Yahoo, do these jeans make me look fat?

Yahoo has turned into the Cosmo of the Internet. Headlines telling us: how to lose a man or women, how to have fun being single, how to lose weight and how to keep a relationship strong. Since when has Yahoo become the forum for this objective information?

The number one search engine (by far) is Google; however, I still use Yahoo because I enjoy their quick home page articles. They create a visually capturing, easily navigable, and constantly updated page for the latest in news, sports, and entertainment… plus I hear they have a real search engine still. Whenever I turn on the computer for the day, I always hit my quick Yahoo tab and check the breaking news. Plus, if any bear has fallen out of a tree, onto a trampoline and then onto the ground, I’ll know about it.

Basically I’m looking for the important events shaping our lives.

Recently my information seeking has slowed down.

I’m stuck having to navigate past articles giving some expert’s opinion on why men and women act the way they do. These are articles found in your monthlies like Teen, Cosmo, or GQ. The headlines and catchy phrases about relationships are great for those magazines because we purchase and obtain those magazines for those reasons. I’m not saying those subjects aren’t fit for anyone. They just are not right for Yahoo.

Yahoo, please drop the fluff and tell me why Iron Man 2 didn’t recast Terrance Howard. (What’s that about!?)

By the way… ladies, keep him by staying in shape, being available but not clingy, and constantly putting out. Men, keep her by spending lots of money. Just my opinion: perfect for a blog, terrible for the front page of Yahoo.

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In a slowed down economy with tightened consumer spending, drawing in customers becomes an even more challenging task for many companies. Low prices and high quality products no longer guarantee customers, and the importance of word of mouth becomes even more valuable to businesses. Today’s post on the Wpromoter looks at the ways restaurants and brick and mortar shops in general can leverage online review sites to their advantage. And best of all, it’s free.

While for many Americans, 50% of all meals are prepared outside the home, a recent Zagat Survey shows that 33% of people said they are eating out less and being more sensitive to menu prices.   Without a doubt this has effected how restaurants managers have chosen to run their business, often adding new items or specials to their menu, redesigning the restaurant’s decor, or even retraining staff.  But these efforts only go so far when restaurants turn a blind eye to what people are saying about them online.

Why It’s Important

For any restaurant, an online review and presence is just as important as the physical appearance.  Monitoring a reputation online is important for two major reasons, accuracy & reviews.  How accurate is the information about your business online? Are the menu prices, address, phone number & business hours correct?  Or is there conflicting information from a recent move or change in management? A business is potentially losing business if incorrect phone numbers and addresses are online.

Now to customer reviews, are negative reviews of your business coming up #1 on Google? Negative reviews are inevitable, but it’s how a business responds and improves from the feedback that makes the difference.  As reported by Rubicon Consulting (and noted on Marketing Pilgrim, word of mouth and online reviews are the most influential factors in consumer purchasing decisions.

Where To Start:

A. Control: Controlling your business profile is the first step.  Most web sites like Yelp.com or Yahoo! Local make it very easy for business owners to control their listing.  Yelp has a Business Owners Section and Yahoo! Local offers its Basic Listing for free.

Once you set-up your profiles or verify existing profiles, make sure your business’ contact information is accurate and consistent.  That means if you are in Suite 860, Suite 860 should be written on all of the web sites, not #860, Apt. 860, Apartment 860, etc.  Once you have basic information filled out, add in more multimedia; appealing photos of your business or video often work great!

A nice feature that Yelp offers it that once registered, it will keep you informed of new reviews, messages, and the number of views you business page has received.

B. Prepare & Interact
Prepare yourself for the worst and take the reviews with a grain of salt.  Don’t try to sue customers for negative reviews.  There will be harsh words, and even potentially fake negative reviews (possibly from your competitors).  If the web site allows you to respond to the reviewer directly, consider doing so as it may look great from a public relations perspective and really have been an anomaly as to why the customer had such a negative experience at your establishment.  On the other hand, thank users who gave you a positive review! The customer has taken time out of their busy schedule to write a positive review for you.  Go the distance to acknowledge such loyal customers.

C.  Encourage Feedback & Focus Your Efforts
Encourage customers to review your restaurant.  Consider adding a print out with receipts, posting a sign on your business window, or leaving an old-fashioned suggestion box for people to write in their comments.  You may be surprised at how willing people provide their feedback when asked.

And lastly, how far does the rabbit hole go?  Online reputation management is an industry of its own.  There are technically thousands of business review type of web sites online and monitoring each one can be a very time consuming task.  Focusing your efforts to the most trafficked web sites is particularly important.  Here’s a quick checklist of suggestions on how to manage your online reputation if you only have one hour a week to spend.

1. Search On Google And Yahoo! For Your Restaurant

What comes up first? Is it your official web site, a page on Yelp, UrbanSpoon, Yahoo! Local or another result?  Scan through the result, if there’s a negative review see if there’s a way to address it.

2. Move On

Move onto the next search result.  Is this page a business listing? If so, do you already control it? If not, can you control or verify the page? Is all of the contact information updated, accurate and consistent?

3. Interact

Interact where you can, respond to negative reviews and thank customers who provided you with positive reviews.  Add on to the pages with new pictures, specials and anything else.  Ideally, in time these pages will continue growing with unique and positive content about your business and fill with dozens of positive reviews.

Our Top List Of Customer Review Sites (Mainly For Dining):

Yelp.com
Yahoo! Local
DineSite.com
Chowhound.com
RoadFood.com
UrbanSpoon.com
CitySearch.com
Gayot.com
Zagat.com
& even Google Maps has their own review section!

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While this is characteristically off topic for a blog entry from the scholarly Wpromoter, I just couldn’t resist jumping on the opportunity to talk about something as cool as space ladders! Yes, that’s right, space ladders. As soon as one might hear the concept of a “space ladder,” more than one idea might come to mind. Is it a nefarious plan to condemn the whole world to bad luck? Or are we just trying to make an altogether simpler and more efficient way to transport people and cargo way up yonder into the reaches of space? As it turns out, there have actually been multiple attempts to make a space ladder, and despite the failures, Japan has announced that they will be tackling the idea, and they are bringing a few new ideas to the table that they think could make this Arthur C. Clarke, sci-fi dream, materialize in the real world.

The future is upon us, and that idea can be seen in the attitude that Shuichi Ono (chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association) had when he said, “Just like traveling abroad, anyone will be able to ride the elevator into space.” While this seems a little exaggerated or that the chairman is getting a little ahead of himself, it is a novel concept to think about. As the earth becomes more and more charted and documented, it makes sense that progressively we are going to look more and more into going into space, and getting off this rock.

There are specifics to this operation as well, or at least as specific as you can get with a theoretical project. It is estimated that about 7.3 billion dollars will be thrown at this project, and that the breakthrough method of really hoisting up an “elevator-carriage” would be through a complex system of carbon nanotubes. This idea came up because, currently, the biggest hurdle to the project is the need for composite cabling that is 180 times stronger than steel and much, much lighter than it. Carbon nanotubing is theorized to be able to accomplish this task, as well as be able to be a method to provide power to the apparatus, as the carbon nanotubing is a good conductor of electricity.

While the suggested uses for the elevator have been as sublime as lifting up giant solor panels to provide the earth electricity, to as nefarious as using it to slingshot our nuclear waste off the planet and make it someone or something else’s problem, it really is a riveting spectacle. One day we really might have an elevator to the stars. All I know is that Arthur C Clarke aside, they really should reference the ol’ board game Chutes and Ladders because I better one day be riding a giant space slide back to Earth.

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The internet, in all its glory and wonder, has the particular ability to be quite a den of “spoilers”. People or organizations can post just about anything up on the web, and often it is information that isn’t common knowledge, and sometimes that’s because it wasn’t necessarily designed to be broadcasted to the entire world at once. The original idea behind this topic and blog sparked from a conversation with my friend and co-worker Dom, who began to tell me how annoying it was that Yahoo was posting front page headlines about Olympic winners, but doing it based on the air times and schedule for the first US airings. These happened to be the east coast and left many Pacific Standard Time Yahoo users in a state of disappointment, having many of their favorite or at least anticipated events ruined, knowing the outcome already.

It’s a funny thing to think about. The exact kind of headline we have become accustomed to and even might prefer in many cases – one that is short, specific, and gives you the “punchline” – is pretty much the worst kind of headline to have for a scenario with which the outcome is hotly anticipated, and especially where not everyone across the United States even has the ability to even see things without a delay. The Olympics are a big thing for a lot of Americans, and I could pretty easily see it being jading knowing the results of something you were waiting to watch for the first time.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though. After a short amount of time Yahoo either realized the error of their ways or people complained openly about it because things are different now. Now the headlines are much more geared around being a teaser, with any actual results being one-click away, not something you could accidentally stumble upon just from their front page.

The moral of the story? Never forget the power the internet has to reach a large audience at once, and how that might not always be the ideal way for information to be disseminated. There can certainly be times and applications (like with our dear friend Yahoo) where either a delay or an extra step is implemented to protect time-sensitive information.

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