Reputation Management for Small Business

I was catching up on Website magazines this week and happened across an issue that had a story on Reputation Management.  I hadn’t read too much on this subject before but had often wondered if companies were working on solutions for small businesses for Reputation Management.  It looks like there are a few solutions out there but they are mostly focused on Enterprise size companies.  Best Buy has a well known program for customers with questions or issues on social media.  With the number of small businesses starting Yelp and Facebook pages Reputation Management is something that they should definitely look into.  The only thing worse than not being visible on these types of sites is to have a presence but never monitor it.  Customers with both good things to say and not so good things to say will just feel like they are ignored.

I recently used Yelp to help me find an electrician for a small job.  I poured over the reviews and eventually decided on one that seemed to have great reviews.  Unfortunately my experience wasn’t that great and I promptly wrote a review summarizing my poor experience.  However, the company never responded; either directly to me or commenting on Yelp.  This was a missed opportunity by the company to show that they both monitored the entries and cared about maintaining a consistently good customer experience.  This is a good example of “being out there” but not having a complete social media strategy that included monitoring and responding to customers.

For small businesses sites like Yelp are critical to their success.  Few of the folks I know use only the Yellow Pages these days; most are turning sites like Yelp and Facebook to maintain contact with their customers and as a way to passively prospect for other customers.  Few small businesses monitor these sites to see how things are going and actively respond to entries.  The article in Website Magazine offers a number of tasks that small businesses can perform on their own to conduct their own Reputation Management efforts.  All of them seem reasonable and small businesses should be able to execute them without taking up much time.   Items like monitoring your competitors’ entries on these sites and tracking prolific contributors.  These contributors could be potential leads in the future.  If you have considered starting a Facebook page or talking up your Yelp page don’t forget to do some planning for your Reputation Management.

What are you using for Reputation Management for your business?  Are you doing it by hand as the article mentions or are you using an automated tool?

No Predictions for 2011 Just Suggestions

It is that time of year when folks in the press and analyst community either talk about what was hot in 2010 or what they predict will be the upcoming hot item for 2011. Yeah, yeah, it happens every year. I am not sure how many readers follow up on these predictions and call these folks on them at a later point; I doubt any.

What I think is more important is to use this time of year to summarize what worked or didn't work for your web marketing efforts. I have always been a huge fan of web metrics and the benefits good metrics can provide as to the effectiveness of on-line marketing efforts. This time of year is perfect for running those metrics reports and looking over key project results and trends; at least for the last quarter or two.

I don't usually try to get to complicated here. I limit my scope to where were visitors going, where did they come from and what did they do or view while I had their attention. This information helps me determine a lot about their intent and if they were successful when they came to my site or sites. It always amazes me that there are marketers out there who spend more time on their next project than to take a moment to determine what if anything about their last on-line campaign worked. I guess it is easier to just ask for more budget for their next project.

The results of reviewing these metrics typically guides me to make small changes in my web pages and campaign tactics. Things like better cross linking between key areas of my web pages, placing searched information above the fold on key pages, and continuing to understand what my visitor's task is when they visit are just a few examples. These small changes help make my web pages more effective and provide increased qualified traffic and please my users.

So instead of using this time of year to make predictions on markets that are always changing, spend a little time reviewing what worked and how you can make relevant changes based on metrics.

Graphics are nice but content is King

The marketing teams were having a discussion the other day about including graphic heros at the top of documents; i.e. data sheets, specification sheets, etc... These graphics were often times in no way related to what the document was about. They were just pretty pictures of pretty people sitting around a computer screen.

This discussion reminded of an article by Gerry McGovern in which he talked about the use of graphics in this gratuitous way.

For me it comes back to understanding what the customer wants and what their mission is when deciding about the look and feel of the document. If I am a customer who is interested in the size, shape and performance of a product I probably don't want to download documents or look at web pages with large graphics at the top of each page. I will most likely do a search within the document for the spec I need and then move on. In other words, focus on the content. Headlines are more important than a gratuitous graphic on a page or doc. Headlines grab a visitors attention, focus them in on the topic and start the visitor reading and solving their problem.

What experiences have you had where content takes a back seat to graphics?

Web Marketing Team or Workgroup

Is your web marketing team functioning like a team or a workgroup?

When I was in business school we studied both workgroups and teams. The differences in the quality of output could be dramatic.

Here is a short refresher;
Workgroups have a strong individual focus. They typically exist with minimal supervision and do more coordination with each other than collective works. An example would be that within a group of product marketing professionals each member is assigned separate products to bring to market and each team member works and is concerned only about his particular products or tasks.

Teams typically produce collective works comprised of contributions from team members. Accountability is shared and products are the result of group efforts not just individual parts. Teams share a common purpose and set of performance goals. Team members are mutually accountable.

My experience working in both product marketing and centralized web marketing organizations is that workgroups are much more common than true teams. But it seems that the benefit of teams could really enhance the work product for both product marketing and web marketing groups. Either because of limited people resources or different levels of experience most groups seem to default into workgroups. In some cases I wonder if groups have even considered functioning as teams. Teams where multiple product marketing or web marketing individuals work together on a launch or a pilot project. A team where each member provides a different viewpoint and skills that enhances the project. In addition, breaking out of the siloed work tasks and really working with your peers just seems like it could be more fun.

Here is a great HBR article on teams.

What have you seen more commonly used workgroups or teams? Is it possible for managers to make a shift towards teams or are resources to constrained these days?