Marketing - Earn Money - Where to put your money

Don't use Social Networking loosely

2009-11-11T17:48:00.000+05:30

1. Don't use social networking to make a generic sales pitch to thousands of people.

2. Do start a dialog of conversation by sending updates that will be interested to people. Offer valuable information.

3. Don't use public forums for private messages.

4. Do ask people if they want to receive your FREE newsletter before you start sending it to them.

5. Never, ever post negative comments on other peoples blogs, profile pages or websites. You always want to be positive.

6. Don't rely on one group or one website for all your networking needs.

7. Be sure to read other people blogs, tweets, websites to keep up to date on industry changes as well as staying connected to like minded people.

What are Google Alerts

2009-11-01T12:40:00.001+05:30

What are Google Alerts?

Google Alerts are emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for your search terms. You can also choose to have your alerts delivered via feed to the feedreader of your choice (e.g., Google Reader or add the feed to your iGoogle page). We currently offer alerts with results from News, Web, Blogs, Video and Groups.

What are the different types of alerts I can sign up for?

Google Alerts currently offers 6 variations of alerts - 'News', 'Web', 'Blogs', 'Comprehensive', 'Video' and 'Groups'.

A 'News' alert is an email aggregate of the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.
A 'Web' alert is an email aggregate of the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.
A 'Blogs' alert is an email aggregate of the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.
A 'Comprehensive' alert is an aggregate of the latest results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) into a single email to provide maximum coverage on the topic of your choice.
A 'Video' alert is an email aggregate of the latest videos that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Video search.
A 'Groups' alert is an email aggregate of new posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.

What kinds of topics make for interesting Google Alerts?

Well, if it's interesting to you, it's a good subject for a Google Alert. We've found that many alerts are set up by people who are:

monitoring a developing news story
keeping current on a competitor or industry
tracking medical advances
getting the latest on a celebrity or sports team
watching for new videos that match a specific topic

Are you in favor of SideWiki?

2009-10-26T13:05:00.001+05:30

Google has set up a controversial new tool that permits the public to comment about any web site in a side bar displayed in their web browser. Guess this tool will open a wave of problems with spammers talking rubbish about great sites, there is also nothing stopping someone's competitor using this tool under lots of Gmail id's and creating a hate campaign against its rivals.

The tool is integrated in the latest version of Google Toolbar and works with both Firefox and Internet Explorer but ironically, not yet Google Chrome. To use Sidewiki, download the most recent version of the Google Toolbar and set it to enhanced.

Once activated, Sidewiki glides across from the left and becomes an browser sidebar, where you can compose entries in a vertical column and read the entries of other people. To activate Sidewiki, you simply click on the Sidewiki button in your Toolbar menu or the little talk bubble on the left hand side of your screen.

Tips for Making a Corporate Blog Stand Out

2009-10-26T10:44:00.001+05:30

Talk about something other than yourself. Too many corporate marketers make the mistake of creating blogs as purely another mechanism to talk about their products and services. While increased sales and improved brand visibility may be two fundamental goals of a corporate blog, there are more effective ways for achieving those goals that just pushing product.

The most successful corporate blogs leverage product and service information with relevant industry news, human interest pieces, case studies and other useful information. That balance is what keeps readers coming back time and again.

Keep your blog focused. Whatever message you chose to deliver, stick with it. Unfortunately, some corporate blogs lack a clear message and include posts on topics all across the board. Because goals were never defined, these blogs have a difficult time gaining readership.

Blogs gain strong, consistent followings by giving readers the information they want and expect to find. A reader might visit a shoe retailer's blog expecting to find information on the latest shoes styles and celebrity fashion news. If the readers have to sift through information on travel, home décor, and health & fitness in order to find what they're looking for, they may not return.

Give your blog a distinct personality. Whether you choose to feature just one blogger or multiple bloggers, let the blogger's voice come through in the posts. Without a distinct personality, your blog will be just like every other faceless corporate blog.

Let your readers see behind the corporate and marketing jargon, and instead discover the real people behind your organization.

Have some fun. Another effective method for letting a corporate blog stand out from the rest is to infuse some humor and excitement. Granted, this technique may not be appropriate for all corporate brands. But if you're able to, consider creating a blog that can be light-hearted, relaxed and at-times funny. It's just another way to humanize and personalize the brand for customers.

Provide readers with something they can't get anywhere else. Use a corporate blog to announce company breaking news or highlight original research in order to make the blog truly unique. Assuming the information is interesting and useful, readers will keep coming back for more. The simply can't get it anywhere else. Plus, your customers can form a close connection with your brand because they feel as if they're gaining an inside look or exclusive information.

Data: Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment

2009-10-22T15:45:00.001+05:30

Screening Phase

Examine data for five different kinds of possible errors:

Lack of data – Do some questions have far fewer answers than surrounding questions?
Excess of data – Are there duplicate responses?
Outliers/inconsistencies – Are there values that are so far beyond the typical that they seem potentially erroneous?
Strange patterns – Are there patterns that imply cheating rather than honest answers? For instance, does a respondent alternate between ratings of 4 and 5 on every other topic in a matrix question?
Suspect analysis results – Do the answers to some questions seem counterintuitive or extremely unlikely?

Diagnosis Phase

From the Screening Phase you have highlighted data that needs investigation. To clarify suspect data, you often must review all of a respondent's answers to determine if the data makes sense taken in context. Sometimes you must review a cross-section of different respondents' answers, to identify issues such as a skip pattern that was specified incorrectly.

With this research complete, what is the true nature of the data that you've highlighted? The five possible values the authors give:

Missing data – Answers omitted by the respondent or questions skipped over
Errors – Typos or answers that indicate the question was misunderstood
True extreme – An answer that seems high but can be justified by other answers (e.g., the respondent working 100 hours a week because they work a full-time job and two part-time jobs)
True normal – A valid answer
No diagnosis, still suspect – The verdict is out on this "idiopathic" data. When it comes time for the Treatment Phase, you may need to make a judgment call on how to treat this data.

Treatment Phase

You've screened the data and tried to come to a verdict on whether suspect data is guilty or innocent. You have three choices for what to do with suspect data:

Leave it unchanged – The most conservative course of action is to accept this data as a valid response and make no change to it. The larger your sample size, the less that one suspect response will affect the analysis; the smaller your sample size, the more difficult the decision.
Correct the data – If the respondent's original intent can be determined, then I am in favor of fixing their answer. For instance, perhaps it is clear from the respondent's explanation for their ratings that they reversed the scale in their minds; you can invert each of their answers to this question to correct the issue. Some statisticians will argue for imputation, replacing the answers with imputed values, such as the mean for that variable, but the techniques for imputation can become quite elaborate and are best left to professional statisticians.
Delete the data – The data seems illogical and the value is so far from the norm that it will affect descriptive or inferential statistics. What to do? Delete just this response or delete the entire record? Whenever you begin to toss out data, it raises the possibility that you are "cherry picking" the data to get the answer you want.

However you choose to treat the data, make sure to document in your survey report what steps you took, how many responses were affected and for which questions.

Screening Phase

2009-10-22T15:44:00.001+05:30

Examine data for five different kinds of possible errors:

Lack of data – Do some questions have far fewer answers than surrounding questions?
Excess of data – Are there duplicate responses?
Outliers/inconsistencies – Are there values that are so far beyond the typical that they seem potentially erroneous?
Strange patterns – Are there patterns that imply cheating rather than honest answers? For instance, does a respondent alternate between ratings of 4 and 5 on every other topic in a matrix question?
Suspect analysis results – Do the answers to some questions seem counterintuitive or extremely unlikely?

Market Basket Analysis

2009-10-22T15:25:00.001+05:30

Market Basket Analysis is used to identify or gain interesting insights into the way customers buy items. It finds out the combination of items which are most likely to be bought together. For example buying milk and bread together can lead to buying butter. Identifying such patterns from the transaction data collected over the years provide new window of opportunity to explore and understand the purchasing behavior and thus can be used to increase sales through cross selling and targeted marketing. Market basket analysis is not limited to retail sales but are applied to a wide range of areas like analyzing credit card purchases, fraud detection for insurance claims and so on. Data Mining technique called association rule mining is usually used. Algorithms like FP-Growth and Apriori algorithm are usually used for mining the transaction data to get the desired patterns.

Easy Database Marketing

2009-09-29T10:40:00.001+05:30

Some business owners assume that database marketing requires a level of sophistication that is beyond them.

While it is certainly true that some systems can be quite complex, there's one powerful database strategy that is within everyone's grasp. The concept of Recency.

As long as you have a database that records customer transactions, you can use this powerful concept to help market to people most likely to respond. This will help reduce your overall marketing costs while increasing your response rates.

Determining Keywords For Your Web Pages - Research on Google Key Words

2009-09-01T11:02:00.001+05:30

Determining keywords that are profitable is one of the most important techniques you can master as you bring your small business online.

Just in case you haven't heard the term "keyword" before, here's a brief explanation.

Any time someone uses a search engine, they type in a word or phrase. This word or phrase is known as a keyword (even though it can be longer than one word.) The search engine goes out and retrieves all the web pages that focus content on that particular keyword or keyword phrase.

The more relevant the web page is to the keyword, the higher the page ranks in the search engine. Each web page contains a place in the HTML coding to insert these keywords. This helps the search engines determine page content. This is a bit of a simplification as search engines use many other criteria to rank pages. However, keyword focused content pages are the most important on-page criteria.

Deliver poor content that is not keyword focused and you will have a difficult time ranking highly in any search engine.

So, the questions becomes this. How does one choose the proper keyword for any particular web page? The answer is quite simple. You research keywords that pertain to your business and choose the ones that have a high demand and low supply.

The Demand of a keyword is a measure of the number of times people have searched for that keyword in a particular period of time. The Supply of a keyword is a measure of how many total web pages focus on that keyword. Keywords with a high demand and low supply will allow your page to rank higher in the search engines and will drive more traffic.

The best way of determining keywords is to use a good keyword research tool. The purpose of these keyword research tools is to allow you to enter a specific keyword related to your business and then see how many times people searched for that keyword (keyword demand) as well as how many web pages are focused on that keyword (keyword supply.)

In addition, a good keyword research tool will come up with new keywords related to the initial one you typed in, giving you ideas for branching out and coming up with dozens of other high quality keywords.

Meta Tags

2009-09-01T10:56:00.001+05:30

It's very simple - if you don't optimize your web pages, the search engines will have a difficult time figuring out your content focus and you can forget about increased website traffic.

These are the things you build into your web pages so that the search engines find your site and rank it favorably. You should also know that there are many dozens of off-page criteria that the search engines (SE's) look at as well - but that's a topic for another article.

How does an SE know that a page has relevance to a particular search term? They use one or more of the following on-page criteria.

1. File Name
2. Page Title
3. META Keyword Tag
4. META Description Tag
5. H1 Headline
6. Keyword Density
7. Links
8. Image Alt tag

While various search engines rank the importance of the above criteria differently, you should be consistent in applying all of them to your pages for increased website traffic.

Understanding Google PageRank

2009-09-01T10:09:00.001+05:30

Understanding Google PageRank is not as mysterious as some would have you believe.

So what exactly is PageRank and how does it affect your rankings in the search engines? This article will set you straight on this often misunderstood topic.

PageRank is essentially the measure of a web page's importance relative to all other web pages. While no one knows the exact algorithm Google uses to calculate PageRank, one of the major factors is the number and quality of inbound links pointing to the page in question.

The key to understanding Google PageRank is to realize the democratic nature of inbound links. A link to your page from some external site is really a vote or "thumbs up" for that page. The more votes (i.e., inbound links) a page gets, the more important the page must be.

While your Meta tags and main page keyword help determine the relevance of your page, PageRank determines the importance of that page. When Google returns search results, it wants to return a page with the highest relevance AND the highest importance.

Get a Better Understanding of Customers via DataBase

2009-08-31T19:34:00.001+05:30

Most companies have a base of regular customers, but few know why those customers keep coming back. Quality, price, delivery, convenience; these are some of the factors that could explain why a customer continues to buy from your company but, unless you understand the factors behind your success, you cannot plan a customer retention strategy for the future. The discipline of building and using a database helps you concentrate on these important issues. By bringing this information together in a single database, you can get a comprehensive view of individual customers and customer groups and assess the effect of different marketing activities on their purchasing behavior. This is the kind of customer and market profile you can develop using database techniques:

Which market sectors do customers and prospects fit into?
How many are in each sector?
What products do they buy?
What other products could be offered to these sectors?
Which sectors offer the best growth opportunities?
Which are the most valuable sectors?
Who are the key customers in each sector?
How profitable are the key customers?
What is the cost of each customer?

What DataBase provides

2009-08-31T19:32:00.001+05:30

The information in your database provides you with a detailed picture of the market and allows you to answer questions such as:

Who are our most important customers?
How many are there?
What characteristics do they have?
What other prospects have similar characteristics?
Are we generating the maximum amount of business from each customer?
Are we maximizing the business opportunities from each customer contact?
Do we really know what our customers want?
What factors and marketing activities affect their buying behavior?
Can we identify every product our customers might use?
Do we know every transaction they might want to make?
Is information available to everyone who might need it?
Is our organization giving the right information to the marketplace?
What would happen if we varied our marketing spend or used different marketing channels?

Database marketing is used by most Marketers

2009-08-31T11:57:00.001+05:30

One of the most successful forms of marketing used by marketers is database marketing. Database marketing is essentially about sending targeted promotions to any segment of the customer and prospect lists and measuring the value of each individual customer and tracking the promotional efforts, measuring responses, purchases, and the return on investment for the spent on the promotional efforts.

Database marketing is essentially the technique of gathering all the information available about your customer, leads, and prospects into a central database. This central database is then used for the information, and it is this information then that drives all the marketing efforts.

This information collected in Database marketing is stored in a marketing database and then can be used at both the strategic and tactical levels to drive targeted marketing efforts.

A company that chooses to utilize the concept of database marketing for their marketing efforts continually gathers, refines, and analyzes data about its customers, their buying history, prospects, past marketing efforts, demographics, and etc.

The company also analyzes the data to convert the data into information and it is this information that supports all their future marketing and sales programs. Some of the more enlightened marketing companies also use customer and prospect interests and preferences, which are generally gathered from their web site, to tailor design the marketing efforts to the individual level.

Database marketing can also further be defined as a way of organizing a company's customer and prospect data so that it can be used more in a more effective manner in a direct marketing effort. Database marketing is also a way of organizing the whole marketing process. Database marketing allows the company to choose what to market to whom and when based on the sum total of the knowledge and experience that lies with a customer or prospect.

Get That Prospect Off Your List

2009-08-14T08:41:00.001+05:30

Congratulations! You've got a real live prospect on the line. Your first task is to start selling, right? WRONG! At the very beginning of the sales cycle, your most important task is to find out if you can eliminate the prospect completely from your to-do list.

Yes, you heard me correctly.

Many sales pros (particularly novices) are so thrilled simply to be talking to a real live prospect that they don't want to burst the happy bubble. So they pretend that the mere fact that a prospect has shown a little interest (by not hanging up) means that they're a potential customer.

Nothing could be further from the truth. There are at least half-a-dozen reasons a prospect might show interest but never buy. For instance, the prospect may:

feel bored or lonely and just want to talk to somebody.
hope to have the offering…someday in the far future.
be looking for a catspaw to play against your competitor.
be confused about their firm's real needs.
think your pricey offering fits within their teeny budget.
be looking for new contacts for a future job hunt.

Look, the last thing that you want to do with your valuable time is to waste it on somebody that's who NOT going to buy.

So it's a BIG WIN for you, if you can eliminate a prospect from your to-do list. And it's an even BIGGER WIN if you can do this within the first five minutes of talking to the prospect. Here's what you need to know:

Do they really need your offering?
Is the financial impact big enough to justify a purchase?
How do they buy this kind of product?
Do they have a budget or can one be secured?
What's their time frame for addressing this issue?
Who says "Yes" and who can say "No"?

If you can't get a decent answer — or a process to get an answer — to any of these questions, then you're WASTING YOUR TIME.

On the other hand, if you can get answers — or a process in place to get those answers, you've got a real opportunity.

But let's be clear: if that prospect ain't gonna buy, you wanna exit ASAP.

Should You Let Your Interns Manage Twitter?

2009-08-07T08:41:00.001+05:30

Would you let a 21-year-old intern work the phones without training? Then why would you let one manage your company's Twitter account, where they have direct contact with loads of extremely vocal customers?

Fresh joinees are often given charge of a corporate Twitter updates because they tend to be Web savvy.

But their lack of experience can be a drawback, especially when they're dealing directly with customers.

They may struggle to pick up on the culture, image, direction, and goals of a company in the short time they are there. And when they leave, they take their Twitter skills and style with them, leaving the company to find fill that void every few months.

Here are four tips to ensure your Twitterer is adding value:

Find the best people for the job. Interns are not your only option. Your company probably has people who are using Twitter. Find them, and recruit them for the task of becoming your official Twitterers. Already being familiar with the service will give these people a leg up.

Train them. Give them the same basic customer training that you give to the rest of your customer service team — how to interact with customers, what the company wants to communicate, the language that works best, and the image it wants to convey.

Let them become experts on Twitter. Give them the time and resources to learn the ropes. Twitter is a tiny bit more technical than working the phones (though you would train your phone reps on your phone system, wouldn't you?). Especially important is Twitter etiquette — a backlash on Twitter spread across the Web can be damaging to your reputation.

Keep them in the loop. Give your Twitterers the same information you'd supply other customer service reps — promotions you're currently running, as well as any ongoing product or service issues. A customer who Tweets a complaint is just as important as one who calls one in, and if your Twitter-er is in the dark about the nature of the complaint he or she could just make a situation worse. Remember — an angry phone call can't go viral.

Incentivise the role. What kind of reward can you offer your Twitterer for interacting individually with a set number of customers, or generating a certain number of re-tweets.

Backlinks to your websites

2009-08-06T23:09:00.001+05:30

We all need backlinks to our websites.

A backlink is an inbound html code that points to your website. You are probably wondering why you would want a backlink.

If you have many websites with one-way links to your website, the search engines interpret this in your favor. You want to make sure that your website is at the "hub of the wheel" so to speak -- all the spokes, or links, are pointing to your website.

Your goal should be that the search engines view your site as an "authority site". If a website provides excellent, interesting articles and other content, and has many readers, that website could be called an "authority site". Websites mention and point to, or refer to, articles and videos on the authority site.

Let's step back a bit and explain links in an example:

If Sally's site links to you, then you have one inbound link. However, if your website links back to Sally's site, the links balance each other out and no one wins - that is called a reciprocal link. Don't look for reciprocal links. You should look for links back to your website from other websites where you don't have to link to them.

Now who is going to do that? Any website marketer who has been around for some time does not want reciprocal links. He wants one-way links to his site.

Sources of Inbound, One-Way Links:

Links from directories
Links from articles you write

Are You Socially Acceptable?

2009-08-03T09:49:00.001+05:30

One reason social media sites have caught on like wildfire among users is that, by and large, they operate on basic principles of social decency. always have a check on: Do your social-media skills match the subtle standards set at sites like Twitter and YouTube?

Not sure? Well, here are a few site-inspired rules to help ensure your online outreach efforts are socially acceptable:

Don't stifle the conversation. It's easy to react negatively when you spot a negative review at a social site, but first take a deep breath. Consider this: do the comments have merit? If so, acknowledge them and commit to making a change. If they are silly or mean, it's probably best to let them go.

Bring something besides your product to the table. People don't want just a pitch, they want a person. Don't spend precious social-media time pushing your wares; pass a little time with your audience. Let them get to know you and your brand.

Be responsive. Agencies have spent decades trying to get people to cultivate emotional connections with logos and labels; it's only natural that, now that they have a soapbox, users demand to know why they should ally themselves with you. Demonstrate that you care what your customers, donors or clients think: Follow their discussions, engage them in dialogue, express interest in who they are.

Suggest: Toe the social line. Social media sites are about being natural—in acceptable ways. Make sure your outreach—no matter how fun or creative—always shows consideration and respect.

Past and Current customer behavior are the best predictors of Future customer behavior

2009-08-01T16:08:00.001+05:30

Past and Current customer behavior are the best predictors of Future customer behavior. Think about it. Any entity you can define as a
customer – external, internal, distributors, manufacturers, suppliers – they all pursue certain routines, and changes in these routines often indicate an opportunity or challenge is ahead in your relationship with them. When it comes to action-oriented activities like interacting with a web site, this concept really takes on a very important role. You can predict future behavior based on an understanding of past behavior, and use this knowledge to improve marketing or service programs.

Take these two groups of potential buyers who surf around the 'Net:
People who are a perfect demographic match for your business, but have never made a purchase / subscribed to a service online
People who are outside the core demographics for your business, but have repeatedly purchased / subscribed to a service online
If you sent a 20% off promotion to each group, asking them to visit and make a first purchase, response would be higher from the buyers (second bullet above) than the demographically targeted group (first bullet above).
It works because actual behavior is better at predicting future behavior than demographic characteristics are.

High ROI Customer Marketing Tactics!

2009-08-01T14:00:00.001+05:30

Go beyond using simple customer demographics to start looking at past customer behavior, the most reliable source of data for predicting the potential value of a customer and their likelihood to remain a customer. When you nail down these behavioral metrics and start measuring their trends, you will be able to:

* Identify customer segments with the highest future potential
* Focus on growing the profitability of middle potential customers
* Stop wasting resources acquiring and marketing to low potential
customers

Once you identify these groups, you can manage their value by:

* Emphasizing the ads, media, and products creating long term high potential value customers and downplaying ones that don't

* Creating High ROI marketing programs that maximize customer value by increasing sales while lowering expenses

* Predicting when best customers are about to leave you and reacting with customer retention and save-a-customer programs

* Quantifying the profitability of marketing and operational initiatives by linking them to potential customer value

what is Google Analytics?

2009-08-01T13:54:00.001+05:30

Google Analytics is a free analysis tool which gives you information on where your website visitors are coming from, which pages they visit, how long they stay, and a lot more. There are plenty of paid stat counters available which present data in different ways, but Google Analytics is one of the best, and it's free.

One can over-analyze or under-analyze any website. Some people spend too much time checking stats, analyzing, and planning, and don't spend enough time writing good content and getting new readers to their blogs.

On the other side of the pendulum, you could go on week after week, blindly publishing content and flailing along with offsite promotíon, without seeing what results your campaigns are getting, which type of content is the most popular for your visitors, and which traffic-generation techniques are getting the best results.

In between, we have a happy balance.

1. Find out which of your website's pages are getting the most traffic, and optimize those pages.
2. Find out which referrers are generating the most traffic, and continue any actions you have been taking to generate traffic from those referrers.
3. Find out which keywords you are ranking the best for, and see which ones you can "push to the top."
4. Find out which pages keep your visitors' attention for the longest.
5. Look at the graph of your bounce rate.

What is Market Basket Analysis

2009-07-30T12:23:00.001+05:30

Market Basket Analysis is a modelling technique. The basket enables us to diagnose on who is buying what product and what he/she 'may' 'most probably buy'. Based upon the theory that if you buy a certain group of items, you are more (or less) likely to buy another group of items. To put it simply it is Affinity Analysis.It is a technique that discovers co-occurrence relationships among activities performed by (or recorded about) specific individuals, groups, etc.

In the case of retailers with stores, market basket information enables the retailer to understand the buyer's needs and rewrite the store's layout accordingly, develop cross-promotional programs, or even capture new buyers (much like the cross-selling concept).

The set of items a customer buys is referred to as an itemset, and market basket analysis seeks to find relationships between purchases.

The challenge has been how to leverage this data to produce business value. Most have already figured out a way to consolidate and aggregate their data to understand the basics of the business: what are they selling, how many units are moving and the sales amount. However, few have ventured far enough to analyze the information at its lowest level of granularity: the market basket transaction.

At this level of detail, the information is very useful as it provides the business users with direct visibility into the market basket of each of the customers who shopped at their store. The data becomes a window into the events as they happened, understanding not only the quantity of the items that were purchased in that particular basket, but how these items were bought in conjunction with each other. In turn, this capability enables advanced analytics such as:

Item affinity: Defines the likelihood of two (or more) items being purchased together.
Identification of driver items: Enables the identification of the items that drive people to us that always need to be in stock.
Trip classification: Analyzes the content of the basket and classifies the shopping trip into a category: weekly grocery trip, special occasion, etc.
Store-to-store comparison: Understanding the number of baskets allows any metric to be divided by the total number of baskets, effectively creating a convenient and easy way to compare stores with different characteristics (units sold per customer, revenue per transaction, number of items per basket, etc.).

When Bad Buzz Happens to Good Companies

2009-07-27T23:14:00.001+05:30

It seems almost inevitable these days: You run a search on your company's name or product and a negative review, remark or blog post appears in the top listings. What do you do? Don't ... lose your cool and try to retaliate, It often does more damage than good. Instead what you probably could do is:

Do your best to resolve the issue with the dissatisfied person—publicly. It shows that you are persistent and take your customers' satisfaction seriously.

Take action to push the negative reports down in search-results pages. Submit a press release to PR distribution sites, or start a new blog about your company's products or services. Make sure you share the good information about your business, such as favorable stats or testimonials. All that good news will likely be listed in search results before the bad stuff.

Use social networking to build—and spread—positive buzz. People will refer your site if it has appeal for their peers. So provide pertinent and buzz-worthy info.

So in short: Hold your head up high. With proper planning and a few positive strategies, you can mitigate any damage done to your rep by a few bad comments—and you may boost your goodwill in the process.

Maximize Your Social-Networking Investment

2009-07-25T20:04:00.001+05:30

You don't get to be a social-networking superstar without paying your dues. You ought to try to maximize the value of the time spent.You should talk about others eight times for each thing you say about yourself. There's a good reason for doing so: The more you discuss what others say and do, the more likely they are to reciprocate. You're going to be more successful in social networks if people have an idea of the real you—not just the business you, not just the consultant you. But beware of sharing TMI [too much information], a common mistake in the world of social networks. Some people go crazy and they're all out in the ether, talking about weird stuff.

Make your brand talk. But not chatter away.

Tweet Like You Mean It

2009-07-22T22:46:00.001+05:30

Lots of companies are trying out to see how they can use Twitter to promote their products and services. The fact is a few good tweets can also provide great customer service.

Send out tips on maintaining your products. Your years of experience can help you gain credibility on Twitter as a leader in your profession,

A jeweler can tweet a few tips on cleaning and maintaining that wedding ring. "How often should you have the prongs checked?" .
A dry cleaner can tweet advice about attacking a stain before you bring a garment in to be cleaned. Or he could talk about treating stains on a variety of fabrics, one tweet and one fabric at a time.

Announce new arrivals of inventory. These tweets can be particularly effective when targeted to customers who have registered their product preferences.

Twitter isn't the sole solution to surviving the recession, but it can be one of the many strategies you employ to reach new and current customers.

So go on, Reach out and tweet someone. If you make a list of 10 or 20 tips, you can send one out each day, Ross says. What a great, free way to provide active customer service during the downturn.