Local business reviews are a new kind of social media, in which customers review their experiences with brands over the internet. Business directories such as Yelp, Citysearch, and Yellowpages.com allow for customers to post what they think of the businesses that they have dealt with.

These reviews are seen by the customers who visit such sites, and can serve to gauge the public opinion people have of your brand. The ability of customers to do this has caused the business world to react in many different ways, ranging all the way from ignoring it altogether to overreacting and becoming paranoid. The important thing about this type of social media is that it is transparent. It cannot be altered or removed by the businesses that are being reviewed.

These reviews are important because they affect your brand reputation, they allow you to get feedback from your customers, and they get your brand in the search engines. Because of this, as much as is possible, businesses should respond to the negative reviews to the extent that they can. In many cases this can cause the customer to become a bigger fan of your business than if they hadn’t experienced any problems to begin with, which has a tremendous effect on word of mouth regarding your brand.

One way to do this is through the use of several programs that allow you to track these reviews, such as Cymfony, Trackur, and Marchex. In addition to responding to negative reviews, you can also use these tools to publicly thank people who have given you heartfelt, five-star, positive reviews.

In her article on iMediaConnection, which I strongly recommend reading, she makes it very clear how and why businesses need to re-evaluate their approach to data.

The new email list-building rules – iMediaConnection.com.

It’s never nice to think that after a lot of hard work to acquire new email addresses, a company should offer customers a chance to simply opt-out. But that is exactly what they will do if you start sending them emails. Worse, if they don’t un-subscribe as they should and keep getting more, they actually start to resent the business.

It’s always better to bite the bullet sooner rather than later and get a quality database, rather than just a quantity one.

They’re working together to study viewing habits, mobile use, social media adoption and attitudes to sponsorship during the World Cup.

The joint research, undertaken before England’s defeat by Germany at the weekend, was conducted using a panel of 3,300 UK sports fans. It found 44% were likely to watch and share videos, while almost a quarter (24%) were likely to visit dedicated Facebook pages.

Other findings were that a quarter (26%) expect to watch weekday World Cup matches via the internet at work, while a third (33%) said they were more likely to watch games online in 2010 compared to 2006. When asked when they’d be most likely to comment on a World Cup website, 17% said they’d choose to before a game, 21% would afterwards and only 7% would during a game.

Meanwhile, 18% of men planned to listen to podcasts and 18% said they would be downloading World Cup apps to their mobiles.

Mobile has become increasingly important to fans, with 41% of respondents likely to text a friend before the match, 43% during and 45% afterwards. In addition, 27% said they were more likely to follow games on their mobiles in 2010 compared to 2006, and 8% were more likely to watch games on their mobiles.

Just over half (55%) of the panel said they were taking part in World Cup competitions online.

Have you started your social media campaign yet? What have you found to be the most productive way of getting your brand name out there

Aegis chairman Napier wades in to BP-Obama spat – Brand Republic News.

However and interesting point was raised last night in the BBC One programme ‘This Week’. Andrew Neil pointed out that both the drilling company and the company that supplied the parts that failed, were both American, yet seemed to be absent from any overt criticism.

Does this indeed reflect some bias towards BP as being a British company as John Napier alludes too?

However, what does a company do when their audience is not computer illiterate and refuse to digress to the digital world? Surely with so much marketing potential online, companies are keen to communicate more effectively through the ever-developing web channels.

To influence an audience, there has to be something beneficial to them. Therefore, head back to the basics and identify exactly what it is that your target market desire. This information can easily be fed through to them using researched print, TV and radio sources.

Why influence people online? Because then you have greater control of the market and detailed analysis of how potential customers act and perceive your brand. Methods such as PPC, Google Analytics and A/B testing can all be employed to examine how well a brand is marketed.

Driving an audience online provides a reason for them to visit your corporate website and explore the products and services in greater detail. Tools such as social media and a blog can give visitors a feasible reason to stay in touch with your brand and open up an opportunity to exploit visitors at a later date.

It’s time for digital evolution. Communication as we know it has changed. People would rather interact through Facebook than face-to-face. This can have a high impact on how you can introduce and sell services to your target market.

Increase your marketing offline with the goal of driving the audience onto the web. Bring the consumers to you and you can soon discover that the market is chasing you, rather than you chasing them!

Need help influencing your market? No problem. Get in touch and see how productive we can be when exploring various platforms for marketing success.

Comments always welcome!

Companies should always be keen and active to create newsworthy stories about products and business developments. Though press publications won’t allow businesses to directly sell their services, it can help to promote initial awareness to customers.

Publishing regular content develops a greater understanding with the public and provides the perfect platform for customer interaction.

A campaign needs to be carefully planned and releases publicised at key development dates. Timing is a key issue. There is no benefit of releasing information about the launch of a new product before the release. Any delay or alterations to a product could leave the brand feeling rather foolish or misleading to customers.

Make sure all information is clearly presented in a informal manner and that all contact details are accurate and available for journalists to pursue initial interest. If the story is not worth reading, they will not publish it to their readers.

Of course, PR tactics have changed and developed with time. Digital platforms are providing greater prospects to reach wider audiences and create greater awareness.

Simply possessing a regularly updated blog on a website and bring adequate awareness and an essential tool for publishing business developments conveniently and cheaply. Not only with a blog create awareness of products and services, but also mount significantly greater SEO value for industry keywords.

Want to start your own digital PR campaign? Send us an email and we will get back to you suggesting some unique solutions to help increase brand awareness and reputation.