We are doing a 1% experiment of Reviews on Ads in which we match ads to reviews on various 3rd party sites, and display links to the review in a separate section in the ad. Advertisers cannot opt-into this experiment, but know that all eligible ads are being included. Currently, through the beta, clicks on these reviews are not being charged.

This morning Search Engine Land posted a brief article and screen shots of Google AdWords reviews that included a Yelp rating at the bottom of the ad. Similar to the authors of the article I was unable to find a search result that had the Yelp ratings, but would not be surprised if I did start seeing this more frequently in the near future. For local businesses running PPC advertising, it’s becoming even more critical to know what your customers are saying about you online.

Here’s the deal – you’re buying ads from Google because you want your business to be found. So you pick out your keywords and your ads are showing and driving traffic to your site and you’re a happy business owner. But lets say that you have completely ignored your business reviews on a site like Yelp (or CitySearch or Google) and maybe there are less than favorable comments on your Yelp page. If your Google ad shows at the top of the page with only 2 stars from Yelp, I’m going to be a lot less likely to click through from your ad. These changes are going to force smart business owners to be proactive about their Yelp listings specifically and address any major problems directly.

If you’re unfamiliar with Yelp – change that. If your business is listed in Yelp you can claim it as your own just like any other local business listing.  Business owners can then follow up with unhappy customers as they see fit and try to remedy any situations that sound like it could have been a one time fluke. Or look at the bigger picture of how their business is run if the same problems are being repeated by multiple Yelpers. With the mass influence of review sites and social media, every business needs to be in the customer service industry if they want to survive.

Hopefully we’ll find out some additional information about how these advertisers are selected. We’ll keep you posted as we find out more. In the meantime, go see what people are saying about your business and take action!

You are now not only able to target mobile devices but you can target specific phones or carriers!  What does this have to do with online reputation you ask?  Well let us look at a current example in the mobile industry and the friendly competition between AT&T and Verizon.  Between all of the attacks back and forth in advertising it would be smart for Verizon to directly target current AT&T customers in PPC.  They could set their targeting options to only AT&T/iphone users and have ad text talking about the benefits of Verizon compared to other carriers.  Something like, “Not happy with your current provider? Switch to Verizon today”.  Offering some type of promotion/incentive in the messaging would be more convincing…

For Verizon a campaign like this would help to build their online reputation while AT&T continues to attack Verizon in its current campaign.

While consumers are not thinking it’s important to Google themselves, HR professionals and recruiters certainly do. About 75% of the survey respondents said they use a multitude of sites, both on search engines and various social media sites, to seek information about potential candidates. Here is a breakdown of the sites they use:

• 78% of respondents use search engines
• 63% use social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace
• 59% use photo and video sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube
• 57% use professional networking sites like LinkedIn

So, even if you’re scared to Google yourself because you just attended your buddy’s wedding, or you just recently graduated, I would highly recommend doing so. That way you can explain to the recruiter that the tiger in your car was actually Mike Tyson’s and you were going to return it, not steal it (a reference from The Hangover, for the 6 people who haven’t seen it yet). I’m sure they’ll understand.

Seriously, if there is negative content about you that is easily accessible via search engines or social media sites, it would be in your best interest to remedy that potential disastrous situation, whether you’re an organization or an individual. How do you go about doing that? I wrote a post on how to protect your brand, whether a corporate or personal brand, the same tactics will work. Read it. Do it.

When it comes to PPC, there is vast opportunity to gain visibility on 3rd party websites, via Google’s Content Network, for example. With AdWords, advertisers can opt to have their text or display ads shown on other sites in Google’s network. A few of the sites that Google prominently cites as being in the content network are highly reputable:



However, there are ways that you can and should determine where your ads are actually showing (there are 1,000’s of sites of varying quality in addition to the handful Google mentions above), should you decide to leverage the content network. By understanding where you are appearing, you can manage your visibility and potentially choose to NOT show on sites that you deem undesirable. Even though Google’s network is one of the biggest and best around, there are still sites within it that may not be ideal for all advertisers. So, how do you determine where your ads might be showing? It’s simple and can be easily found in one of two places – your campaign tabs directly in the AdWords interface and also in AdWords reporting center.

In the AdWords interface, assuming you are currently advertising on the Content Network (if you’re not sure, check out this article), navigate to the “Networks” tab and find the “Automatic Placements” – click “Show Details”

You then see all of the sites where Google is placing your ads, along with performance data, and an easy way to select and exclude the sites that you deem to be poor matches or under-performers. Simply select the placement(s) you wish to stop showing on and then click “Exclude Placements”. Voila – much like excluding a negative keyword from your Search campaigns.

To run a report that you can schedule and have sent to you on a regular basis, go to Reports and run a “Placement Performance Report”. This will show the sites on the content network where your ads have been placed. It will also show your ad’s performance on those sites (clicks, cost, conversions, etc.), which can also help to determine from where you are receiving valuable traffic.

By managing your Content Network visiblity, you not only ensure that your brand is associated with the sites you want it be, but you also ensure that your dollars are well spent on content network sites that are delivering results.

These new guidelines have a significant impact on anyone who uses the Internet to promote a product or service, particularly bloggers and those who use any sort of amazing claim or testimonial in their promotional materials. If you  (or a friend you know, *wink* *wink*)  are utilizing landing pages with any sort of claim to the effectiveness of what you’re promoting, it’s important that you read the following new guidelines very closely.

Overall Impression Counts

Although so vague as to be almost useless, the new FTC rules state that regulators’ overall impression of an advertisement and offer is heavily weighted. In other words, if an offer looks spammy, it probably is and the FTC can act on it. I take this to really mean that an advertisement promoting a shady rebill offer, or an ad claiming that a grade-school dropout bum found the “secret of the Internet” and now makes $4,598 per day sitting on his couch in his underwear is going to be scrutinized way more closely than an ad promoting a local carpet cleaning company.

New Rules On Fine Print

Basically, you can no longer say whatever you want in your ad as long as you put a “results not typical” phrase in the fine print. This is utilized regularly not just on the Internet, but on many television commercials as well (I still have a hard time buying into a Taco Bell drive through “diet”). With the new guidelines, advertisers must state the typical results one can expect in their advertisements. So instead of saying “Jennifer lost 45 lbs in one month while still eating whatever she wants,” you’ll now have to say “James gained only 7 lbs while on our diet when he would have most likely gained 25 lbs otherwise we think.”

Note, however, that the FTC left a small loophole in this rule. According to the guidelines, you can still state the outlandish results as long as you narrow the segment that the results apply to so that they, in fact, are typical for that segment. For example, you could say “Jennifer, weighing almost a ton, lost 45 lbs in one month while still eating whatever she wants because she could only go downhill from there.”

Disclosure of Connection With Endorsed Products

This most likely resulted from popular bloggers and social media influencers that pushed various products because companies paid them or offered them free gifts. While it makes sense that popular bloggers would want to accept such gifts and capitalize on their hard earned fame, the FTC found that this was just too sneaky.

If you want to promote a product online, and are doing it in a way that’s not an obvious ad (like a banner ad or text ad), then you now must disclose your relationship with the company you are endorsing. Moreover, this should not be in fine print, it must be stated clearly in the context of the promotional avenue. For example, if you’re writing a blog post and are reviewing a product, you have to disclose if you’re being paid, in any way, by the company within the actual body copy of the post (by the way, the FTC is not related to Reputation Watch in any way and we are not being paid to write this post).

I think, however, that this is really not that big of a deal. Saying “XYZ company sent me this gift, so I decided to review their product” will not ruin your blog post, but might actually make it convert better as your readers will actually trust what you’re saying. Transparency actually helps make sales online.

Really, nobody should be surprised by the new FTC guidelines because they’re a long time coming. Consumers are moving online for their purchases and product research, and thus it’s natural that the FTC and other major online companies want to ensure that consumers continue to feel safe online. If you are an online advertiser or affiliate marketer that isn’t shady and indeed provides real value, these rules will actually help you as the other less ethical advertisers begins to take their game someplace else.

What do you all think? Are these rules helpful overall?

Specifics

• In your campaign settings, you must be opted into display on “iPhone and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers”.
• Need to enter the phone number you want users to call.  This can be done in two ways.  If you already have your phone number in your local business listing make sure you have the two accounts linked to each other.  Or, you can manually enter the phone number under the locations section of your campaign settings.
• How do you see the results? In the Campaign tab, click on the Filter and views drop down to Segment By then to “Click Type”.  This break down the URL clicks v. the calls.
• How will you be charged? This is the great part, a click-to-call is the same as a normal click to your website.
• Where will your phone number be placed in the ad? It will appear as a 5th line of ad text in your ad.

This is great news for local businesses because it allows you to control even more information you put online about your business, manage your reputation and help customers find/call your local business more easily.

If you’re a local business running PPC on Google, have you already added phone numbers to your mobile ads?

It’s funny because I feel like getting clients to optimize their images always seems to be a challenge. I think it’s because the value is still underestimated and thus the priority often gets put on the backburner. But remember, images will rank in standard web search results and can act as both a great tactic for driving traffic to your site OR can threaten your online reputation if the images aren’t entirely favorable.

First, we monitor your reputation to see if there is anything we should be concerned about. The great thing, it isn’t rocket science. It does, however, take dedication, routine and a bit of set up time. I highly recommend creating a dashboard, Yahoo Pipe or setting up  Google Alerts. By doing this, you’ve just completed the first step in managing your reputation. Not too bad right? Now you need to figure out where your customers are leaving comments/reviews. Is it on a blog? Yelp? Twitter? Your dashboard, pipe and/or Google Alerts will help you understand this.

Once you’ve found out where your customers are hanging out online, the next step is for you to create accounts on those respective sites. For example, if your customers are leaving lots of Yelp reviews, then I suggest creating a  Yelp (get a free biz account) account. With this free account you’ll receive alerts when you have new reviews, customize your profile page with images and a description, as well receive basic stats about how many people have visited your Yelp profile page.

Twitter is another site I would highly suggest monitoring, no matter what. Things happen quickly on Twitter, which is precisely why you must be monitoring this site. Twitter easily allows anyone to listen, and join in on any conversation happening out there. It’s excellent for establishing relationships, and even easier to monitor conversations. Simply go to Twitter Search, search for a keyword and subscribe to the RSS feed.

OK, now you have a few profiles set up. You’re armed and ready to go after these people who have been bad-mouthing your establishment. You want to burn them at the stake. OK, slow your roll. The next step is going to be listening. Yes, just listen. Don’t talk. Just listen to what your customers are saying. Do you see any recurring themes? Is the service being hammered for rude servers/bartenders? Are the prices too high for the quality of the food/service? Is the music too loud? Are your customers too cold? You can learn so much from your customers, but you have to be willing to accept criticism and feedback without flying off the handle. Once you are ready to try to start a calm, constructive conversation, reach out to some of these people by following them (on Twitter, not home from work). They will see that you’re following them and they may even start a conversation or be impressed that you’re actually on Twitter. Reach out and thank those who made comments, however, be sure to have read the proper guidelines for Twitter etiquette. Yes, I’m serious.

Yelp now allows businesses to create profiles of the business and manager/owner. This is a great way to put a face to a business and make it more personable. Within the past year Yelp has also added the functionality for business owners to be able to reply publicly to a review of their establishment. Sites like TripAdvisor have been doing this for years, so it’s great to see Yelp providing the same feature. Having the ability to publicly acknowledge a fault, a customer concern, or clarify a misconception is huge. It can literally save a business.

The whole point I’m trying to make here is to be sure you are active in managing your own reputation. Don’t let a reputation issue start, stop it before it explodes. With free tools, like the few I showed you above, you’ll be well on your way to monitoring all comments, reviews and conversations happening in the www (wild wild west).

Are you a small business owner? I would love to hear your experience with managing your reputation.

At first glance, Facebook gives you the option to leave your privacy settings as they were or to allow each segment of your profile to be open to “everyone”. Everyone includes not only anyone on Facebook, but search engines feeding real time search results as well.

With all three search engines announcing real-time search results being integrated into universal search results this week, users need to be extra sensitive to their privacy settings within social media. Here are a few personal recommendations to keep your online reputation spic-and-span.

• Review your privacy settings in Facebook. Or review what information is on your Facebook profile. The photos of your wild Friday night might be fun for your friends to see but not for your boss.  Segment your Facebook friends into lists if you still want to be your boss/clients/partners friend on Facebook and use Facebook’s exclude feature on photo albums to keep your professional appearance.

• Un-tag yourself from any incriminating photos.  For when you can’t control what your ex-college roomate posts of you – there is always that un-tag feature.
• Consider removing information that may make it easy for someone to steal your identity.  Kent has posted about this threat in the past – you can read all the juicy details in his post: How social media networks facilitate identity theft.

Since Facebook pages and groups are more likely to be indexed and included in real time search results as there are less privacy walls, make sure your business page is posting often and using keywords in your Facebook page updates.  If you can do this without spamming hot topics, you may just find some new fans finding you through a traditional search engine!

Similar to Google AdWords and other PPC engines in that the advertiser pays each time their ad receives a click, Facebook advertising has something the others don’t. They have an incredible amount of demographic data from the user profiles that each and every Facebooker creates. Advertisers, then, are able to harness that data to pinpoint target ads to Facebook users. So for example, while on AdWords you can target users’ search queries and geo-location, on Facebook, you can target based on any combination of the following attributes:

• Location (country, city, state)
• Age
• Birthday
• Sex
• Keywords
• Level of education
• Workplace(s)
• Martial status
• Language

At last count, Facebook shows that there are nearly 90,000,000 users in the United States alone that could potentially be displayed an ad. With the targeting options, advertisers on Facebook have an incredible opportunity speak to an audience of potential customers. That audience also happens to be one of the most captive audiences online right now – according to a recent Nielsen Online study, users spend an average of just under 6 hours each month on Facebook – 2x more than they spend on Google! That could mean some serious face time for any business.