The Business of Digital Podcast

Andy Beal joins this episode to walk through Reputation Management and dig deep into how to respond to negative reviews about your business or products.

How to Respond to Negative Reviews

In the past we dug into How Your Brand Can Reduce the Risk of Reputation Nightmares but we didn't really cover what to do when something happens and you get a negative review. In this episode a guest stops by to help walk us and you through how to handle negative reviews and how to leverage them to improve your business.

How Do You Know Something is Going to be Offensive?

The internet is global, just because you think something will play well in a certain market it might not everywhere. In the example during the podcast the ad may of not been offensive locally but for a global company that has a global audience that then saw it - many were not so pleased.

Negative > Happy

Those that you make happy, serve well and meet their expectations are less likely to leave a review. Those that are unhappy, upset or offended by something are the people more likely to be the one to leave a bad review, Tweet about something, or spread their angst by word of mouth. Those that are happy move along with their day and life.

Tips on Responding to Negative Reviews

No matter if it is on Google, Yelp, Tripadvisor, Facebook, or any other site that has reviews. And no matter what remember what Andy says in that those and all review sites is not who you are but a reflection of how you treat your customer.

Be sincere in your apology - don't give a stock apology.

Explain what happened and explain what you are doing to change and demonstrate how you are actually following through.

Look at ways to collect responses before people leave your business or before they go elsewhere unhappy and leave a review.

Be respectful but don't get into a back and forth.

Try and take it offline - give them an email address, phone number, something.

Don't let your response become emotional and defensive.

Always assume that the person complaining is having the worst day of their life.

Draft up your response and then walk away. Give it time between from when you write something and when you publish.

Call a friend. Discuss what happened and what you are thinking of giving as a response.

Check their purchase or if they were actually a customer. Fact check on what they say and what reality is (did they think you have 1 day shipping but the site clearly says 3 day)

Watch for trends - do people constantly leave similar reviews? Watch for trends.

Show them that you are a company that cares.

Highlight any positives in the review that you can.

Tips on Leveraging Negative Reviews to Improve Your Business

Training Opportunities

Watch for trends - do people constantly leave similar reviews? Watch for trends.

Keep negative reviews and go over them with various team members. What copy on the site could be changed? Does your business need a bigger or better placed sign?

Lifetime cost of a detractor - Andy digs into how and why you should factor this into your business.

What is the Value of Unhappy Customers?

The short answer is - a lot. Andy touches and makes reference to studies but then the conversation moved on and we didn't specifically state any studies or resources. We won't leave you hanging! To help you we thought we would dig up a few additional resources so you can dig into the Lifetime Cost of a Detractor.

21 Customer Support Statistics That You Absolutely Need to Know

The Value of Customer Experience, Quantified

Why Unhappy Customers Are a Valuable Resource

The Cost of Unhappy Customers (Infographic)

75 Customer Service

Facts, Quotes & Statistics

Episode 95 Mentioned Tools & Resources

Burger King Is Apologizing for Its 'Ignorant' Commercial Which Featured Customers Eating The New Vietnamese Burger With Chopsticks

Looking to start a podcast and have questions around what your hosting options are? We got you. Dig in with us as we cover 3 main ways to host podcasts.

Breaking Down Podcast & Site Hosting Options

After almost two years of podcasting one of the more common question we get is around what we use for hosting our podcasts. As with most thing that answer is changing now in 2019 and likely in the future. So while our setup may or may not work for you we highly suggest you dig into the write up below and give a listen to the episode.

Podcast Hosting Questions

Things to ask when you are starting your podcast or looking to compare podcast hosting solutions, offerings, and overall podcast hosting options:

How often will you podcast - daily, weekly, monthly?

How long will your podcast be?

How many hosts will you have?

Do you have a domain?

Do you want to host it on a site/folder or its own domain?

Does ad insertion and ads in general matter?

How many plays do you have or expect?

What bandwidth do you require or expect to need?

Do you need players for 3rd party sites?

Do you need a way to plug into a Wordpress site?

How much do podcast stats matter to you?

What do you want to spend monthly on hosting?

Business goals

Pros and Cons for the hosting type, specific provider

Breaking Down Podcast & Site Hosting Options

So what does The Business of Digital currently use? We use our web host to host the podcast files and leverage a series of plugins from Seriously Simple. There are many sites like say Anchor.fm that force you to create a "about me" page and that is your "website". If you want to have full control over the site, have limits or need your own site - there are certain solutions that may make sense and some that don't.

Podcast Hosting Types

To further break out the three types above and that we discussed on the episode here are the ways we see them:

Self hosting with Traditional Web Hosting Provider

Using a Podcast Hosting Provider

Using a file hosting company like AWS or Soundcloud (SC actually fits into many provider types)

Popular Podcast Options

While there are many out there worthy of being on a short list, for what we are looking at, need, and what fits some of our own goals here is our short list: Podbean, Blubrry, Libsyn and Buzzsprout. At time of press for this episode we are exploring these and others vs current web host solution and still have a fair amount of research to do but it is fairly likely we will end up with one of these solutions at some point in 2019.

We STRONGLY suggest you look at all providers and find your own short list that matches your own needs.

Podcast Hosting Costs

The million dollar question, or in this case the Free to $20 question is how much is hosting my podcast going to cost? The answer is - it depends. But there are some typical ranges that you will find:

Starter - Free to around $6 for entry. This gets you started but often limits the uploads, files and such.

Entry - $6 to $12 - still some limits here but you start to get some good stat options

Middle - this range is $12-20 and once you get going or if stats and ad insertion really matter this is likely your range.

Heavy Hitter - there is quite a jump to $29-50 (and quickly goes higher) and honestly if you are here reading about Podcast Hosting 101 we want to know how you lasted on lower tiers for so long!

Episode 94 - Podcast Hosting Tools & Resources

The WP theme we use.

Seriously Simple Podcasting WP Plugin

While we would like to think few people are educating using disinformation & misinformation, it does happen. So if you get nothing else from this episode, please think through things and test things yourself.

How to Battle Misinformation in the Classroom

Matt's Godaddy Rant is another name for this episode. There were actually others we either mentioned on the show or kicked around previously. The name we went with (well, Dave picked it honestly) is a play on us misspeaking and saying disinformation instead of misinformation but in some cases they may both be correct.

Per dictionary.com we can breakdown both words:

Disinformation: deliberately misleading or biased information; manipulated narrative or facts; propaganda.

Misinformation: false information that is spread, regardless of whether there is intent to mislead.

Also before we get started digging into the summary, here are the two resources Matt highlighted at the beginning of the episode.

Dr. Scott Cowley

Stuart Draper

Lastly, for those that don't wish to follow the link at the bottom, here is the content in the Tweet that started it all (the photo above is also from the Tweet):

We also want to make it known that we know there are TONS of teachers, mentors, professors and others out there doing good and great work. The point of this episode was to focus more on those few that are either spreading bad advice knowingly or are in a position as some type of instructor that is not even trying to keep up with things.

And while we pick on certain people, statements or solutions, we also encourage you to test, validate, verify, try, read about elsewhere the things we tell you to do. "Best Practices" often isn't the best thing for you and should be tested for your own business, site, business model, stomach for risk, budget, social network, country, and industry among many other variations.

In the end the main thing we want to stress is that take all things with a grain of salt, learn whom to trust and be sure to test things and ask questions.

Oh and for those that are DYING to know about this Meg or Peg and the Cat. Here you go:

Episode 93 Mentioned Tools & Resources

Matt's Tweet

MarketingLand

SEJ

Search Engine Roundtable

Search Engine Land

Social Media Examiner

Listen as we dig into some ideas and ways to reuse marketing campaigns but make sure you also know when to refresh your ads and content.

Signs That it is Time to Refresh Your Marketing Campaigns

Every holiday and thus every month we all likely hear or see some advert that is promoting something from the past. It might be a concert that happened a few days ago, some sale that ended last weekend, an offer that was sent out last year and someone ran it again and didn't tell anyone. These things happen and so do accidents. The goal though is to try and limit the times you waste your ad budget or worse, you upset your customers and prospects.

Here is Mat's tweet (as shown above):

I feel like all the ads I’m seeing telling me how I can spend my “tax refund” are just trolling me. Pouring salt in the wound. Yea like imma have a refund.

Examples of Campaigns That Need Refreshing

As we got to talking we both realized just how many ads and overall marketing campaigns we have heard or seen recently that were great examples.

Tax refunds

Promoting Concerts days/weeks/months later

Radio(Spotify) ad promoting past events

Does the product, social, marketing, PR, and other teams talk to each other?

Changing URLs for yearly events each year

How to prevent your campaigns from going stale

During the podcast we cover a ton of examples and ideas that you can implement and here are just some of them:

Use URLs that don't mention dates or years

Don't just update the year, look at the content and links

Yearly holiday campaigns - really validate all of the content

Double check landing pages - are they still active and/or relevant

Update images and offers at least slightly each year

Create a checklist for end of life for projects and campaigns

Set calendar reminders or alert

Add a final task to a campaign or project in your project management system

If you get nothing else from this episode, remember that here in the US tax day is April 15th!

Episode 92 Mentioned Tools & Resources

Mat's campaign refresh idea

Planning and processes are your best chance to comback Twitter storms, customer feedback and other things that may throw your business a curve ball.

Business Decisions Based on Overreacting & How to Avoid Doing It

The initial idea for this episode was spurred by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's Oscars Performance but it is much more than that. For businesses focusing on data, customer feedback, market research and more can still make decisions based on what a single person or small group of people think. Does your company work like this?

CEO asks 2 people or one person, everything changes hours/days/weeks before a big launch.

5 people on twitter have an issue but none of you 1,000 other customers don't like it.

The press today looks to make stories out of nothing, does your company do the same?

One person in a project or company comes along at the 11th hour and makes a suggestion - everything changes.

A single investor and only them suggests something, do you do it?

One suggestion we have for companies is to plan ahead with capturing data around your service, product, sales, social media, customer feedback, etc. Do you send out monthly or quarterly calls for feedback from your customers? Do you have a team or part of the process where you try and extract various levels of feedback from partners or clients?

Depending on your business it might make sense to look at using Net Promoter Score (NPS) to help give you data that you can track.

So what can you do to get ahead of things?

Capture and track NPS scores

Monitor social media

Talk monthly with customer service, account managers, sales reps, servers, and others on the front lines that interact with customers

Talk to product managers and back office staff that focus on putting out a product

Review assessment and inventory

Launch post mortem

Have a plan on how to handle a bad product launch, review, feedback, social/pr fire

Focus on fixing and not fighting

Alert customers of changes to a product, app, UI/UX early.

Use email, talk to your customers.

What platforms should you consider watching? While there are likely some industry specific sites for your business here are some that at the least you should watch:

Twitter

Facebook

Google Reviews

LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and similar

Instagram

Forums

Yelp, Tripadvisor, and similar

Episodes 91 Mentioned Tools & Resources

Today’s News

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's Oscars Performance Got Weird Quick

Lessons to be learnt from the Gap logo debacle

10 Rebranding Failures and How Much They Cost

5 Epically Hilarious Amy’s Baking Company Yelp Reviews