You hate and love them. But review sites are a fact of life and are here to stay. In Melbourne, the biggest of them all is Urbanspoon, which is about to be relaunched in a few weeks as Zomato with local community managers and content creators on the ground. And the team looks to be improving some of Urbanspoon’s shortcomings by ranking trusted reviewers and changing the point scoring system. A history of review sites Yelp! was the first review […]
rules of engagement
How Big Huey beat the trolls
I was tempted to call this post “Meet the troll wrangler”. I’m not talking about Iain Hewitson or myself but an astute watcher of social media. More about this Caped Crusader of the digital world later. Online restaurant reviews are a serious business. Bad ones cause restaurant owners anxiety and they can spend a lot of time – and money – dealing with them properly. Nobody wants a bad review to go viral by handling it badly. And some owners […]
ACCC to tackle online reviews?
One of the biggest gripes among and hospitality or tourism-based business is the anonymous online review. We’ve helped many people over the years with trolls who have defamed venues and individuals just because they were refused entry or kicked out for being drunk – or just because they are competitors. It’s a real pain and emotionally draining for owner operators who care about their businesses. Now Restaurant & Catering Australia is in discussions with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission […]
What can you do about Urbanspoon reviews?
For restaurants it is tough to know what to do about negative comments on Urbanspoon. As the chart shows below in the past few years it has become the the most popular review sites in Australia and for some customers it has become a blood sport to leave negative comments for even the smallest problems. In the case of a popular venue its profile will be seen by several thousands visitors a month and can refer several thousand visits to […]
Centre yourselves on your customers
There’s a great quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt in this blog post: “Microsoft organised itself around the structure of the industry; Apple organised itself around the customer. You have to organise around the customer.” I caught up with Chris Lucas who I helped out on the digital and social media side for the launch of Chin Chin. He is excited about what social media offers to focus what he does on the customer. Each day he feeds reviews from […]
Davos: businesses exposed by social media
From today’s Australian: “And Davos confirmed that the Facebook social networking and mobile technology revolutions were now a priority agenda item for Australian business leaders extending from retailing (Mr Goyder) and banking (Mrs Kelly) to construction (Mr King) and business services (Ms Walker).” Westpac CEO Gail Kelly said that social media meant that “business was more exposed to issues being magnified and accelerated at digital speed”. “There are big implications for the way you manage media and marketing, the way […]
Brand development through social media
How to be social View more presentations from Edward Charles.