Customer Feedback: Authenticity as the Final Frontier

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Coherent feedback cuts the distance between a company and its audience. But all that is compromised when paid reviews and rigged ratings enter the scene. Authenticity therefore remains the final frontier for marketing and client-oriented strategies.

How Not to Respond to Reviews: 10 Common Pitfalls

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Contrary to the popular saying, all publicity isn’t good publicity. It’s quite possible to go about review response in a way that does more harm than good. Listed below are 10 common practices that won’t do your business any favors and are arguably worse than no response at all.

Street Fight Daily: GDPR Is Here and Complaints Are Being Filed, How Not to Handle Reviews

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Tech Giants Face First GDPR Complaints Over ‘Forced Consent’… Google Confirms Feed Ads Are a Test… Namogoo Releases 2018 Online Consumer Behavior Study…

Makeup Product Reviews

Influenster Launches Solution to Help Brands Leverage Organic Reviews

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In a bid to help retailers take advantage of the growth in user-generated reviews, the product discovery and reviews platform Influenster recently launched its own service to continuously supply organic, non-incentivized reviews to brand and retail websites like Walgreens, Target, and Bloomingdales.

An eBook on Google Q&A: Everything You Wanted to Know and More

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Brand engagement with Google Q & A would not just provide authoritative answers to consumers who are looking to do business with brands but would also demonstrate a level of brand concern that could provide a competitive advantage.

Q&A, Reviews, and Fake News on Google: False Content Is Not Just a Facebook Problem

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“Given the primacy of Google’s market position, and the primacy of Knowledge Panels in SERPs—also a conscious product decision on Google’s part—the percentage of customers who are likely to come across fake information is great,” David Mihm tells Mike Blumenthal in their biweekly column.

Should Local Businesses Ask for Reviews?

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Reputation management services should focus on helping businesses understand what consumers are saying and engage with reviewers by responding. Unbiased review content is a true goldmine for the brand who works with a reputation company to glean deep insights about consumer sentiment offered by consumers themselves for free.

How to Influence Customers Through Online Reviews

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As major brands look to capitalize on the most effective and trustworthy ad formats, they are refining their strategies for managing online reviews. Here are six ideas that brand marketers should keep in mind as they look for new ways to influence the way consumers interact with their online reviews.

Could Chipotle Have Saved Millions of Dollars By Taking Online Reviews More Seriously?

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If done right, online reputation management can act as an early warning system for multi-location businesses, and can ultimately prevent long-term brand damage and reduce the risk of decreasing profits.

The Increasing Impact of Reviews and Google+ (?!) on Local SEO

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Some new data has given us some “big time insight” into how Google is using authoritative local sites to inform local search rankings, says David Mihm. Mike Blumenthal agrees, saying that the prominence of local review pages and appears to be “transferring prominence directly to the local entity in a way that is totally independent of links.”

How Merchants Can Use Reviews to Influence Sales

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When local merchants turn online reviews into marketing collateral, posted on their websites, social media, or in print, they’re likely to encourage other positive reviews and also influence sales. Here are five examples of ways that merchants can leverage these reviews.

Street Fight Daily: Bing’s New Ordering Service, Google Revives Wallet

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyBing Now Lets You Order Food And Book Hotels Directly From Search Results (The Next Web)… To Revive Wallet, Google Tries to Wrangle Unruly Partners (Wall Street Journal)… Uber Valued At $41 Billion As Revenue Growth Powers Expanded Funding Round (MarketWatch)…

Street Fight Daily: Digital First’s Thunderdome Implodes, Mobile Payments Heats Up (Again)

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyThe Newsonomics of Digital First Media’s Thunderdome Implosion (And Coming Sale) (Nieman Journalism Lab)… Tech Titans Are Vying to Be Your Pocketbook (New York Times)… TaskRabbit For Business Service Portal Quietly Disappears (TechCrunch)…

Street Fight Daily: Square Makes Loans, Why Microsoft Invested in Foursquare

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technologyWith Square Capital, Square Begins Offering Controversial Merchant Cash Advances (Recode)… It’s Now Obvious Why Microsoft Invested Millions In Foursquare (Business Insider)… Uber Says it Doesn’t Discriminate by Neighborhood in Chicago (GigaOm)…

How Online Review Sites Can Regain Consumers’ Trust

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As long as there are economic incentives to create bogus reviews, unscrupulous people and businesses will continue to exploit the platforms that make it easy to deceive. For the local players seeking to help users in selecting a great business, use the offline world as a guide. Require an identity, build communities of real people sharing advice, and give legitimate customers a megaphone to honestly rate the service received…

Street Fight Daily: Square and Intuit Play Nice, Confidence Crisis With Reviews

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologySquare and Intuit Play Nice With New QuickBooks Integration (AllThingsD)… Confidence Crisis: 40 Percent Don’t Trust Online Reviews (MarketingLand)… Finding a Model for Sac Press by Looking at The Hawaii Independent (ScramentoPress)…

Street Fight Daily: Yelp Quantifies Its Value for SMBs, Identifying Anonymous Location

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Yelp Announces A New ‘Revenue Estimator’ For Small Businesses (TechCrunch)… Why the Collision of Big Data and Privacy Will Require a New Realpolitik (Paid Content)… How Indoor Location Could Find Its Way into Apple Services (GigaOm)…

Street Fight Daily: NYC Gets Local Discovery, Tiger Takes Stake in Groupon

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.New York City Replaces 250 Public Pay Phones with iPad-like Screens (GigaOm)… The World’s Hottest Hedge Fund Manager Thinks Groupon Stock Is A Good Deal (Forbes)… Basing Hotel Choice on Web Reviews May Be Bad Move (LA Times)…

Street Fight Poll: Word-of-Mouth Is Primary Driver of Local Business

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A new Street Fight poll finds that even with a slew of new locally targeted marketing platforms at local merchants’ disposal, word-of-mouth is still a primary driver of local consumer behavior. The poll of 500 U.S. consumers found that 43% of consumers are most likely to shop or dine at a local business after a recommendation from a friend or colleague…

7 Strategies for Dealing With Online Reviews

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While nobody doubts that positive reviews can be good for a business, many merchants aren’t quite sure how to encourage their customers to post their opinions online — and how to respond when they receive negative feedback in such a public forum. We spoke to five experts in the field and asked what businesses should consider when managing their online reviews…