over the course of the year, as Google is getting more involved in FCC rulings, government programs and assistance in pressure on other governments with its global business growth… especially in China. Here’s a rundown of some of the spending from the Associated Press : Google tried to influence legislation intended to prevent U.S. technology companies from cooperating with repressive foreign governments that restrict free speech and violate human rights. [ China ] Google also lobbied last quarter in favor of the FCC’s proposed “network neutrality” rules, which would require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. Although the big phone and cable TV companies oppose such regulations, Internet companies such as Google say rules are needed to prevent Internet access providers from favoring or discriminating against Web sites and services. Google lobbied on the FCC’s national broadband plan, which lays out a roadmap for bringing affordable high-speed Internet access to all Americans, and on efforts to find more wireless spectrum for mobile broadband services. In Q1 2010, the bulk of Google’s lobbying was spent on lobbying the Congress, the FCC, the Federal Trade Commission, the Commerce Department and the Justice Department. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Increases Government Lobbying by 57%, with $1.4 M in

Weekly Search & Social News: 04/20/2010

cgseo — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:11:36 +0000

Welcome to another edition of ‘ 7 Days of Search and Social ‘ – It was another interesting week out on the trails with some good posts, some humour, a whack of social and of course, lots of patents (that best part of my week). Starting things off is the new data Google was giving away via Webmaster Tools. I’ve talked to more than a few people that weren’t happy about the data integrity, for my part, I haven’t really dug around enough to have an opinion. Anyway, on with the show! Lead