Marketing Google

At the LSA-SMX West Local Search Advantage Workshop this week, Yelp’s Luther Lowe offered a number of “white hat tips” for marketers on reputation management and reviews. There was one gem that I was totally unaware of: “incentivized check-ins” can help generate Yelp reviews.
Yelp’s influence and footprint are substantial and growing. The company now feeds content and reviews to Apple Maps, Bing, Yahoo and elsewhere.
However Yelp’s strict “no review solicitation” policy has left many marketers and local business owners frustrated and even angry. And Yelp’s “review filter” practices have been the subject of lawsuits and numerous unproven conspiracy theories.

Unlike with reviews themselves, Yelp allows for incentivized check-ins (“check-in offers”). Here’s the trick I didn’t know: if users check in to receive an offer, they are prompted by Yelp to review that business upon their return to the site or mobile app. Users must be signed in for this to work however.
Below an example screen: “you…

Here are five good reasons why you should migrate to AdWords' new Call-Only Ads as part of your PPC strategy.



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Compelling infographics can help marketers earn links for the content they produce and lift their SEO rankings.



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It's no secret that great content can generate links, which in turn can boost SEO. But how can you determine what's newsworthy about your client in order to produce that good content?



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According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Google Wireless could launch by the end of next month. The “big catch” being discussed today, however, is that only one phone will work on the hybrid network: the massive Nexus 6 (by Motorola).
The device will need to jump between WiFi and wireless networks (Sprint, T-Mobile) that operate according to different standards. Sprint is CDMA and T-Mobile is GSM. The associated Nexus 6 devices will be capable of “network hopping,” which Motorola has extensive experience with. Some versions of the iPhone 6 are also compatible with both CDMA and GSM networks.
Other Android phones will thus not work. This is one way Google can limit enrollment and reassure other mobile carriers that it won’t be directly competing with them. It remains to be seen how Google prices the phone and plans.
Google confirmed the rumored wireless network at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week but added that the purpose of its network was to drive innovation. Goo…

Working with Deutsch LA, VW is out with a series of videos, gifs and memes featuring YouTubers and Oprah Winfrey Network reality documentary stars, the “Golden Sisters,” three wise-cracking, elderly sisters who first rose to fame when a video of the trio watching the Kim Kardashian sex tape went viral.
The videos, two of which will be released each week, aim to debunk the 7 Myths of Diesel. The first video, entitled Sluggish, combats the notion that diesel cars have no pick up. The second video, entitled Loud, combats the belief that diesel engines are loud.
In each of the videos, the ladies let loose a full-on barrage of wise-cracking snarks.


In addition to the videos, the Tumblr site has memes such as “Hasn’t Moved This Fast… Since 1954″ and “Thought Libido Was Dead… Then Drove Diesel.”
The memes along with a collection of animated gifs are shareable to social media.



VW is promoting the videos with the hashtag #vwtdi on Twitter:


If a diesel turns on and three old wives don’t hear it, is i…

Brands using mobile messaging app Kik to make connections with fans got an upgrade today. Kik announced that it has added the ability to target followers by gender, geography and mobile device.
It’s another move by the Waterloo, Ontario-based company to position itself as a more-brand friendly alternative to Snapchat. Both messaging apps are wildly popular, especially among young teens and millennials, but Kik is making a stronger play to directly link businesses with that highly coveted audience.
In August, Kik gave users the ability to follow and communicate with brands via Promoted Chats. Then in November, it enhanced that chat product by enabled brands to customize automated responses based on keywords in messages from fans.
The effort has been very successful, Kik reported today. The company said it has more than 60 brands — including Funny or Die, Seventeen Magazine, Skullcandy and Vans — in the program. More than 10 million users have opted into a conversation with a brand and exc…

In addition to powering the help search feature in Office, Bing now allows users to see a news feed along the bottom of their homepage and share their feedback with the search engine.



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Google launches an AdWords app for Android that is now available in the Play store.



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It’s nothing personal, but you’re probably going to notice a drop in likes on your Facebook Page in the next several weeks. Facebook announced today that it will stop including likes from memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts in Pages’ like totals.
The move, Facebook said in a blog post, will ensure businesses have more precise information about the people who actively follow their Page and make ads targeted to people like their followers — aka lookalike audiences — more efficient.
From the blog post:

Over the coming weeks, Page admins should expect to see a small dip in their number of Page likes as a result of this update. It’s important to remember, though, that these removed likes represent people who were already inactive on Facebook.

Facebook said the dip in likes is likely to be small. That means it’s not likely to cause an uproar like the fake account purge Instagram undertook in December.
Facebook is signaling the change to Page administrators in a message within Insig…