Read 10 Ways for Small Businesses to Use LinkedIn

The post 10 Ways for Small Businesses to Use LinkedIn, By Guy Kawasaki appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

Zappos has grown from a little over $1 million to over $1 billion in just 10 ten years!   

“We’ve aligned the entire organization around one mission: to provide the best customer service possible. Internally, we call this our WOW philosophy” says Tony Hsieh   

Their goal is to position Zappos as the online service leader. Everyone in the company is trained in Zappos’ culture, values and customer service. Everyone!   

It certainly has paid off! Much of Zappos billion dollar business comes from happy repeat customers and word of mouth.  And at the same time they’ve created one of the Best Companies to Work For (2009 Fortune’s Top 100 Best Companies to Work For).   

You can learn from Zappos , especially if you run a retail ecommerce business (Zappos.com sells clothing).   

How you can learn from Zappos.com

Read This TopRank Article
An article posted on Lee Odden’s TopRank blog after Tony Hsieh’s keynote address at Pubcon 2009 gives a good overview of Zappos and what they do on their web site and internally to develop a customer service focus including:   

• 365 day return policy
• Free shipping both ways
• “above and beyond” customer service – even directing customers to competitors if they are looking for something Zappos doesn’t have
• No sales-based performance goals for reps
• 5 weeks of culture, core values, customer service and warehouse training for everyone

Read The TopRank Article   

Learn about their core values and how they build their culture   

http://about.zappos.com/ or   

http://www.zapposinsights.com/main/   

Read Books Suggested by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh
Here are some lists of these books   

Booklist: Zappos CEO Lists Books That Inspire   

 Zappos’ Library   

 New Zappos Culture Book . It’s not on the lists above. I haven’t read it yet myself. Still working my way through some of the others.   

Search on “zappos social media”
Learn how they did and DID’T use social media to build their business, including;   

“the way the company really builds relationships with customers – are the telephone call and the email conversation” Says Tony   

Zappos : Social Media Marketing Example #26. A look at Zappos on twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc   

Check out their web site, Zappos.com. Buy something
I bought some winter boots to start experiencing what they do first hand   

For More Info  

Increase ecommerce conversions 2-4x and improve search marketing results by helping shoppers decide what to buy  

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The post $1Mil to $1Bil in 10 years: Zappos. What You can learn from them (especially Internet retailers) appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

Often when people search for companies or specific  products and services there are reviews in the search engine listings even is people don’t specifically search for reviews (More and more people do search for reviews too).

A quick example. A Facebook friend’s daughter posted that they were going zip lining in our area one day so I sent her a message, “Sounds like fun. Where is it?”

She sent me the name of the place and the town it’s in. I searched for it on Google. All I wanted was to find their web site, check it out, get the hours, that kind of stuff.

However near the top of the search results was a Yelp review about the place, so I read it. The review was pretty negative as was the only other Yelp review. So I searched for more reviews by searching on the name of the place and adding “reviews” to my search. I found about 5 more reviews. Most of them where also negative talking about lots of opening season problems. So I’ll wait till next season and hope they listened to the reviews and fix the problems!

Ask for Reviews
You should consider asking your clients for reviews like Amazon.com does. A few weeks after buying something you’ll get a message from Amazon asking for feedback in their customer rating system.

Many shopping sites run their own customer rating systems, like Amazon, or use a shared review system like Power Reviews. Most ask for reviews.

You should consider asking for reviews too. Otherwise you could end up with mostly negative reviews.

Its human nature, many people will not take the time to write a review unless they are upset. So reviews can tend to be mostly negative.

You should be able to improve your ratings if you ask for reviews (assuming you have mostly satisfied customers!)

You can ask for reviews even if you don’t have your own customer rating system just point them to the best online review site.

Find what review sites are best for you
First search to see what reviews sites are best for your company and industry.

Search on your company and product names and add “reviews” to the search phrase.

Search on your competitors’ names and their product and service  names and add “reviews” to the search phrase

Search on generic product and services for your industry and add “reviews” to the search

Send a message to some existing clients
You can send a message out to some existing clients if it hasn’t been too long since they purchased or used your service etc.

See “How to Ask for Customer Reviews” on salesandmarketing.com in the ”For More info” section below for some tips; such as not sending out a blanket blast to all clients as this could back fire.

Set up a system to send a message to new customers
Have a message sent to new customers after just enough time has passed for them to have used your product or uservice long enough.

Tip – If you find more than one important review site you can cycle the messages for each review site.

You could just ask them to “please provide your feedback”. You might also mention it you’re not happy, “please call us at xxx-xxx-xxx. We’d appreciate the opportunity to correct the issue”

If you offer something to get them to write a review you want to make sure it doesn’t cross the line and look like you’re paying for reviews (See How To Ask For Customer Reviews – Nicely. Tips and examples, below)

Include simple step by step instructions on how they should do the review (I may post an article or a video on how to submit Google Maps Reviews in the future)

For more info

“How to Ask for Customer Reviews” – Tips from Sales & Marketing Magazine

“How To Ask For Customer Reviews – Nicely”. Tips and examples

Your Customers are talking about you! And your potential customers are listening!

The post Ask for customer reviews. Good reviews = more business (And will likely help your local search rankings) appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.

There was a study reported in Search Watch a few weeks ago that I think helps make it clear how important it is to take an active role in social media if you aren’t already.

Here are the two most important results from the study:

• 59.1% in the study use social media to talk about their customer experience.
• 72.2% research companies’ customer care online prior to purchasing products and services at least sometimes.

In other words:

Your Customers are talking about you!
… And your potential customers are listening!

Here’s an example from my presentation for the folks here in Ukraine. First I did a Google search on “largest energy companies in Ukraine”, then I searched on the company name that came to the top of the results “United Energy Systems of Ukraine”

Below are a few results from page 1 of the search results in Google for “United Energy Systems of Ukraine”.

The first result, labeled number 1, is a Wikipedia article about the company. It was the first search result, position 1 in Google.

The second result, labeled number 2, is two posts from a blog. The first one talks about a past president of the company.

Oh NO. In the last result, a news result labeled number 3, the headline includes “Corruption!”. When I scanned the news item it mentioned the “Demise” of this company (which explains why I didn’t find any results from their own web site).

So far everything I know about this company comes mostly from social media.

I (and according to the study, many people) do this kind of research before I buy just about anything significant these days (or even go to a new restaurant or hotel). I’m looking for what other people say about the products or services, the support, the food, etc. What I’ve found has often been the deciding factor in wheter I buy the product or service, try the new resturant or stay at a hotel.

The point is, you can and should use social media to listen to what your clients are saying about you, respond when appropriate, and use social media to help build your brand.

Here’s some tips in bullet form from the presentation. I think they’re self explanatory:

Listen to what is being said about you

TIP: Google Alerts – google.com/alerts for your company name, domain names, and product names, (competitors too) etc. Goolge will let you know about anything it indexes with these names

Find the social sites that fit your audience

Search on important search terms, topics, etc

Listen, Learn, Respond when appropriate

Participate – Become an active user and contribute in a helpful way

Work on creating, improving, guarding your brand; useful articles, research, helpful expert responses, videos, etc

Ask clients to submit reviews to appropriate sites (otherwise reviews tend to be mostly negative as people who had a bad experience are more motivated to say something than those who had a good experience)

Don’t self promote or spam

Learn the written and unwritten rules, don’t break them

Some sites allow you to submit your own content, such as posts from your blog

Few examples –
Digg
StumbleUpon
del.icio.us

Look for more sites that fit your audience & market

Setup profiles for your company or key personnel

Some examples (Many allow links to your site and or blog)
YouTube
Wikipedia
LinkedIn
Flickr
Craigslist
Facebook
MySpace
Technorati

Build up lots of friends
Participate and Contribute

Blogs –

•  
  • Can help build your reputation
  • May attract links from other sites
  • You can submit your posts to other sites
  • Allow others to submit comments, makes blog more useful, more “social”
  • Can have a newsletter generated from new posts
  • Participate on other industry leading blogs with thoughtful comments etc. Some will allow a link in your signature
  • Summarize other useful posts and link to them. They may return the favor

Add blog to main site e.g. evisionsem.com/blog –

• Adds content to a site (search engines will index it)
• Keeps site fresh and makes it more useful
• Gets searches engines returning more often
• May help rankings of the entire web site

For More Info

 Four unique social bookmarking gems from David Leonhardt

The post Your Customers are talking about you! And your potential customers are listening! Using Social Media Part 1 appeared first on eVision Online Marketing.