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Amy’s Baking Company’s Massive Social Media Meltdown

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Amy’s Baking Company’s Massive Social Media Melt Down

While your online reputation is important to manage, if managed incorrectly, it can backfire into a viral disaster with devastating repercussions. A perfect recent example of bad online reputation management and nonsensical rants over social media is the recent meltdown of Amy and Samy Bouzaglo of Amy’s Baking Company.

Amy’s Baking Company is located in Scottsdale, Arizona and run by the Bouzaglos. After receiving negative reviews online and a bad experience on the show “Kitchen Nightmares” the couple had a severe melt down over social media sites complete with salty language, all caps and the lines, “I AM NOT STUPID YOU ALL ARE. YOU JUST DO NOT KNOW GOOD FOOD.” This just about pitched the company over the edge resulting in the bakery temporarily closing and the social media world grabbing their pitch forks and attacking the company from all angles, including allegations about tip withholding from employees. To make matters even worse, the company posted the following statement on their Facebook page denying responsibility for the posts:

This recent fiasco is a perfect case study of what NOT to do. Our natural instinct is to get defensive and fire back at the customer. However, this is never the appropriate response. In the business of customer service, it’s important to keep calm and remember the old saying, “the customer is always right”.

No matter how ugly, inaccurate or rude the reviews get, businesses need to acknowledge mistakes and offer incentives such as discounts or a free dessert to bring back those negative customers. When you resolve conflicts online, others are impressed with your response and your willingness to correct a mistake.

Companies can no longer stand by and let bad reviews sneak past without responses. Customers and potential customers will see it. According to Jay Baer, president of the social media marketing consultancy Convince and Convert, “You have to respond 100 percent of the time, whether you like it or not.” Baer said. “Businesses need to assign someone to stay on top of it.”

Idyllwild Advertising can manage your online reputation with our social media and directory optimization services, contact us today: 801-733-8400.

How to Advertise Your Google Place Page Outside of Your Physical Location

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Google Places can be tricky for those of you who serve many cities and areas without having a physical location within those cities.

There are two major factors when it comes to advertising in more than one service area. Some companies either have multiple office locations through the state or they have a mobile business with no office location at all.

Unfortunately, Google tries to avoid listing business that do not have an actual location in the city they are trying to advertise in. Some businesses try to trick the system and create a fake address like a P.O. Box.

Google guidelines specifically state that you should not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. They also ask that you do not create more than one listing for each business location in either a single account or separate accounts. This also goes for creating different accounts for each service a company offers.

“Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.” – Google

So what can you do? Here are a few options to help you optimize your listing and get listed in your desired cities.

  1. Create one listing and then include service areas within the same listing.
  2. Get a physical location address – it may seem like a lot to do just to get listed in more cities but if there are enough clients for you in that area, it is a very reasonable thing to do. Just make sure you are close to the city center.
  3. Get a virtual office location – a lot of companies use virtual addresses and rank well in competitive markets, especially if you are a mobile business and work from a home office that customers wouldn’t go to.  Virtual offices are great for those companies if they need a meeting space. Be sure that you actually have access to a virtual location as Google will call and ask questions to confirm you use this as an office location.

If you have any questions in reference to your Google Place account or any other online marketing services, our experts here at Idyllwild are available for your convenience.

Hailey Wilcock – Account Manager

 

Writing Website Content and Becoming a Great Writer

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Developing strong writing skills is an essential skill required in almost any job field. In website development, developing captivating content is essential to the success of your website. To stand out from the thousands of others writing online content, become a great writer.

To become a great writer, you need to establish your own voice. According to a recent post by Search Engine Journal, with the overflow of writers and content online, your own voice has become increasingly important if you want your content to stand out online. The first step is to develop a voice that uniquely fits your website. You need to write engaging content that will hold your audience’s attention on your site. You can be a pro at writing SEO and getting traffic to your page, but if you don’t have the content to hold a user’s interest, there’s not really a point. You may notice that the website content you enjoy reading is typically simple and direct. When users visit your site, they are generally searching for information about your brand or business and don’t want to read pages and pages of content searching for answers to their questions. Keep your content clean, concise and to the point.

Another tactic to improve your writing is to read content on your favorite websites and note some of the techniques they use to keep you engaged. The best writers understand that each website’s audience is different. When writing content, understand your target audience and what messaging will capture their attention and evoke a response and action.

One suggested practice to increase your writing skills is to practice free writing. Spend at least 30 minutes a day writing in a journal, your personal blog, or just jotting down thoughts on a loose-leaf piece of paper. Practice makes perfect and this is especially true when it comes to improving your writing skills and developing your own style and voice.

Becoming a great writer is a continual process even for the pros, and takes consistent effort and practice to improve. The more you practice your writing and learn how to tailor your voice to fit your target audience, the more effective your website content will be.

Do you need help writing your website content? Idyllwild Advertising can help, contact us today.

Vine: What Can You Say in 6 Seconds?

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Back in January I posted on our Facebook page about Twitter’s release of the new microvideo app “Vine”. In case you are unfamiliar with Vine, it is a microvideo mobile app where users can share short videos with their friends and followers. How short? Six seconds. When I first heard about the app, I posted the question what kind of video can be made in only six seconds? Apparently there are a lot of videos that can get their message across in only six seconds.

In just the few months of its existence the app has attracted thousands of brands, musicians and celebrities. The first video footage of the new Wolverine movie was released on Vine as a teaser instead of a full movie trailer. At the beginning of this month Vine held the number one spot for free apps in the Apple Store.

Vine has already had updates to make the social media app even better. At the end of March an update to the Vine app allowed users to embed their videos across the web. The app also released a trending hash tag section to help users find trending videos and topics on Vine.

Musicians and bands are taking to the new app to promote their music. Jason Derulo is using Vine to promote his new single. There are tributes to the Rolling Stones, a thank you to the fans video from 30 Seconds to Mars, and hundreds of other celebrities and musicians use the app to for personal promotion or as a six second behind the scenes look at their lives on tour or on set.

The White House even joined Vine and released their first video on Monday. Their first video was of Bill Nye and Levar Burton announcing the White House Science Fair. Comedy Central experimented with Vine with a series of six second stand-up comedy acts.

Vine is available to download for those 17 and up. The app’s popularity continues to grow despite the Apple Store slapping a 17+ warning on the app and Facebook’s block from using the Facebook platform. What can you say in 6 seconds? Get on Vine for inspiration and start sharing your own mini videos on Vine.

Google+ Local reviews missing? Let the protest begin.

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Since January 2013, there has been nothing but complaints about companies losing reviews on their Google Place page in this new Google+ Local migration that came in late 2012.

As we all know, your customers reviews are very important in increasing your visibility and rank on Google Places, and ironically enough, this new update has a bug which is starting to delete these reviews that Google themselves once recommended.

There was a point where you couldn’t pay enough or convince a customer to remove a negative review and now we can’t even maintain a positive review?

What is Google doing to resolve this solution and return the old reviews that companies once had? Unfortunately we don’t know yet because Google is not answering anyone’s questions.

As a result of the lack of information from Google, frustrating articles and comments are popping up like a vicious storm all over Google forums and all we can do is ban together and hope that Google will soon provide us with a solution.

Some are saying they have bypassed the issue with different editing and submitting strategies but if the reviews do start showing again its only temporary and they fall off again.

What should you do in the mean time?

Social media and other online marketing services should be considered regardless of any review issues with Google+ Local.  Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all sources for great reviews so make sure you have a profile and a link in your email or on your website and direct your customers there until this is resolved.

If you have any questions in reference to your Google+ Local or any other online marketing services, our experts here at Idyllwild are available for your convenience.

Hailey Wilcock – Account Manager

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