March, 2011

Gary Vaynerchuk is Smarter Than Chris Brogan. Here’s Why:

Posted on March 31, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 7 Comments

I walk this funny line between believing in stuff like “The Power of Positive Thinking” self-help ideals and thinking it’s pure bunk. I could go on and on about how that hits me and what it means for my clients, but instead I’ll wrap it in a simple package:

Do What You Promise.

The “Do What You Promise” thing has appeared here several times, and it matters. Especially in a business change and customer service environment such as what exists when the only way you can differentiate yourself from thousands of other potential contractors and business partners, your word, and correctly setting expectations, is everything. ... READ MORE of Gary Vaynerchuk is Smarter Than Chris Brogan. Here’s Why: at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (456 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Customer Service, Marketing

Perception Is Reality in Your NYC Food Sanitation Grade

Posted on March 30, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 6 Comments

Perception Is Reality NYC Sanitation Food Grade

When is a grade of “B” just not OK?

Besides in my kids’ father’s house and some graduate school programs, the answer is “when the NYC Department of Sanitation comes around to inspect your restaurant for cleanliness”.

But a B is a passing grade when the restaurant police come calling. In fact, a “C” is a passing grade, too. But in a world where perception is reality—and this one sure is—you’d better not get anything below an “A”. ... READ MORE of Perception Is Reality in Your NYC Food Sanitation Grade at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (637 words, 1 image, estimated 2:33 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Customer Service

QR and Bar Codes, Scanners, and Supermarket Customer Service

Posted on March 28, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 4 Comments

I spend a lot of time thinking about customer service. If you read these words regularly, you know that customer service is so important an idea around here that we’ve gone so far as to erect The Answer Guy’s Customer Service Wall of Shame … a wall you don’t want to find your picture hanging on.

So here’s a customer service question: why aren’t bar-code scanners used to improve customer service? ... READ MORE of QR and Bar Codes, Scanners, and Supermarket Customer Service at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (1104 words, 1 image, estimated 4:25 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Customer Service, Search Engine Optimization SEO

The Big Divide: Those Who Believe in SEO Vs. Those Who Don’t

Posted on March 25, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 5 Comments

Yesterday, I came across a post at SEOptimise.com. It was a discussion about whether Search Engine Optimization works, and who falls on which side of the issue.

As an SEO Consultant I found the conversation fascinating, if not especially well presented, and I commented. here’s that comment:

I’d like to agree with you. In fact, to a point I do. But I also think that to hold up those examples as being somehow endemic is missing the point. ... READ MORE of The Big Divide: Those Who Believe in SEO Vs. Those Who Don’t at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (542 words, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Marketing, Search Engine Optimization SEO

The Future Of Internet Advertising? Cute Kittens

Posted on March 24, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 9 Comments

So I’m looking at this picture of a cute kitten. No, a VERY cute kitten. Let me be clear: I’m a dog person; for a kitten to strike me as cute it needs to be one seriously cute kitten.

Really Cute Kitten

Would I kid you? That’s A REALLY CUTE KITTEN! ... READ MORE of The Future Of Internet Advertising? Cute Kittens at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (472 words, 1 image, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization SEO

New Entry on Customer Service Wall of Shame. New Way In, Too

Posted on March 22, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 0 Comments

If you’ve been missing our stories of bad customer service and wondering why it’s been so long since we’ve had a new entrant to The Answer Guy’s Customer Service Wall of Shame, your wait ends now.

Which might be bad news for Binding Price Moving of Fresh Meadows, NY.

If you’ve ever hired a moving company, you know how many “gotchas” there are. Mayflower Moving, a company whose yellow and green trucks had at one point become pretty much ubiquitous have all but disappeared, and the scant references you can find to them on the Internet are mostly … really bad. Here’s one, and here’s another. ... READ MORE of New Entry on Customer Service Wall of Shame. New Way In, Too at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (971 words, estimated 3:53 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Customer Service

The New York Times is The Top News IN The New York Times

Posted on March 18, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 1 Comment

NY Times PayWall Is Top News In NY Times

There’s an old saying about how officials at sporting events should be invisible and anonymous; everyone’s better off if they do their jobs and we never know anything about them other than the fact that they must have been there, but … we don’t remember them.

Just yesterday, a story about that concerning referees in the NCAA basketball tournament ran in The New York Times. Enjoy that story, and quickly; this morning’s news is that the New York Times is about to start charging for access to their online edition, and your ability to read it a couple of weeks from now is not a certainty. ... READ MORE of The New York Times is The Top News IN The New York Times at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (604 words, 1 image, estimated 2:25 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Content, Media

How Google Custom Search Works

Posted on March 17, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 8 Comments

Last week, I told you that Google had turned on a feature that lets you exclude web sites with spammy content from your future searches.

Well, the “exclude what you hate” feature is live. I noticed it yesterday for the first time and poked around a bit: ... READ MORE of How Google Custom Search Works at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (348 words, estimated 1:24 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization SEO

Negotiation 101: Use Every Tool You Have for Business Change

Posted on March 16, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 4 Comments

Negotiation is simple: He who has the best information wins.

I’ve said that for—yikes—decades, and something I read last week made me realize just how important the idea is.

This piece in Inc. is about “Five Things You Should Never Say While Negotiating”. Of course, there are more; negotiation is one of those “simple yet complex” topics that defies being put in so small a box as this. But the point is simple: you need to know when not to tell the person you’re negotiating with what’s on your mind. ... READ MORE of Negotiation 101: Use Every Tool You Have for Business Change at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (398 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change

Watch Movies? Like Music? Run a Server? Get Ready to Pay.

Posted on March 15, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 3 Comments

The all-you-can-eat train is coming to the end of its tracks.

Every now and then I come across someone who’s still paying by the minute to make phone calls. If you’re very young you might not even know that paying for each call you make was once a possibility, but until 1984 it was the only way phone calls outside your immediate area were sold and until the mid 1990s it was still pretty much the standard way things were done.

Data? It’s free. Bandwidth is unlimited, all-you-can-eat. Right? Not any more. ... READ MORE of Watch Movies? Like Music? Run a Server? Get Ready to Pay. at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (452 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Media

Linking, Framing, and Other Not-So-Dull Copyright Issues

Posted on March 14, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 6 Comments

If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, the Internet is the most flattering place in the world.

It’s not just the bad SEO being practiced by folks like JC Penney’s Search Engine Optimization consultant. We talk about SEO a lot here at Answer Guy Central, and we believe we do Search Engine Optimization in a clean, legitimate way. Scraping, Content Farm tricks, and the like aren’t clean.

Neither is framing someone else’s content and passing it off as your own. That practice isn’t even an SEO trick; with the proliferation of mobile computing via Apps on SmartPhones, iPads, and other tablets, framing content has become an easy way to make money. ... READ MORE of Linking, Framing, and Other Not-So-Dull Copyright Issues at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (1336 words, estimated 5:21 mins reading time)

Filed Under: Business Change, Content, Search Engine Optimization SEO

Now Google Lets You Decide What’s Important When You Search

Posted on March 11, 2011 by --Jeff Yablon/The Answer Guy-- Influency & Integrated Marketing Strategist • 2 Comments

About a year ago I told you that Google had rendered their web site measurement tool Google Analytics worthless. It’s not strictly true; Google Analytics provides a lot of great information about your web site. But because anyone can have their computer put up a big “don’t count me!” sign, what Google Analytics doesn’t do is count all your web site visitors or all the pages that they visit.

As Google continues to struggle with which sites deserve high ranking in the search engine optimization wars, tweaking their results in ways that we can all only hope turn out OK, the real outcome remains in question. ... READ MORE of Now Google Lets You Decide What’s Important When You Search at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (359 words, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)