Chatmeter http://www.chatmeter.com Just another WordPress site Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:57:46 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 How The Facebook Updates Help Monitor Social Media http://www.chatmeter.com/2012/04/facebook-updates-monitor-social-media http://www.chatmeter.com/2012/04/facebook-updates-monitor-social-media#comments Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:55:08 +0000 admin http://www.chatmeter.com/?p=1182 On March 30th, Facebook rolled out the timeline update for all brand pages. This update has some great new features that should help companies organize their image and help engage their audience. Here are the new features briefly explained.
 
Fans/Users can now send businesses messages directly to their Facebook brand pages and the business can respond to that message directly. This is a great feature for companies to get feedback from its customers. This could be good news for the people who monitor reviews and social media for companies. If customers start messaging companies directly about product complaints, those complaints will not be posted in a public space.  This feature could be very powerful for businesses that manage their online reputation by responding to guest messages. On the other hand if a company does not respond to messages it could damage their online reputation.
 
This next feature is an effort to help organize the many apps and games that can be utilized on Facebook.  There is a section right underneath the cover photo where a list of Facebook apps that the brand uses will be shown. These apps can then be placed in a specific order based on what is important to the brand. The screen shot shows that chatmeter uses the photo, like, and blog apps. 
 
The Star and Pin features are for posts on the timeline. These features allow a company to tell its story and to highlight mile stones or special events that the business is proud of.  The Star feature allows you to enlarge a post/picture/video to take up the width of the screen in timeline, so it is more noticeable. The Pin feature allows you to pin a post/picture/video at the top of your timeline for exactly 7days.   
 
The best feature from a social media monitoring perspective is the new admin panel. This allows you to track and view all of the activity on a page, every thing from new likes, messages, posts, to who is responding to posts. This gives a snap shot of the recent activity for the page and lets the user respond and update content from this panel. 
 
The last feature Facebook is the cover photo feature, when timeline went live for personal accounts they rolled out this feature. Now the cover photo option is available for brand pages. With this added release came some rules from Facebook that apply to businesses that use this feature.
           
You can not have:
 
Price or purchase information, such as "40% off" or "Download it at our website"
 
Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section

References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features

Calls to action, such as "Get it now" or "Tell your friends"
 
These rules are put in place to keep branding pages “human.” This should give a sense of connection between the companies and their current and potential fans.
 

Facebook is going to continue to change and innovate, their user interface to keep it fresh and dynamic and keep consumers coming back to the platform. These new features allow businesses to communicate what is new and important in a more bold and effective way with their audience. In addition, as email usage continues to decline, the new messaging feature enables Facebook fans to communicate with the business without sharing their message across the web. Business should embrace these new features and integrate them into their online strategy for effective customer communications. The challenge continues to monitor all these different social and directory sites across the web as the fragmentation of local search continues. If you are looking for a solution to help monitor and react to content via daily updates and alerts, please check out chatmeter to help you manage and improve your brand visibility and reputation for each individual location.

]]> http://www.chatmeter.com/2012/04/facebook-updates-monitor-social-media/feed 0 Steps to grow your online presence using Pinterest http://www.chatmeter.com/2012/03/steps-grow-online-presence-pinterest http://www.chatmeter.com/2012/03/steps-grow-online-presence-pinterest#comments Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:34:19 +0000 admin http://www.chatmeter.com/?p=1177

Pinterest is the newest social media platform to hit the ground running and start growing over- night. The idea involves a virtual pin board, where users can pin pictures they upload or re-pin pictures from other users. Re-pinning is seeing a picture on someone else’s pin board and then pinning it on your own. With pinning and re-pinning, Pinterest has potential to be a powerful tool for businesses that have an online presence. The question is what businesses, and how do they use it? 

               The pin boards are created based on users’ interests. For example, if a person is interested in home designs, he can pin pictures of amazing houses that he has seen or found. Another example is if someone makes wedding cakes, then she can post pictures of her current designs on a board and title it “my designs”.  Users can then go to these boards and look at the pictures posted and either comment on them, “like” them, or re-pin them to their own board. Also, a picture can be pinned and then linked back to the website where it was found or to a site where it can be bought. This is can be a great move for local SEO, because it creates back links to your site. This could be a great way for a business to generate reviews for their product. Say a local chef posts a picture of a menu item on his website, he can then put that picture on Pinterest and link it to that his page. In theory that will drive more traffic to his site. This can be done with pictures across the web. For example say someone finds a product on Amazon, they can pin to their Pinterest account and that pin will be linked to that Amazon page. This kind of sharing and linking increases the importance of review monitoring. If company has a link to a product where people can review it, then the company needs to make sure that there are no negative reviews on that page. With the ability to review and comment on Pinterest, companies are going to need to monitor their reviews to ensure that pinners like their pins.

           
If a user finds a pinner (a person who posts pictures on Pinterest) or a business and he or she likes the pictures posted, that person can then choose to follow that pinner. Once someone follows a pinner or a business, then a feed will populate their home screen with new pins from that person. It is similar to following someone on twitter where their tweets show up on your wall.
           
So how can Pinterest be used to develop an online presence for local businesses and which businesses will benefit from it? The companies that should jump on Pinterest immediately are companies that rely on creativity, designs, and anything visual to set themselves apart. Which, when you think about it can be almost any business. Obviously, some businesses will benefit from it more than others, like restaurants, hotels, clothing companies, and landscapers. But it is a good platform to expand your online presence. Here are a couple creative tips to use to help get the wheels turning on how to use Pinterest in a business manner.

1.) Build a product board, which is a board that will display your products. Whether you are a restaurant or a landscaper, you should get pictures of your items/work on Pinterest. Once your product’s pictures are online, you can tag it with a price and link back to your site where the customer can purchase it or get more information about the service. The great thing about the price tags is that the pictures will automatically be cataloged, so if someone searches for a wedding dress that is $150.00, only dresses that are listed for $150.00 will pop up in the search. There are different ways to take advantage of this feature. One picture I saw listed 4 items and the picture was tagged with multiple prices so that pictures popped up more often.

2.) Build a step by step tutorial on basic lessons that compliment your service or tutorials on how to do a certain task. This is a great way to help your customers understand your industry, engage your followers, and teach people about what your company offers.  For example if you are a chef and you have a new way to make a great Panini you can post a video or step by step pictures that explain how to create this new recipe. 

3.) Integrate your Twitter and Facebook pages with your Pinterest account. This will expand your online presence and will show your followers on your other sites what you are doing on Pinterest. It is like sending a new tweet or posting a new status, simply driving more traffic to your profile if people are interested in your activity.   

Pinterest has real potential to be valuable for businesses, however we believe it is still too early to have a clear understanding of the true benefits that will come from being active on Pinterest.  
One thing to keep in mind with Pinterest and all other social media sites for that matter is that they are not a one time deal. With any effective social media strategy, the sites that a company participates in, must be active and updated consistently. This will increase your online presence and keep followers engaged.

With the explosion of different marketing channels, from local search to social to mobile, it can be difficult to track where you have a presence and where you should.   Pinterest is the next social medium getting some traction and who knows of its future.   Chatmeter can help agencies and enterprise retailers determine where to focus their efforts in this fragmented world, for more information on how we can help, click here.

]]> http://www.chatmeter.com/2012/03/steps-grow-online-presence-pinterest/feed 0 Online Reputation Terms http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/11/online-reputation-terms http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/11/online-reputation-terms#comments Fri, 04 Nov 2011 17:41:09 +0000 admin http://www.chatmeter.com/?p=1115  
In today’s day and age it pays to have your business online because that is where your customers are. Beginning to create your online presence can be very intimidating, especially the different language that has to do with online marketing. When I first started at Chatmeter as an intern I had one window open to articles that I was reading and another one open up to Google so I could look up any terms I did not know, which was the inspiration for this blog. Here is page of terms that I had to look up when I first started to dive in to online reputations.
 

Terms that relate to SEO:


  • SEO: Search Engine Optimization: Making your website more visible to search engines to increase your ranking in the results
  • SERP: Search Engine Results Page: The results of a keyword inquiry by a search engine.
  • CMS: Content Management Systems: A system used to manage and create information in an organization that allows for easy entry, retrieval, collaboration. Also minimizes duplicate entries and information for gathering reports.
  • Title Tag: The tag that appears on top of the web browser that gives the title of the page that is being viewed. Also a very important part in Search Engine Optimization.
  • Meta Description: Is the description given in a search engine results page to describe the listed links.
  • Meta Keywords: Keywords that describe the content of a web page to a search engine.
  • Keywords: are the words that describe the premise of a website.
  • Black Hat SEO: devious tactics of manipulating search engines to think a site is relevant to many unrelated keywords. Frowned upon and penalized by search engine algorithms.
  • White Hat SEO: accepted tactics in optimizing a web site to be found by search engines.
  • Ranking: the position where a website is listed on a search engine results page.
  • Website Optimization: setting up a website using various techniques to have increase its potential for being seen by search engines.
  • SEM: Search Engine Marketing: a form of online marketing that provides visibility through optimization of a website and targeted paid ads placed on search engine result pages.
  • Keyword Optimization: Strategically placing select words on a website in order to be seen as more relevant to a search engine keyword inquiry.
  • Link Building: is a SEO tactic that links a website to another website. 

General online marketing terms:

 
  • Online Reputation: what others think an entity represents online.
  • Online Presence: The act of being online in some form of content.
  • Online review management: finding and processing review found on multiple review sites.
  • Website Analytics: is a picture of how much traffic a website receives, where the traffic is coming from, what that traffic did while visiting the site, and how long that traffic was on the site for.
  • Bounce Rate: The number of visitors that where directed to the website and exited right away.
  • BLOG: is an entry to a website where the author offers specific content about a subject. Includes but not limited to news, opinions, information, pictures, and videos.
  • Track online reviews: processing where reviews are coming from and if they are good or bad reviews.
  • Content Marketing: creating stories, news, or asking question in order to engage and convert a customer base

General terms:

 
  • SMB: Small to Medium Businesses
  • Guerilla Marketing: an unconventional way to promote a brand or product.
  • PPC: Pay Per Click: A type of online advertising where the entity taking out the ad only pays when someone clicks on the ad.
  • CPM: Cost Per Impression: A type of online advertising where the entity taking out the ad pays per 1000 of impressions. An impression is when the ad is shown on a website when a consumer is logged on to that sight.
  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management: Is how a company handles and maintains its contact and rapport with its customers
For tips on what tools to use for Search Engine Optimization take a look at our previous blog:  Local Search Marketing and SEO Tools / Services
]]> http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/11/online-reputation-terms/feed 0 Social Media Monitoring With The New and Improved Facebook http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/09/improved-facebook http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/09/improved-facebook#comments Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:42:46 +0000 admin http://www.chatmeter.com/?p=1070 Oh No! The social media giant Facebook has changed! Not to worry, this does not mean businesses have to change their entire social media strategies because Facebook did away with “Check-ins”, but did they really?
 
A couple of weeks ago Facebook was said to change some key features of its platform. Some of the changes made were page privacy, ads to target interests, location tags (Location tagging means that people can tag statuses, pictures, and people with their exact location and they do not have to be on a mobile device.) and recommendations on place pages. Rumors were that Facebook was also removing check-ins and places, but it seems that they haven’t done either yet.
 

 

Location tagging can be great news for SMBs. Not only will people see that their friends are checked in at an establishment, but now the picture that was taken at the location can be linked to the Facebook Places page (Facebook Places is a section on Facebook that allows companies to have their information listed on a page created specially for that company).
 
This creates a tagging history for Facebook Places. If a picture or status stays tagged with a location, then anyone who sees that picture or status after its original posting can be linked to the locations page. This can really boast a company’s online reputation or it could damage it. If a company is actively using an online reputation management strategy that includes social media monitoring, then there should be no un-resolved mentions and therefore people will see only the best that company has to offer when people are linked back to that locations Place page.
 
The next change is Facebook recommendations!!! Look out Yelp and Trip advisor. Facebook now offers recommendations for businesses with Place pages.
 

This is a screen shot of Facebook prompting me to recommend a restaurant.

 

 
 
This is an interesting approach with the word “recommendations”, which is simply implying positive content, unlike the word reviews. This is a great strategy to drive online reputation management to a new level. What does this mean for your business? That its online reputation just became more susceptible to damage by negative reviews. With “90% of online consumers trusting recommendations from people they know” (according to BazaarVoice) and Facebook now prompting users to recommend a business, this takes online review management to a whole new level. Not only do businesses have to worry about what is being said on the top review sites, but now they have to worry about what is happening on Facebook.
 
Facebook recommendations should already be a part of your places page. Just like “check ins,” is part of the page so there is no complex integration, and people should be able to start recommending the establishment right away. All the business needs to do is start monitoring its Facebook page by using a third party service like chatmeter.com, to ensure that their reputation online is congruent with the brand image.
 
For the companies that have a fan page and a place page, there is a way to merge these two and have one central page to communicate with all of their fans and Facebook users. The Chatmeter Team published a blog about this very topic to help with the merging process of place and fan pages. 
 
Trends show that before people decide where they are going to eat, shop, or who will mow their lawns, they are checking out online reviews including Facebook. If a company has a lot of negative reviews and is not using some kind of online review management, social media monitoring or reputation management service, it will start to notice a drop in business. For more information on services that include social media monitoring, online review management, and online reputation management check out chatmeter.com.
 
In my research I came up with these questions:
 
Is Facebook going to have its very own ranking algorithm? It seems to me that it may be setting up for some type of ranking system among businesses or locations.
If a business has a bunch of tags that link back to its page, can it make its Facebook page more valuable? I hope that these questions will be answered in the near future.
 
 
]]> http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/09/improved-facebook/feed 2 SMBs go back to school with Google http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/09/smbs-school-google http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/09/smbs-school-google#comments Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:27:50 +0000 admin http://www.chatmeter.com/?p=1030 Google is taking SMBs back to school with “Learn with Google”. Learn with Google is Google’s new tool to teach SMBs to start their business online.
 
Google has put training material together with YouTube videos and work sheets to teach SMBs how to establish their online reputation. It goes through all the necessary steps from planning an online marketing strategy, to executing the contents of that strategy, and even tracking the results to see if that strategy is working. I believe this is a great tool for SMBs which know that they need an online reputation but are not sure where to start. 
 

 
They do a good job touching on a lot of the online marketing concepts but don’t really dive into any of them, except advertising where they teach you all about the importance of adwords and how to use adwords. I would have liked to have seen more in-depth information about email marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and online review management (which they didn’t touch on at all).
 
What they did teach were the fundamentals of having an online reputation and not necessarily how to manage that reputation.  To me, they came across as biased publicizing their own apps, but who can blame them? They created this great informational tool and they wanted to reap the rewards from it. There are many free reputation management services out there that can get you started on managing your online reputation. These services will often help with local search marketing, online review management, and other crucial aspects of online reputation management. To learn how to manage your online reputation, check out chatmeter.com

]]> http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/09/smbs-school-google/feed 2 FOHBOH® & CHATMETER DISRUPTS BILLION DOLLAR MYSTERY SHOPPING INDUSTRY WITH FOHBUZZ http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/08/fohboha-chatmeter-disrupts-billion-dollar-mystery-shopping-industry-fohbuzz http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/08/fohboha-chatmeter-disrupts-billion-dollar-mystery-shopping-industry-fohbuzz#comments Wed, 17 Aug 2011 23:50:57 +0000 admin http://www.chatmeter.com/?p=948  

 

 

 

 

FOHBOH® & CHATMETER DISRUPTS BILLION DOLLAR MYSTERY SHOPPING INDUSTRY WITH FOHBUZZ

THE FIRST SOCIAL MEDIA GUEST SATISFACTION REPORT CARD

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: SAN JOSE, CA, August 17, 2011. FohBoh, Inc. (fohboh.com) announced today the release of FOHBuzz SnapShot®, the first Social CRM reporting tool that promises to make restaurant operators smarter and more successful using real-time, guest satisfaction analysis on-demand. FOHBuzz SnapShot takes aim directly at the billion dollar mystery shopping industry to help both chain and independent restaurateurs access real-time “crowd-sourced” reviews and opinions to better manage guest satisfaction, gauge social media marketing efforts while building loyalty and manage their online reputations.

“For the first time, restaurants will be able to order up a report, tap into customer sentiment in near real-time, to learn (a) what their customers think and say about them for any single restaurant location; and (b) learn how effective their local social media marketing efforts are working, represented by the FOHBuzz Score™” said Emerald Reilly, Senior Social Media Analyst and Product Manager at FohBoh. FOHBuzz SnapShot can be accessed exclusively through the FohBoh.com restaurant community and is only available to registered FohBoh.com members for just $25 per report beginning August 15, 2011.

FohBoh, positioned at the intersection of social media and the Foodservice industry, is the original restaurant social network. “With the general release of FOHBuzz SnapShot, we are able to leverage the power of the social web to build restaurant ready applications that integrate Social CRM with real-time guest satisfaction data” said founder and CEO Michael L. Atkinson. “Knowing what’s being said about your brand is one thing. Knowing what to do to improve your social score is where FOHBuzz really helps.

Already the leading social-business network for the $1.7 trillion foodservice industry, FohBoh, views social media as a unique and powerful force of change that offers untapped opportunity for restaurant operators to forge long-lasting relationships with their customers.  “The FohBoh business model targets a single vertical for social web analysis. Our mission is to build a bridge between social web technology and restaurants, between operators and their guests,” said Sarah Atkinson, Senior Manager, Social Media Marketing at FohBoh.

FOHBuzz is powered by Chatmeter, a San Diego-based online presence and reputation monitoring company that provides services to a wide array of industries. “When Michael conceived the idea of the crowd-sourced mystery shopping report, our solution seemed like a perfect fit.  Not only does our service report what customers are saying, we also report on your brand presence and reputation that potential customers are seeing when shopping online or on their phone.  This is the first tool to measure the shopping experience before consumers ever walk into the restaurant!,” said Collin Holmes, CEO and founder of Chatmeter.

About FohBoh

FohBoh® is a leading provider of social media analytics and social media management services to the $1.7 trillion foodservice industry, via their integrated social-digital media platform. FohBoh offers a powerful way for more than 20 million foodservice industry professionals to connect, communicate, collaborate and transact business online via FohBoh.com.

About Chatmeter

chatmeter (www.chatmeter.com) provides marketers, agencies, and local business owners with the tools for improving marketing effectiveness by managing their online presence and reputation. Our service will help you understand what people are saying about your business online (reviews, blogs, social media) in a single place saving time and frustration.  The chatmeter will measure your online marketing effectiveness, provide personalized recommendations for improvement, and benchmark performance against local competitors.

###

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

]]> http://www.chatmeter.com/2011/08/fohboha-chatmeter-disrupts-billion-dollar-mystery-shopping-industry-fohbuzz/feed 0