How to Deal with a Bad Yelp Review

Posted on by Chris Jenkin

If a customer rant has you Googling how to deal with a bad Yelp review, you’re in the right place. Save face with our tips!

5 Tips for Dealing with a Bad Yelp Review

1. Acknowledge it: Your business is not perfect and your customer caught you serving up less than stellar service. Now of course you don’t want this to become your reputation, but that doesn’t mean you can’t own it and move on with a sense of pride and responsibility. Acknowledging your faults and where your business underperformed will help you understand why you were dealt a bad Yelp review in the first place.

2. Respond- You should always reply to every bad Yelp review. Ignoring it simply implies you don’t care enough, or that you’re too angry or otherwise embarrassed to deal with it (which you are, and that’s also why you’re here). Reach out to the customer and listen to their experience. In any way possible you should try to remedy their concerns, and if necessary- offer them to come back to your business and give it another try.

3. Request a Positive Review- If you’ve reached out to your customer and they’re happy with your response, you’re in a much better position to ask if they’d be willing to write a positive follow-up review based on their new experience. If you’ve handled the situation promptly and professionally they’ll be much more inclined to share their experience with Yelp readers.

4. Establish Customer Loyalty– Now it’s time to move on and keep the customers you have happy. This means you need to establish some sort of customer loyalty strategy. Besides offering quality service and products, your business should also focus on encouraging repeat business. Mobile apps, emails and maintaining an activesocial media presence, are all tools your business can use to encourage loyal customers.

5. Don’t Repeat Mistakes- Last but not least don’t repeat the same mistakes. If you’re constantly reading reviews about your slow or poor service, perhaps it’s time for a meeting and a new game plan? Once you know what you’re doing wrong you can work hard to make things right. Strive to understand your customer and their needs so that you can focus on their expectations (and then exceed them).

You’re Not Alone

Despite what your bad business review discloses, it helps to know you’re not alone. Many businesses have had to deal with the often “unexpected” blow of negative feedback. Since you’re likely already aware that bad feedback spreads like wildfire, you can also make a point to publically share the situation. Social media is a great place to thank your customer for their feedback, and then go ahead and tell the world what the heck you did wrong. People are much more forgiving of people and businesses who make efforts to improve after being blasted.

While it takes time for businesses to get over the sting of a bad business review, patience, acknowledgment, and an unwavering commitment to service will eventually pull you out of the wreckage. (All in one piece.)

How Your Business Can Make the Most Out of Facebook

Posted on by Chris Jenkin

Facebook activity has increased regularly, to the point where people use it just about every day. At the end of 2015, Facebook had over 1.5 billion monthly users. Amongst smartphone users, the average amount of time spent on Facebook is one out of every five minutes. With so many things to do on Facebook, it’s not a surprise that there are people who spend the whole day just browsing their news feed. After all, it’s free!

As a business owner, it’s important that you know how to properly use Facebook to your own advantage. Because Facebook has a huge number of users, you can easily get your message or product across without spending too much money. For the most part, Facebook is an effective marketing tool for your business. If you already have a Facebook page for your business, it’s time you put it to good use. Here are 10 tips that will help your business make the most out of your time on Facebook:

Separate Your Personal and Business Account

One of the first things you should know about using Facebook for your business is how to separate the things you post on your personal account from your business page. When you post the right things on your Facebook page, you appear professional and serious about your business and what you’re trying to promote. Avoid posting something that you wouldn’t want your suppliers, customers, or co-workers to see on your business account. Apart from looking unprofessional, this can turn off potential customers from following your page.

At the Same Time, Be Friendly

While you shouldn’t post personal information on Facebook, you should practice being friendly with all who send you a friend request. For your business, the goal is to gain as many followers as you can. Just remember that when you’re approving friend requests, they should be from real people and not fake accounts.

Be Careful with Your Tags

A common mistake of business owners on Facebook is that they tend to abuse the tag button. Users don’t like seeing a tagged notification on a post they are not even part of, or have shown no interest in. While it does get their attention, it also puts them off. You should only tag people in your photos or posts if they are interested in the products you are offering.

Do the Opposite with Likes

While it’s important that you don’t go overboard with the tags, liking posts is a different story. When you like a post, Facebook sends a notification to your friend. And the more posts you like, the more curious they will be as to who is giving them a like. At the same time, Facebook’s algorithm works in such a way that when you don’t like a person’s posts, it will stop showing them to you. This is why you should be generous with your likes.

Don’t Ignore Your Comments

One way you can build your brand is to engage in discussion with your friends/followers. And when someone leaves a comment on your post, it means that they took the time to do so. In response to this, you should acknowledge their comment by giving it a like. This builds interaction and lets them know you appreciate their thoughts.

Use a Photo When Posting

According to studies, picture posts tend to get more attention from users compared to text-only posts. This is a great way for you to get your message out to your users, even if you are just sending out a holiday greeting. At the same time, Facebook promotes picture posts more than text-only posts.

Remember to Greet Your Friends

Another way you can increase your followers is to spend some time sending out a Happy Birthday greeting. Think of it as a daily task that you do first thing in the morning. This helps you increase interaction with your followers and let them see you as someone who’s taking the time to know them.

Secure Your Account

Remember that when all of your posts are publicly available, you should also set a setting for the things your friends post on your wall. You can turn on the option of approving tags before they appear on your timeline. This way, you can filter out other people’s posts that are not good for your business page.

Be Interesting with Your Posts

The things you post on Facebook should be informative and interesting. Avoid trying to push your products to your customers as this is a big turn off. Get creative with how you post things on your page. Carefully think about each post you make so you can build your brand and increase your interaction with your followers. This also helps your friends stay interested and looking forward to your next posts.

Post at the Right Time

With Facebook, you have to remember that you should post business-related posts at the right time. The best time to do it is to post things during the late afternoon and early evening on weekdays. On weekends, you can post in the mid-afternoon. Timing your posts can help you ensure that your followers see them. Otherwise, they’ll end up on the bottom of their news feed and they’ll be too tired to scroll all the way down there.

These 10 tips can help make your business’ Facebook page earn more likes, comments and shares. At the same time, you’ll be able to make good use of Facebook to reach your customers without paying for anything.

How to Keep Mobile Shoppers Loyal

Posted on by Chris Jenkin

Mobile shoppers have many desirable and distinct traits, however commitment is not always one of them. How do you keep mobile shoppers loyal when there’s so much competition out there in the “cyber” world? The following tips might help you get a return click.

1. Be Mobile-Friendly- Customer loyalty lies largely in whether or not the customer feels doing business with you is convenient and of value. If your mobile website is not user-friendly your visitors will likely take their search somewhere else next time.

2. Lack of Customer Service- Are you hiding behind the laptop screen? If your business takes place on the internet and your consumer interactions are few, you’ll need to work twice as hard to build brand interest and also to maintain relationships. Ease of contact and prompt replies are necessary not only for local businesses, but internet companies as well.

3. Be Competitive- With the endless supply of resources available on the world wide web, your customers have the upper-hand when it comes to making the sale. If your products are not priced competitively you run the risk of losing repeat customers.

4. Know Your Customer- If you want to keep mobile shoppers loyal you have to have a keen sense of what they’re looking for. Staying on top of their interests through polls, surveys, special events and mailings will help you develop a more personal relationship with your shopper so that you can meet their future needs.

5. Increase Search Results- Your mobile site needs to keep growing if you want to thrive. In addition to social media posts that highlight company products, news, sales, specials, etc., you’ll want to start a blog that keeps your brand prominent in search results. Weekly blog postings help search crawlers find you, so they can direct new and return customers right through your door. Your blog should be informative and engaging, and highlight your area of sales or expertise. Not only do blogs provide entertainment and value to new visitors, they attract loyal mobile shoppers who want to stay on top of the news from their favorite brands. After all, they’re loyal. Right?

2016 Digital Trend Predictions

Posted on by Chris Jenkin

Author: Barry Whyte

Lists: I love them. Especially at this time of year. So here is one of the many lists I’ve written in anticipation of 2016. This one is for when a client asks me, “what’s going to happen in digital?”. Steal liberally!

1. Tech grows up. 2016 will be the year the tech industry is dragged kicking and screaming into the real world. Over the past few years, the industry has transitioned from a relatively minor part of the economy outside of California, into the primary driver of growth in a bunch of advanced economies.

Both courts and customers will force Uber, Handy and every other sharing platform you can think of to begin treating their employees like, well, employees. With regular income, health insurance, notice periods and everything else we have the right to expect from our employers. Pressure is mounting on both the left and the right of the political spectrum, and public support is beginning to sour was people reappraise these multi-billion-dollar tech giants as Goliath versus David — not the other way around.

Have you ever had an Uber driver complain to you about Uber? No? You will next year.

2. Workplaces will change. The trends currently playing out in the tech industry — unlimited vacation, shorter working days, no appraisals and work wherever you like — will creep into ot,her high-skill industries as the war for talent intensifies alongside higher economic growth.

Expect the physical manifestations of work: offices, conference rooms and business hotels to fundamentally change along with workplace behaviours.

(That said, I shouldn’t hold your breath for management to disappear. Reports of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.)

3. Microsoft is back. Now Apple has moved from being a challenger brand to become the new mainstream, hipsters who once worshipped at the house of Jobs are turning their backs in droves. Where will they go?

It turns out that during all these years, when Apple obsessively focused their energy on secrecy and voodoo magic, Microsoft just had teams of people away from the San Francisco bubble who were building really good computers. Huh. Who would have thought? When you touch a Surface Book, you’ll understand. It’s the feeling when you touched an iPhone for the first time, all over again.

“Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.” Steve Jobs might have said it, but now Microsoft is the one doing it.

4. Estate agents become a relic. This one might have a slight London bias, given the real estate obsession we have in my home city, but the trend will emerge across all markets. If you think about it, it’s almost staggering that online estate agents haven’t taken over the industry by now. It’s an industry ripe for digital transformation: high transaction margins, relatively basic yet people intensive processes, and a business model that everyone in the transaction despises — both buyers and sellers.

Imagine all that wonderful high street retail space that will become available when we finally get rid of them.

5. Self driving cars will transform the urban streetscape. It’s been on the cusp of happening for so long, it’s almost become a cliché to talk about it. But self-driving cars are no longer just on wide American highways, they are being tested on the narrow, tight streets of London. It won’t be long before you are in one.

Just think how the streetscape will change. Cars will drive closer together, fewer vehicles will be needed and the streets will empty. Those vintage 1900s photos you see of a city free of traffic? They’re about to come back to life.