Using Linked In Efficiently

Social media is a double-edged sword for many business owners and entrepreneurs. On the one hand, it promises so much, but on the other hand, it can take up a lot of your valuable time -- especially if you don't have a proven social media plan. But if you're mainly selling to other businesses, then there's one place you definitely need to be -- LinkedIn.
With more than 400 million users and the ability to connect with new leads, new partners or influencers who can help you spread the word about your brand, it's the obvious choice for B2B.
But are you getting the most out of it or are you just tinkering around at the edges? Here are 11 giveaway signs that you've mastered LinkedIn.

1. You know your objectives.

So many people go round and round in circles in LinkedIn. Not you. You know exactly the outcomes you desire, and you go after them.

You understand that you need to do less to get more, so your focus is on three main areas -- getting more media exposure, creating partnerships and generating leads for your business. Your effort is focused on these three areas, and anything outside of this does not attract your attention.

2. You know who you're targeting.

Because you know your objectives, you know exactly who you want to connect with. You don't connect with people willy nilly hoping that somewhere, sometime, someone will get back to you. You know who you want to connect with, what they do and where they're based. You're not interested in spending time on building a network of people with half-hearted profiles. You're after the movers and shakers, the "A" Graders. Guesswork is not part of your approach.

3. You have a structured approach.

Because you know what you want, and because you know who can help you, your approach can be much more structured. But not only one approach. Each approach is dictated by your needs (e.g. increase exposure, identify partners, generate leads). Each approach is clearly structured and is tailored towards a successful outcome.

Ultimately, you know exactly where you want to get your connections. Whether that's on a phone call or a face-to-face meeting, it's a structured approach that isn't left to chance.

4. You're focused on relationships.

Selling yourself, your expertise or your products and services is your ultimate goal. But there's a time and place for that. People rarely buy on first contact. That's why your approach is built on creating trust and building a relationship from the start.

5. You're committed to content.

You understand the value of world class content, and you offer this to your networks. Because you know your expected outcomes, you understand the challenges and the problems that your target audience face. You create content that addresses these issues.

Whether that's regular LinkedIn Updates or longer LinkedIn Posts, you create world class content to make sure that you stay front of mind with your target audience.

6. A solution-focused profile.

Your profile isn't a dry read that looks like an online CV. Instead it reads more like a set of solutions that you can offer. When your connections come to check you out, they see that you are a solution provider. They see that you understand their needs and that you are a credible partner for them.

Your profile pops with your own media, whether that's articles, photos, videos or presentations.

7. You segment your contacts.

You've got several objectives, and that means several audiences. Not all of them will be interested in the same content. That's why you segment your contacts to make sure that they only get the content that's relevant to them.

8. You don't preach to groups. You ask questions.

Whether you're running a group or you're a member of a group, you understand that asking questions is more powerful than promoting your own content. You understand that asking questions elicits responses in ways that posting content to a group doesn't, and it allows you to direct them to useful resources.

Sure, you know there's a time and place to make a pitch. It just isn't here.

9. It's your comfort zone for cold calling.

One of the reasons you use LinkedIn is because you hate cold calling. You hate the way that it's unpredictable, intrusive and annoying. That's why you prefer a structured approach based on known objectives, targeted outreach and high value content.

10. You're patient.

It would be great if you could just hit it out of the park at the first attempt. But you know that's not going to happen. Building relationships and creating trust takes time. That's why you're patient and methodical. You know that things need to occur in a certain order, and that if you're in too much of a hurry, your prospects will notice.

11. You enjoy it.

Finally, above all else, you enjoy developing meaningful relationships based on mutual benefit. As much as you enjoy growing your own business, you enjoy sharing your knowledge and helping others solve their problems and grow their businesses. For you, this is where LinkedIn really comes into it's own.
LinkedIn is powerful. If you're selling to businesses, it's the place to be. But just going in all guns a-blazing isn't going to work. Whether you're looking for more media exposure, partnerships or new leads, you need to know your desired outcomes and have a structured plan in place to achieve your objectives.
LinkedIn works best for people who understand their outcomes, and people who understand who they want to work with and they have a structured plan to engage with them.

6 Must Have Marketing Essentials

It’s all about the money. When it comes to getting a new product off the ground, raising money for a cause, exploring growth opportunities for your small business and building your brand, crowdfunding offers a nontraditional way to reach non-conventional investors.

Crowdfunding reaches a larger and more diversified pool of interest than many standard methods of raising capital. It invites investment at any level, small-dollar and big. And, it helps you do something new and important for yourself and your investors. Plain and simple, it just makes sense to explore the marketing side of crowdfunding.

Six Marketing Essentials

Here are six essentials culled from our conversation to keep in mind before getting a crowdfunding campaign started.

1. Straddle the fence. Crowdfunding is all about capturing the personal ethos of the campaign -- a connection between message and emotion. However professional it looks and sounds, your marketing has to separate itself from the corporate impression with something casual, humorous or sentimental. If your message is somehow too proper and perfect, the audience might wonder why it requires crowdfunding.

2. Make it worthwhile. The object of the campaign has to come across as special or unique. It should embody an element of innovation, need or scarcity in any market. Scarcity drives the demand for any product, so you have to offer some exchange for the participation. It might be a T-shirt for helping fund a charity walk, or equity participation in a startup, or even an early model of the product (if it’s a physical gadget). But, creating marketing reciprocity must have a felt quality that takes more than just convincing language.

3. Build momentum. Every campaign needs an end date. At some point, the funding has to stop. So, several tracks run in sequence:

• You need a calendar to plan your strategy for the action and implementation.
• During the period before launch, it’s the campaign owner’s job to generate as much interest as possible. Usually through collecting emails and marketing to them.
• Lastly, a specific marketing event launches the period of funding.

Your strategic thinking has to visualize this rollout. You might, for example, peg your calendars around the date for the specific marketing event. That date cannot conflict with competing events like religious holidays, seasonal distractions, equity market activities and more. It’s to your benefit to make your launch stand alone.

4. Write a narrative. Everyone involved should follow the same script. They should all know the story of how things started, where you want to go and how you intend to get there. Your story needs an explanation of why you are pursuing crowdfunding as opposed to other investment strategies and a description of how the funding will make a difference.

It’s also important to respect the needs for copy writing. That is, your team has to brainstorm the language repeatedly until you can reduce the message to one quotable phrase. Then, all parties must be able to speak and write briefly from no more than four to five talking points.

5. Make it multi-dimensional. Content copy is important. It has to convince and persuade. It needs to testify with proof and credibility. Be sure to support your pitch with facts, figures and specifics on costs, forecasts and expectations. You’ll also want to make this a media event, something that goes viral across many a platform.

That takes vivid visuals, such as photos of people interacting with the product, commitments by key principles, testimonials by end users and so on. Finally, well-educated and entertaining videos of prototypes in action, users involved, or analysts’ comments will help your campaign go viral.

Emerging Tools In Social Media

Social media marketing is still a new business tool, relatively speaking. There’s no magic formula for success, and the potential benefits of your efforts are broad and not entirely predictable.
That promise is appealing, especially to young entrepreneurs, but results don’t come automatically -- even if you have a solid strategic foundation for your campaign. In fact, it requires a tremendous amount of planning, effort and refinement before you start to see results. And in most cases, the tools and features offered by social media platforms straightaway aren’t typically enough to give you the edge you need.
Social media operates in a hyper-competitive arena, and if you want to stay alive, you’re going to have to use the newest tools to support your efforts.

The key measure of success in social media, as in most other forms of marketing, is your overall return on investment (ROI). When most people think about ROI, they focus on the return they’re getting, and how to improve it.
Some tools will help you do this by providing more data you can use to target your demographics more accurately or allowing you to reach wider audiences than you have up to this point. However, most tools are directed at the other side of the equation -- the investment side.
They help you work more efficiently, to reduce the amount of time and money you expend in managing a campaign, and increase the power of everything you create or direct. In theory, at least, this should boost the potential of every dollar or hour you put in.

With those goals in mind, we want to show you five incredibly powerful up-and-coming social media tools you should be using to enhance your campaign:

 

1. Notifier.

One of the biggest trends in social media marketing right now is influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is the art of engaging with prominent authorities to earn more visibility for your posts and brand. Notifier is a tool that helps automate and improve your influencer relationships. By plugging in your content, it will automatically search it for references you’ve made to other brands, and pull up their social information so you can notify them that you’ve cited them. This gives you an “in” for engaging with new influencers, streamlining your influencer marketing campaign.

 

2. Real Geeks’ Facebook Marketing Tool.

If you’ve ever been intimidated or frustrated by the process of Facebook advertising, but are convinced of the potential value there, Real Geeks’ Facebook marketing tool is perfect for you. Designed for realtors, the tool connects your Facebook ad campaign directly to your website. From there, it automatically pulls data (such as home listings, images, etc.) and generates the type of ads that tend to generate the best results. You’ll be able to monitor and adjust these ads before they go out, and create your own if you so desire. The tool also provides detailed, easy-to-follow reporting, so you can track your progress accurately.

 

3. SocialOomph.

SocialOomph doesn’t have a particularly fancy user experience layer, but its functionality is powerful. With this, you’ll be able to connect all your social media profiles into one area, schedule posts in advance, and even “bulk upload” updates to have them roll out periodically over a preset schedule. It’s fantastic if you’re in the business of content syndication (as you should be), and it offers a number of audience insight tools as well.

4. Sprout Social.

Sprout Social is similar to Hootsuite in concept, but offers more robust functionality. You can connect to almost every major social media platform, schedule posts, monitor progress in terms of likes, engagements, and user activity, and easily see how your content performs over time. Sprout Social also furnishes social listening functionality, which allows you to perform better content topic research and market research by plugging into your key users’ social media conversations. Perhaps best of all, Sprout Social was designed with teams in mind, so you can establish different user roles and delegate tasks here too.

 

5. Crate.

Crate is a relatively new content curation tool designed to help you find the best-performing content on the web. Plug in the types of content and social media feeds you want to see more of, and Crate will generate a list of the topics that have performed best on social media. You can use this list to fuel your own social sharing strategy, or use it as inspiration to write better content for your blog. Either way, it’s incredibly useful.
Before you go out and start using these tools indiscriminately, let’s leave you with a pertinent cautionary note about automation in a marketing campaign. Automation can be incredibly valuable; it can give you more objective insights and save both time and money.

You don’t need to worry actively about these weaknesses or forgo automation tools because of such concerns. You merely need to acknowledge them, and keep them in mind when you choose to employ such tools to complement and build your campaign. It’s all about achieving a proper balance.

Five Tips That May Help You Grow Socially

In today’s market, harnessing the power of social media is a must if you want to grow your business and grow your brand. From my Instagram posts to my Twitter announcements, I have found that there is no end to the new opportunities that a carefully managed social media campaign can bring. With this in mind, any entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur who has yet to try out the power of social media needs to start working on creating a stronger online presence. It's something that I have seen bring great value to my own business and great value to others I have worked with in the market.
Through my experience, here are eight of the top tips that I have found can help any entrepreneur looking to expand their social media presence and their business.

1. Be consistent.

When it comes to your posts, your message and how frequently you use social media, keep consistency in mind. It is truly the key to success with any social media campaign. Make a plan for what you're going to post and how often you're going to post, and stick with it. This should ideally be a few times a day or a week, depending on your goals and your following. You can’t go from posting once a month to five times a day and then back and expect to have an engaged following. 

2. Use all social networks.

You may have a social network that you prefer over others, but it doesn’t mean that all of your followers feel that way. If you want to be successful with social media, then you need to post across all networks. This means having and maintaining an account with all of the big social media sites, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

3. Format content to optimize for each platform.

Maintaining accounts across all of the major social media platforms doesn’t mean posting the same thing on four different sites every day. It means formatting content specifically meant for each platform. You need photos for Instagram, long posts for LinkedIn, videos and memes for Facebook and short and snappy announcements for Twitter. All of your posts should be different, even if they are delivering the same message. 

4. Push on those networks that really work well.

There are some networks that are going to work better for you than others. When you find that network that really works for your specific type of business and your specific type of customer, then you need to really push on that network and take advantage of the opportunity.

5. Make sure that your content aligns with your message.

When it comes to building a strong social media presence, getting likes and follows is great. However, it's about more than just the number of responses each of your posts get. You may be tempted to deliver a post that simply gets a lot of attention, but that will do nothing for your brand if you don’t make sure that the content aligns with your message. Everything needs to fit within your brand identity and promote what it is that you're trying to say to the world.

When and what to post on your brand’s social media channels is different for every business. Often, what you post on Facebook will not be suitable for Pinterest. Or even if it is, the best post times for each will likely differ. Being in tune with your audience and understanding which types of content work for which channels will help you devise a strong social media strategy.

Best time to post on social media

It is fact that social media plays a valuable role in marketing, sales, branding and more. That’s why it’s vital for your company to keep up with new social media channels and constantly evolving practices. Knowing who your target audience is and what the best times to post are key components toward an effective social media strategy.
Start by conducting industry research and checking out your competition’s social channels. You may be overwhelmed by the number of posts out there and find yourself confused about when you should deploy your own content. That’s why, after analyzing million social media posts by brands, marketing analytics software providers has drawn conclusion of  its Best Times to Post on Social Media.

The best times to post vary by industry, channel and target audience. On five of the major social media networks -- Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest -- user interaction peaks at certain times. The report reveals that Thursday at 5 p.m. (all times Eastern) is an ideal time to send out a tweet, while Thursday at 8 p.m. provides the greatest chance of a customer clicking, liking, sharing or commenting on a Facebook post.
Fridays evenings are an ideal time to reach Instagrammers, and Pinterest’s peak hour is 1 a.m. on Friday. Unsurprisingly, Wednesday morning is an effective time for a LinkedIn post -- you’re most likely to get in touch with business professionals before they start the work day.
The report also examines post times specific to 75 industries. From airlines/aviation to fashion to law, optimal post times differ according to when target customers and followers tend to check their social accounts. In the aviation/airline industry, the best time to post on Twitter is 1 p.m. on Friday -- probably because people are preparing for trips or commuting. For the architecture industry, the best time to send a tweet is on Saturday morning when people have time away from work to think about home projects or renovations.

When and what to post on your brand’s social media channels is different for every business. Often, what you post on Facebook will not be suitable for Pinterest. Or even if it is, the best post times for each will likely differ. Being in tune with your audience and understanding which types of content work for which channels will help you devise a strong social media strategy.
Check out the graphic below to find out what times your company should be posting online, or click here to download TrackMaven's Cheat Sheet for 75 Industries.

Content Is King The Same Old Fact

Writing shallow, generic content is easy, requires minimal research and demands little prior knowledge of the subject -- all of which are selling points for content writers. However, clients are looking to stand out from their competitors and demonstrate to their audience why they are the right choice; readers are looking to be informed or entertained with something new; and Google ranks unique content high in search results. Content that just scratches the surface fails to please all three.
The problem is that there is a huge amount of content already on the web, making it difficult for writers to create something completely original. However, by taking a different approach to content creation, you can intrigue your readers and provide value to your audience. Here are a few ideas how to avoid being generic and go deeper into your subject matter.

1. Write from a different angle

You can turn even what may at first seem like an uninteresting subject matter into an exciting piece of content when you consider how you feel about the issue.
Most Creative People recommends sticking to topics in which you already have some interest; however, we understand that this is not always possible. In the case you do have to write on a subject you find boring for a B2B company, never allow your audience to feel your despair. Liven up the content by finding aspects that make the subject compelling, taking an angle you've never tried before. You may not be an expert on the subject matter, but this has no bearing. In fact, limited knowledge can often be beneficial, as you are even more likely to have some fresh ideas that your client's readers had never considered.

2. Infuse pieces with your personality

Nothing makes for more shallow content than facts presented in a bland, dry tone. Your content may be completely free from grammatical or comprehensive errors, but this does not necessarily mean it is well-written.
Enhance your content by allowing your personality to shine through. Pay attention to your choice of vocabulary, style and structure to ensure your writing reflects who you are, while still taking an appropriate tone and voice to meet your clients’ requirements.

3. Experiment with various formats

Mix things up by trying out a variety of formats for your content. For instance, if search results on your subject are turning up many pieces in data analysis form, try a Q&A, opinion piece or how-to instead. Simply by presenting the information differently can be inspiring and may lead you to coming up with a range of new ideas or penetrating the subject in greater depth.
Whether you are tackling a completely new issue or returning to a topic that you have covered many times before, it is always possible to put a new spin on the subject. Keep your clients happy, encourage their readers to come back for more, and improve search engine rankings all by creating something fresh and thoughtful.

---

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

So you’re thinking about adding Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to your website? Stop thinking and start doing! Of course, it is all about how you implement AMP, but we'll get into that.
If you’re unfamiliar with AMP, it’s an open-source technology that enables pages on your site to load quickly for users on a mobile device. This happens with the help of a JavaScript library and some additional HTML markup.
Here are five reasons why you should add AMP technology to your website:

1. AMP is essential for good mobile SEO.

By now, you already know that if you want your site to rank well, you need to make sure that it’s mobile-friendly. That’s also why you need AMP. Think of it as the latest iteration of mobile-friendly design.
With AMP, your pages and blog posts will load quickly on mobile devices. That will not only give your users a better experience, but it will also give Google a good reason to rank your site well in the mobile search engine results pages (SERPs).
But it’s not just about organic ranking with AMP. Your site could be featured at the very top of the SERPs. How? With Google’s carousel that displays AMP pages -- and only AMP pages -- at the very top of the results list.
If you take your mobile device right now and Google a keyword related to current events, you’ll see that the results include a carousel of AMP pages at the very top of the SERPs. That’s where your page could be, but only if you adopt AMP.

2. AMP is so fast, it will reduce your bounce rate.

Don’t you hate a high bounce rate? When people visit your site, hang around for a few seconds, and then go somewhere else, you’re obviously not doing something right to inspire them to hang around for a while.
One reason people bounce -- the site is just too darned slow. That’s why AMP is so valuable. It will load your pages in a flash so that users will have one less reason to run away.

3. AMP could help you monetize your site.

Do you know why some sites are agonizingly slow? It’s because they’re loaded up with ad technology. It’s ironic, really. Websites increase ads to generate more revenue, but in the process the increased load times caused by the new ads also cause people to leave the site. That means, in all likelihood, less revenue in the long run.
Of course, some users who really like ad-overloaded websites will install ad blockers just so that the sites load faster. That’s also a problem for publishers because their ads won’t be seen, and they’ll lose revenue.
Enter AMP. It was designed with ad monetization in mind.
Here’s what the folks who started the AMP project have to say about their technology as it relates to advertising. “A goal of the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project is to ensure effective ad monetization on the mobile web while embracing a user-centric approach. With that context, the objective is to provide support for a comprehensive range of ad formats, ad networks and technologies in Accelerated Mobile Pages.”
The idea is that mobile pages -- even ones with an abundance of ads -- will load quickly with AMP. As a result, mobile users won’t see any reason to install ad blockers. AMP is great news for advertisers and publishers alike.

4. AMP offers analytics.

By now, everybody in the online marketing universe knows about the importance of analytics. Those are key metrics that offer insight about the effectiveness of specific marketing campaigns. AMP offers analytics as well.
Using AMP, you can track important information about visitor counts, new versus returning users, clicks, conversions, video engagement, link tracking and more.
Even better -- AMP analytics offer built-in support for almost every marketer’s favorite analytics tool, Google Analytics. Specifically, you can easily track three request values with AMP -- page views, events and social interactions.
If you’re really a hardcore GA aficionado, you can even use AMP to send custom dimension parameters to Google Analytics. That way, you can track very specific data points.

5. Google loves AMP so you should too. 

If you want to maximize the visibility of your website, then you need to play nice with Google. And Google absolutely loves AMP.
Just within the past few weeks, Google has made it easier to split-test AMP pages, announced that it will display AMP errors to site owners in search results and announced that AMP pages will be added to Google’s organic search results.
And that’s not all. If your site doesn’t support AMP, you might log in to the Search Console and see the following message -- “Google has detected that your site has many pages that may benefit from being served as AMP pages. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are HTML pages that are optimized to load fast on mobile devices. Learn more about AMP benefits in the resources below. Valid AMP pages on your site will be eligible to be shown in search results and receive special badging in search results.”
In other words, Google really wants you to use AMP. Why not get started today?

It's pretty clear that AMP is here to stay. They are even making AMP possible for e-commerce websites now.

How does SME sector helps Improve Business ??

The SME sector is the backbone of India’s growth contributing to 45% of manufacturing output, 40% of total exports and targeted to contribute to 20% of India’s GDP by 2020. Backed by the government via the Digital India initiative, this sector is likely to embrace technology in a big way to promote growth. Irrespective of segment, there are numerous research reports that provide statistics on the link between technology adoption and the SME sector growth with some stating that SME’s who were early adopters of technology could increase their annual revenue 15% faster than their competitors.
This article explores the five leading ways in which technology will encourage growth in the SME sector:

1. Creating a digital business: SME success depends upon creating early differentiators. Thinking through and executing a digital business model could mean getting that ticket to differentiation. This requires a fundamental shift in strategy in favor of leveraging digital, to either bring out a new offering or take the existing offering to market in newer ways.  This means being able to explore technologies such as IoT for say creating a new business offerings, leveraging robotics for say faster plant output, analytics for a deeper understanding into the internal and external business environment to leveraging social for customer outreach or cloud for flexibility and lower capex. The option are numerous. It only requires very strong business understanding to be able to analyze the existing business models, analyze what the ecosystem looks like, have a very strong understanding of the customer and their unstated expectations to then be able to devise an appropriate strategy to create the digital business model.
2. Hiring the right talent: Senior management of SME’s need to change the lens with which they view enterprise talent. Digital talent is not only about technical skills, but goes much beyond permeating business processes, to deal with the new requirements brought about by changing customer expectations. As a famous quote goes “Even in such technical lines as engineering, about 15% of one’s financial success is due one’s technical knowledge and about 85% is due to skill in human engineering, to personality and the ability to lead people.”  Transforming business by leveraging digital is a huge opportunity provided that the SME equips itself with the right talent that is able to accelerate the pace of growth.
3. Information Management to increase productivity: With fully automated business processes, the SME creates a paperless office, where the right information to execute a business process seamlessly is available to the right user when they need it. No longer do they need to clamor for information – everything that they need to deliver process cycle time is available to them on their fingertips including complete automation of workflows and integration to the ERP or back end applications. What this really leads to is significant increase in productivity and doing more with less.
4. Understanding the customer / customer outreach: What used to be a last channel of resort for customers is now turning out to be the natural and most immediate touch point for progressive brands.  According to some studies, companies with social care experience see a 5.6% increase in the first contact resolutions, 6.5% increase in agent productivity and 17.5% increase in SLA attainment. Social is being leveraged by SME’s like never before to gain a good understanding of the customer. With social and sentiment analysis, SME’s in the B2C space are not only able to better understand customer’s perception of a brand and their expectations, but also leverage it for generating leads, managing engagement with prospects to delivering customer service in newer ways.
5. Lower capex with cloud: Rather than owning assets, SME’s can leverage cloud to be operators of those assets owned by an external provider. This enables quick readiness and faster ‘reach to their enterprise goals’, thereby making it a significant driver for SME growth.

The SME segment plays a very crucial role in the socio-economic growth story of the country, and technology is likely to become a sine qua non for driving business growth. Taking a lead early on in this respect will make a big difference between the also-rans to those who are really going to drive a new wave of growth enabled by technology.

Growth Strategies Hiring Technology Small BizTips Small Businesses

Buying Needs Social proofs

These days consumers are influenced by other people more than they realize it is also that  social norms influence consumption behavior and even private interests, including one’s taste in music. This is what makes the concept of social proof a powerful one.

What is social proof?

In Science social proof is described as a psychological phenomenon in which people follow the actions of others in an effort to reflect what is considered correct behavior for any given situation -- including online experiences. Simply put, social proof influences people's decisions on how they should behave.
We've traditionally turned to a variety of useful sources as social proof. These include credible experts, thought leaders, celebrities, friends and the wisdom of the crowd. But today's diners rarely go to a restaurant without first visiting Yelp, and shoppers seldom make a meaningful purchase without first reading what verified buyers have to say. Online reviews have significant effects on purchasing behaviors. Predictably, they've emerged as one of the most potent forms of social proof.

When customers read reviews on various sites such as Google, Amazon or TripAdvisor, they depend on star ratings to determine the quality of a product or service. They read others' comments and ask increasingly specific questions.

• “Will this bank location help solve my problem the way it solved others’ problems?”
• “Is the food as good as advertised? What do previous diners really think?”
• “How long will I have to wait before I see the doctor? How long did others have to wait?”
• “Based on others’ experiences, what potential issues or problems might I have to face when I decide to buy this product?”

Do reviews really guide purchase decisions?

According to a survey nearly eighty percent of consumers in the United States read reviews before making a purchase decision. The report reinforces findings in a previous study that found that 87 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust friends and family. On the other end of the spectrum, four out of five consumers reverse their purchase decisions based on negative reviews.

People take positive reviews and high ratings as social proof a product or service is worth the purchase. They reason, “This has great reviews, so I’m buying it.”

How do reviews shape perception and future feedback?

According to a study published in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, the average rating for a hotel with 11 to 20 reviews is 3.5 out of 5 stars, with “terrible” reviews (a rating of 1 star) at close to 12 percent. Interesting, as a hotel sees 101 reviews or more, its average star rating increases to 3.9. The feedback pattern, therefore, favors quantity. The more your business is reviewed, the likelier you are to receive higher ratings.
Apart from providing social proof for customers looking to make a purchase decision, reviews also provide social proof in other ways. These online testimonials shape how people perceive brands. And reviews also influence what people think they should say, when it's time to add their own voice to the conversation.
A customer’s opinion about a Yelp-listed restaurant with 100 reviews and an average rating of 4.5 stars is less likely to go against the grain and offer a counterpoint to all the positive feedback. The consumer thinks, “This has great reviews, so I’m going to say the same about it.”

How should you manage and respond to reviews?

To stay competitive, you must be able to effectively manage your online reputation. Track and monitor your reviews. Know when and where your customers are talking about your brand. Respond to customer feedback, both positive and negative. Dive deeper into the comments to look for useful insights and information that will help you improve the customer experience.
Related: Why Big Businesses Must Proactively Manage Their Online Reputations
Here are a few tips on responding to negative reviews:

• If you or your staff made a mistake, apologize. Even if you didn’t make a mistake, apologize and thank the reviewer for taking time to tell you what he or she thinks. Social proof is most potent when you’re able to turn unhappy customers into loyal fans. If someone wrote a harshly unfair comment and gave your business a low rating, keep your head up, say sorry, and tell them you hope they’ll come back so you can offer a better experience.
• Address all parts of the review. For example, if the reviewer writes the bank teller was rude or your bank’s app is buggy, acknowledge the issues and address them individually in your response.
• Ask the customer to reach out to you directly. Explore whether there’s anything you can do to make up for the customer's bad experience. There's a caveat, though: Never offer bribes or incentives for customers to change their review's sentiment.

Of course, harnessing the potential of reviews as social proof isn’t only about righting wrongs or recovering critics and detractors. It’s also about activating happy customers and promoters. Keeping that in mind, here are some equally important tips on maximizing the social proof inherent in positive reviews:

• Say thank you. If a customer took the time to present social proof for other prospective customers to see, expressing your gratitude is the very least you can do.
• Reinforce what customers love most about their experiences. In your response, explain that the delicious cupcakes actually are homemade. Let them in on how you grow your own arugula, or tell them others also have commented on the amazing views from your resort's cliffside swimming pool.
• Respond in a reasonable amount of time. Seven days or less is an ideal time frame to start.

Customers who are active online can influence others’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. While there's no way to control what people say about your business online or offline, you do have the power to change the conversation. Managing customer feedback and leveraging the right kind of social proof ensures you account for the positive opinions shared by your happiest customers. 

Not Yet Samsung Re- Launched Note 7

Samsung has said it will delay restarting the sale of its Galaxy Note 7 phone in South Korea, as the firm needs more time for the global recall of the device.

The South Korean tech giant was forced to recall some 2.5 million devices globally due to overheating batteries.
Dozens of devices were reported to have caught fire.
The phone was to be back on the shelf on 28 September but is now expected to be available 1 October at the earliest.
On 2 September Samsung had said it would stop selling the phones and offered to replace the ones already sold. The firm also urged people to stop using the device.
The global recall affects 10 markets. In South Korea, some 200,000 customers have already returned their devices with the same number of people still left for the recall, according to Samsung.
Reuters reported that the next markets where the phone will be available for sale again will be Australia and Singapore in October.

What makes lithium batteries catch fire?
On Friday, cabin crew on an Indian passenger aircraft used a fire extinguisher to tackle a smoking older Samsung handset.
The Galaxy Note 2 - a model launched in 2012 - was smouldering and spitting sparks, according to a statement from airline IndiGo.

Image copyright Ariel Gonzalez

Image caption The recall came after reports of 'exploding' phones

In the US, regulators have ordered a formal recall of the Note 7, while the country's Federal Aviation Administration has told airline passengers not to bring the phones on planes unless they keep them turned off and don't charge them during the flight.
A number of airlines around the globe have also banned the phone from being used or charged on their planes.
The phone was originally launched on 19 August and had been generally well-received by critics and consumers.
The recall comes at a crucial time for Samsung as rival Apple has just released its new iPhone 7.