I wonder how much Penelope has paid Yelp for good reviews?
OK, I don’t know whether that’s happened. I mention Penelope paying for good reviews on Yelp only because Yelp’s been accused of some underhanded business tricks, and a year ago I went so far as to ask whether Yelp might be in the extortion business. But after the experience I had at Penelope NYC this weekend it’s hard for me not to believe Penelope is doing something dirty with her on-line reviews.
Yesterday Google turned the Search Engine Optimization world on its head. I had been all ready to write about Axl Rose today, as the erstwhile Guns N’ Roses front-man is the subject of a great article on Business Change in the latest issue of a major business magazine. But Google has changed those plans for me. I’ll be talking about the former Bill Rose … umm … Bill Bailey next week.
Instead, today’s business change is all about Search Engine Optimization. Google has changed the way they process information in their index yet again, and the results are great for users . . . and could spell the end of content farms like Tim Armstrong’s AOL.
I have this little device in my bag of tricks. It’s called a Square, both because that’s its shape and because Square is the name of the company that manufactures The Square.
Oddly, although there’s no web site to be found at square.com, Square the company is at squareup.com.
The Square lets me accept credit cards. In and of itself that isn’t such a big deal; the days when you needed a special merchant account to take credit cards are long passed, with anyone being able get get paid via credit card just by directing people who owe you money to PayPal. What’s great about the Square, though, is that it plugs into the headphone jack on your SmartPhone (Android or iPhone), and with the help of a simple app lets you scan a credit card, anywhere.
Last week I talked about a simple way to deliver superb customer service: just do what you promise. I write about customer service quite a bit, and I’m passionate about it; customer service is what makes your business the right one to do business with, and this has only become more true as the Internet has grown in importance in our business lives. And hey, you don’t want to end up on The Answer Guy’s Customer Service Wall of Shame, right?
So I look down at my Droid one night last week, and there’s a nasty Tweet directed at me by Nick Denton. Nick is a famously-cantankerous (and very successful) blogger, and owns the Gawker Media family of blogs. Gawker includes in its stable Gizmodo, one of the more influential geek/gadget blogs around.
Or maybe it wasn’t actually Nick Denton, but because the folks who follow the @not_nicknotned Twitter account are Nick Denton’s peeps, I presume that the nasty note I received really was from Denton or someone on his payroll.
As you know, there’s this Twitter thing making the rounds of the Intertubes. All the kids are doing it. People have stopped blogging. 140 characters is the limit for most anything you have to say. Which of course means I’ve already gone too far here.
Yikes! Stay with me, please.
I’m not going to do a rant against Twitter. Twitter drives me crazy, but I use it, and I’ve suggested that you need to, also, more than a few times. But last week Twitter fired a shot heard across the Internet when they turned off the services of several of the companies that make Twitter “client” software. Coopetition? What Coopetition?
It almost doesn’t matter what business you’re in, what the price tag is, or which part of the business process you’re working on: the easiest and best way to make great customer service happen and happen well is simple: just do what you promise.
Of course, that still leaves the question of what your customers think you’re promising versus what you think you’ve promised, but that one’s beyond your control.
With Search Engine Optimization more and more becoming the most important business change you can put in place, you know you’d better do it the right way. And although Google admits they even they don’t know the best way to do SEO, do SEO you must.
Matt Cutts, Google’s head engineer for ferreting out search spam, link spam, or whatever you call it, despite being the guy in charge of making sure that your web site isn’t doing anything dirty, does a series of videos where he explains how SEO works (and how SEO isn’t supposed to work).
Valentines Day is in the rear-view mirror. You’ve spent an inflated amount on flowers, a similarly-inflated price on dinner, and moved on. Your life is the same this morning as it was a couple of days ago, except you’re a bit poorer.
And if you’re one of the many Groupon customers who bought that half-off flowers deal from FTD you’re a bit less angry than you had been.
About 18 months ago, my phone rang and on the other end was none other than Michael Gerber. OK, actually it was Michael Gerber’s assistant on the phone, but it turns out that Michael Gerber was requesting a meeting with me. A few days later that meeting came off; we spoke for about an hour.
In case you aren’t familiar with his work, Michael Gerber is one of the most successful business change authors in the world. His E-Myth series of books just keeps expanding and has sold millions of copies. Michael called me to investigate a joint venture with Answer Guy Virtual COO Services, and also to tell me that he hated the black theme of our web site.
I was wrong. Twice. Tim Armstrong is a genius, and AOL buying the Huffington Post doesn’t represent the disassembly of journalism in favor of pure search engine optimization.
Just Kidding. I’ll stick with my statement that Tim Armstrong has redeemed himself by buying the Huffington Post, but I’ll also stick with my previous assessment of Tim Armstrong and The AOL Way. And as for the “journalism is dead, welcome to Search Engine Optimization” angle? We’ll stick with that one, too.
I promise to stop writing about Tim Armstrong, Content Farms, and Search Engine Optimization after this piece, by the way. *
You know all those followers Ashton Kutcher and Kim Kardashian have on Twitter? Remember how I’ve told you that follower count just isn’t that important? Now, there’s proof.
It’s true, despite Ms. Kardashian’s seemingly important role in the Twitterverse, and Mr. Kutcher’s claim to fame as the first person ever to have over a million Twitter followers (he’s now over six million), new research shows that the most imprtant thing about social networking turns out to be the “social” part.
Fred Wilson is a very successful venture capital guy. He’s happy to pay for his music downloads and streaming. But Fred Wilson is a music pirate.
Follow that maybe-a-bit-inflammatory link and you’ll see why Fred Wilson is a music pirate. And as long as you aren’t an RIAA employee or working for a record label or other media business you probably agree with Fred on this.
I’ve made this point before here at Answer Guy Central. Make the conversation about music, movies, or whatever; we need better distribution channels.
Tim Armstrong is starting to look a lot smarter. But he’s making me look smarter, still. Now that AOL has bought The Huffington Post, Tim Armstrong’s plan for World Domination via Content Farm is actually workable. But that’s a bad thing for everyone except Tim Armstrong.
OK, it’s a pretty sweet deal for Arianna Huffington too; the lady is now way-rich even for her, and as head of editorial at AOL is in a position to lead a charge into the new journalism.
Problem is, the new journalism looks pretty ugly.
The words above belong to one Tony Kaye. Mr. Kaye, from what I can tell, is a low-level employee at Gawker Media’s Gizmodo. I’m happy to report that when you search the Internet for Tony Kaye, you’ll find lots of references for Tony Kaye the 1970s-and-later musician and Tony Kaye the film director, but nary a one to this Tony Kaye.
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