By Carl Weiss
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| Cover of William Shakespeare |
"What's in a name? That which we call a
rose,
by any other name, would smell
as sweet."
That’s
the way that William Shakespeare saw it.
Of course, Bill didn’t have the Internet to contend with. Back in 1594, things were simpler. Heck it had only been a little over a hundred
years since the printing press was invented.
The age of the scandal sheet had not yet been born.
Fast
forward five hundred and twenty years and the world is a very different
place. What with news organizations,
bloggers, social networkers and YouTube videos spewing out intimate details concerning
the lives, loves and eccentricities of celebrities, athletes and politicians it
would make the Bard blush.
Want
to know which celebrities have been caught cheating? Interested in keeping tabs on the latest
crooked politicians? Dying to find out
more about professional athletes caught driving while under the influence of
alcohol or drugs? All this and more is
but a Google search away.
The
trouble in today’s wired world is that neither the emperor, nor the superstars
wear any clothes. The Internet in
essence has become the ultimate scandal sheet, where even the tiniest
impropriety can suddenly explode onto the worldwide stage as a scandal of epic
proportions, fueled by the public’s insatiable need to know.
The
problem is that the same tools that can be used to create a media feeding frenzy
can also be used to make or break any business owner on the planet. No longer sated by celebrity gossip, the same
tools of the trade that can tell the world about Lindsay Lohan’s latest
wardrobe malfunction can be used to dish dirt on any business.
Are You Running an
A-List Business?
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| Right Time, Right Site (Photo credit: rekha6) |
Traditionally
companies strove to be on the A-List, that is the preferred list of vendors
through which others would choose to do business. When it comes to business listings today, the
A-List for many means Angie’s List. Founded by Angie Hicks in 1996 in Columbus, Ohio as a means to evaluate and find reliable contractors in suburban
Columbus, Ohio. For the first year of its existence, Hicks went door-to-door,
signing up members and collecting ratings on local contractors. By 1999, she
took her service online becoming one of the country’s most influential business
ratings portals. Angie’s List went national when William S Oesterle and Angie Hicks joined forces in
2009, and today’s its viewed as one of the Internet's premier rating portals.
Using
a report card grading system of A through F, Angie’s List rates companies based
upon third-party reviews purportedly from consumers who have used any vendor
listed on the site. Not everyone agrees with
validity of their model, as reported by Consumer Report in October 2013,
"We think that the ability of A- and
B-rated companies to buy their way to the top of the default search results
skews the results. Cheryl Reed, a spokeswoman for the company, disagrees. 'We
don’t believe that,' she says. But Angie’s List marketing materials intended
for businesses say that companies that advertise get 'an advantage of increased
exposure' that 'can propel you ahead of your competition.' They get 12 times
more profile views than companies that don’t buy ads. Angie’s List encourages
businesses to solicit reviews by giving customers free, postage-paid forms,
stickers on thank you notes, and Web links embedded in e-mail invoices. But
experts who study survey techniques say that can create a bias for positive
reviews. Angie’s List misleads consumers by prominently promising that
'businesses don’t pay' and that it’s a consumer-driven service supported by
membership fees. But almost 70 percent of the company’s revenues come from
advertising purchased by the service providers being rated. Angie’s List tells
consumers that it provides 'reviews you can trust,' and takes steps to detect
and remove fraudulent positive and negative reviews.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie%27s_List
Relying
on a pay-to-play system is always dicey when it comes to their
impartiality. Take for instance what
happens when you query the Better Business Bureau, another paid service,
regarding Angie’s List. On the BBB
Angie’s List, LLC is rated A+. Yet if
you scroll down the page you will find out that, there have been 290 closed
complaints filed against the company within the past three years (129 in the
past 12 months alone). Of the 24
customer reviews posted on the BBB site, 23 were negative and only one was
positive. If this is an A+ rated
business, what does it take to get a D? http://www.bbb.org/indianapolis/business-reviews/consumers-cooperative-organizations/angie-s-list-llc-in-indianapolis-in-3041007/
Of
course, the problems with skewed or impartial reviews are not limited to paid
rating services. Far from it. The real elephant in the room is the fact
that there are far too many places that reviews and ratings can be posted for
any mere mortal to keep track of them all.
Everyone from search engines (Google Local, Yahoo Local) to Social Sites
such as Facebook and Merchant Circle, to popular review sites such as Yelp,
Yext and Local.com all vie for the public's attention.
While
review sites are important for consumers to check on businesses before they do business with them, there are a number of flies in the online
ointment.
1. Many of these sites
have no way for the company receiving a complaint to redress it. This means that anyone who simply has a
grudge against the owner can fire at will in order to damage the owner’s
reputation.
2. This also means that on
many review sites a wily competitor can post an anonymous complaint on a
company without fear of retaliation.
3. An unscrupulous
business owner can also flood the review sites with false positive reviews from
their friends, family and neighbors.
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| Customer Marketing (Photo credit: Jen Beever) |
The
biggest problem for most business owners is the fact that they have no
mechanism for generating positive reviews and/or testimonials. This is unfortunate since this means that the
ONLY reviews posted on most businesses are negative, since as they say, “You
can’t please all the people all the time.”
In
order to redress this potential disastrous problem, every business owner needs
to establish a corporate policy that is dedicated to cultivating positive
reviews and testimonials from satisfied customers. This way when an occasional complaint does
surface it will be buried in a mountain of positive press. In order to accomplish this in a reputable
manner, I recommend the following:
1. Call or talk to some of
your most loyal customers and ask them if they would be willing to tell of
their experience with your business in front of a video camera. Video testimonials are some of the most
persuasive reviews on the planet. They
can literally turn your best customers into your best salespeople.
2. At the conclusion of
the video, you can also ask them to post a review on Google Local, Yahoo Local,
or any other site you prefer.
3. If you have a
receptionist or sales staff, encourage them to ask your clients to post
positive reviews. (I even recommend
having a contest where the employee that generates the most reviews every week
receives a reward.)
4. Broadcast these videos
and customer testimonials by reposting them on your newsletters, mailers, blogs
and social networks.
The
best part about using this strategy is that all it costs you is time. And that is something in business that can
either make or break you, since failing to bolster your online reputation can
cost you dearly. Or, as the Bard might
have put it,
“Alas, Poor Yorick! I knew him well.”
When he
isn’t waxing poetic, Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, a
digital marketing agency. You can also
join him live every Tuesday when he co-host’s his weekly radio show that airs
live every Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern on Blog Talk Radio.
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