I find myself often defending the validity of the review section in Google Maps almost immediately after telling someone that I work for the local division of an interactive direct marketing company. “Those things aren’t real,” they say, “those are written by the owners themselves”. At first, I was surprised that people were so cynical about reviews, but lately, something has happened. I feel my brow furrowing as I examine the review section because of some of the things I see. Things like names of competitors in reviews that had such bad service that the customer had to turn to the business that provided them with excellent service. Or the same review by the same name on the same day in different channels, all pulled in by Google to create one suspicious looking review section. Or, maybe the same person feels the need to write one review for multiple locations of a same business. The latest favorite, the inclusion of names in reviews written by, get this, a person with the same name (sometimes with a competitor’s business name spliced in for good measure). I now understand why the reviews in local results have the stigma that they do.
~Search DivaThe team at Microsoft have been busy working on updating their Desktop application for the MS AdCenter advertising platform in the recent months. If anyone read one of my earlier posts 10 Ways to Make AdCenter Desktop Crash they may have noticed that a few members of the Desktop team commented on it asking me to contact them to follow up on the issues I was having.
~Stephanie
On July 26 Ford is going to reveal their 2011 Ford Explorer. No, not at a car show or on a commercial—on Facebook. Didn’t have enough proof social media is used for EVERYTHING? Here’s your proof.
One of the first key pieces to good mobile marketing is ensuring your site renders well across all devices and browsers. After all, conversions on a small, difficult-to-navigate site are not easy to come by. There are two tools (more than that really!) you can use to test your site against mobile web standards.
~Crystal