TripAdvisor to face legal action over negative reviews

Reviews websites have, for some, been the scourge of online businesses. Websites such as blagger.com, ciao.co.uk and tripadvisor.com are frequented by millions of users, all looking for reviews of the latest products, films, business services and, in the case of TripAdvisor, hotels and holiday companies.

The problem is that because these websites are used by so many people, and receive so much great quality, original content literally brimming with keywords, they tend to rank very well in Google for searches relevant to the industry. They’re a business’ nightmare when it comes to bad reviews, unhappy customers and unscrupulous competitors looking to give you a bad name.

But what can you do about it if reviews for your business, or hotel, on these websites appears at the top of Google for a search on your name? What you’ll need here is a stiff drink, and some reputation management. Getting rid of bad press is like clearing a bad smell – it’s not easy, and it takes time, but (more…)

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Domino’s Pizza uses YouTube advertising

dominos

If you’re one of those people who thought YouTube was a website full of pointless videos of babies laughing, dogs knocking over their owners and people falling off things then, well, you’re right. It does have an awful lot of that. However, it also has a lot of videos used for business purposes.

For example, all of the major film studios have their own YouTube channels and they use them to distribute trailers for their latest films. Many of the big news networks, such as (more…)

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SEO can help minimise PR fallout

It has emerged that the millionaire owner of Segway, Jimi Heselden, 62, has died in a freak accident involving one of the vehicles after driving the scooter off the edge of a cliff into the River Wharfe, in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire.

Whilst StuckOn extends its sincerest sympathies towards Mr Heselden’s family, it is apparent that this accident could pose a public relations hitch for the company.

The vehicle was touted as being “…to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy“, but in 2003, the Segway PT model was recalled as users who ignored the low battery warning were (more…)

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Rachel Elnaugh says ‘Sales, Sales, Sales’

rachel_elnaugh Recently some of us from StuckOn attended the Manchester Business Show at the ‘Manchester Central Exhibition Centre’. At the show we listened to a variety of guest speakers talking about their business experiences, and how they succeeded (or failed) in their enterprises.

One of the speakers was Rachel Elnaugh, who you may remember from early seasons of BBC’s Dragons’ Den. Rachel was the founder of the company ‘Red Letter Days’, which she built from scratch to a company generating a £10 million turnover – pretty useful by anyone’s book.

In her talk Rachel spoke openly about how she grew the business, the mistakes she made on the way and the eventual failure of the business due to (more…)

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Search engine ranking problems: the modern whodunit

Did you know that Agatha Christie wrote for SEO? Well, obviously the renowned British Queen of Crime and creator of Hercule Poirot was not around for the birth of the Internet, but nevertheless she provides some handy pointers for the average website owner looking to increase their rankings within Google. Namely, every failing ranking is a mystery that must be solved, and the little grey cells hold the answer.

This isn’t as ludicrous as it may seem. As many struggling site owners know, it is often near-impossible to spot the cause of a failing ranking. It really does form an intriguing mystery at times.

Christie gave hard-working programmers working in SEO jobs a few handy hints on how to (more…)

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Facebook’s gone down – is the world ending?

If you were online on Thursday evening (and the chances are that if you’re reading this, you were, just like me) then you’ll probably have noticed that Facebook – the sole reason for the existence of the Internet in the eyes of many – was unresponsive. The fact that a simple website was down shouldn’t have been a major news story across the world on Friday morning, but this isn’t just any website – it’s Facebook.

The website acts a meeting place for friends, a reunion ground for families and a way to keep in touch with people when they’re not around. Facebook has rapidly replaced the phone, the mobile phone and even text messaging as the preferred method of communication between the young – and its absence from our lives, even for a few short hours, is unacceptable.

The outage suffered by Facebook late Thursday evening was (more…)

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Doyle doesn’t see the point in Facebook

He may like to think of himself as a serious actor, playing proper roles in BBC and ITV dramas, but we know of him in one role, and one role only; Ray Doyle, the mighty perm, in the classic ‘The Professionals’.

Bodie and Doyle

A little older, and lacking the trademark perm, actor Martin Shaw has recently confessed to not understanding the power of social networking, and has dismissed Twitter and Facebook as being pointless. In a recent interview in the Radio Times, to promote his new BBC series, Martin Shaw comments with regards to social networking websites Facebook and Twitter:

“What is the point of all that?”

Shaw goes on to add that he does use text messages, and he uses email, but social networking has completely passed him by. He also only uses texts and emails because (more…)

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Let staff use Facebook and Twitter says Internet security expert

Do you let your staff log into Facebook and Twitter while they are at work? No? Perhaps you should, at least you should according to Paul Ducklin – the technology head at Sophos, one of the world’s leading Internet security firms.

Paul Ducklin believes that employers need to be open to the power of social media and should embrace it, allowing their employees to use within the workplace. After all, with the Internet now enjoying a greater advertising spend here in the UK than television advertising, your business could reach more people online than through any other medium.

Paul Ducklin, addressing the delegates of Brisbane’s National Identity Crime Symposium, commented about social media:

“It’s a good way of rooting your brand, telling stuff to a large number of people in an informal way, so many organisations want to use sites like Facebook, services like Twitter, to tell their constituents fun stuff about themselves.”

“If you then also block social networking entirely [to your staff] at work it’s awfully hypocritical – ‘tell all your friends to come and look at our social media page but you can’t do it’.”

Of course, you’re probably thinking that you don’t want your staff idling away their time on Facebook when they should be working. You don’t want your employees wasting time, time that you’re paying them for. Paul Ducklin however believes that employees who want to waste time will (more…)