Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL

Up until now, if you’ve received a complaint in a Google review (legitimate or not) there hasn’t been any way to respond to that review.

Today Google announced via their Lat Long Blog in their post Respond to reviews for your business on Google Place Page that those days are over. As long as you have claimed your Google Place Page you can now log in and reply to the bad review.

Example: Google Place Page Review and Owner Response (from Google Lat Long Blog)

At times, responding to a customer through a review is the only way to reach them if you don’t have their contact information. Perhaps just as importantly, it gives you the opportunity to let potential customers who are reading your reviews know your side of the story. While bad reviews are often earned, there are those that are inaccurate.

There’s another opportunity here that I want to call your attention too.

While most business owners will take the opportunity to respond to negative reviews, very few will take the time to respond to the positive reviews. But why not? We appreciate it when people acknowledge us, even if it’s a small thing. Showing readers of the review that you’re actively paying attention to your customers (good or bad) will go a long way to demonstrating your dedication to great customer service. Plus, the person that you acknowledge will feel even better about having done business with you, paving the way for repeat business and even more referrals. You may even consider going a step further and offering your customer a small thank you offer (like a free dessert on a future visit if you’re a restaurant). Nothing that someone would consider coercive, just a small gesture of your appreciation for their business.

Take advantage of the opportunity that two-way reviews give you and make it a part of your overall social media strategy today.

As Google Places (formerly Google Local Business Center) evolves one of the most important aspects of their development is their mobile presence. The video below shows how Google Places has been enhanced to work more seamlessly with the iPhone, Google Android phones and other Smartphones like BlackBerry’s, Windows Mobile, Nokia and others.

With Android, Google wants to continue to play a leadership role in how mobile is intermeshed with local. And how much more local and intermeshed can something be than a device that’s never far from your fingertips than a mobile device?

This all bodes very well for small businesses who’ve invested the time to create and updating their Google Places page with photos, video, updates, mobile coupons and more.

You may have already heard more than you can take about social networks like Facebook and Twitter or blog marketing. These conversational communications tools are none the less here to stay. Once in a while it’s a good idea to step away from the How-to make a facebook page type article and look at the bigger picture of how online tools are redefining our customer relationships. That’s the intent of this piece.

The Broadcasting Model

It would be an understatement to say that customer communications models are changing. Old marketing and communications practices followed a we speak/you listen model. This worked out pretty well for business owners and marketers when people used to have more attention to spare or we could rely on the novelty of an advertising medium to break through the clutter. Unfortunately, the expiration date these days on novelty expires in months and not decades.

The issue now is that people don’t have the time or interest in listening. Before they expend their time and attention on your company or product an exchange of value has to take place. For today I’ll call that exchange of value, engagement.

The old model looked something like this.

Ye Old Marketing and Communications Model

The Interaction Model

Interactive online tools like blogs ushered in today’s interaction model and extends today in webinars, livestreams, chat rooms, virtual worlds and social networks. Clearly we have a lot of tools that make it possible to better listen. For those of you with businesses with retail locations this interaction model has always extended to the most powerful of interaction models – face time! The influence of online tools has grown and today small business owners are starting to see the value in listening more with online tools. But listening skills aren’t enough and far too many organizations are still stuck in the broadcast model.

The interaction model looked something like this.

The transitional model - think web 2.0

The Evolving Engagement Model

With today’s tools we have what we need to move towards a new engagement model that focuses more heavily on listening, processing, interacting, and broadcasting. Ideally, the net result is tangible engagement and then a lift in your brand and sales.

It probably resembles a formula like this.

Listening 30% / Processing 20% / Interacting 30% / Broadcasting 20% = Engagement

The evolving engagement model

I’m going to dive into the engagement model in more detail in future posts and we’ll bring it all together with an actionable process.

Julian, ed LOCAL Na8ion
where you are is where it’s at