Ailsa is all over the Brownlow in an attempt to get some free publicity.
Thanks to Bruce Keogh and the email regarding last weeks stress test of the Benalla Online portal.
We mention some sites that offer paid for Templates for WordPress and the Theme viewer for free templates as a way to try out the new technology approach to the web portal.
Also we mentioned user feedback would be a simple part of the admin under WordPress or Drupal.
Deborah Selleck gets an opportunity to raise her profile as a designer as her dress is worn by the fiance of the eventual winner of the best and fairest award for the AFL.
Photo gallery images online at the Herald Sun are good PR but with no content online at deborahselleck.com.au missed the mark.
Google Adwords stops retailers using brand names as keywords in Australia.
Opening and closing music by Velvedene.
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September 30th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Just listened to this weeks podcast. Interesting stuff as usual!
I thought I would write as it seems that you may be missing the point and the marketing opportunities behind the use of an open commenting system. Yes you can get negative comments on them but these should be welcomed for the following reasons: -
1. People do not believe a commenting system with nothing but positive comments.
2. It gives the particular retailer a chance to respond to a criticism. If this is done correctly it can quickly turn a negative into a positive.
3. Retailers can learn from the comments and look to improve or target their product/service to meet requirements.
I have seen some great examples of this from simple apologies with the offer of free stuff on a next visit, however my favourite has been a one complaint about a hotel. The client was complaining that they had been ejected from the hotel and would never recommend it to anyone. The response was that for this particular case they had had complaints from other patrons about noise, had repeatedly asked for this to be reduced, then after seemingly much thought had decided to send the client elsewhere. This maybe didn’t placate the particular client, but as a potential visitor made you aware what type of place this was and that they cared for the majority of their clients enough to boot out the ‘bad egg’. Great marketing!
You also hinted at the possibility of censoring certain comments. As mentioned above this really does not work. A sanitised comment system usually is just not believed.
One last thing, I know that you like Wordpress, but Dreamweaver is now heavily biased to CSS too. In fact the new version, CS4, also includes some content management features as I’m sure they were feeling the heat from Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and the like.
October 1st, 2008 at 10:01 am
Thought I might mention the Google keywords thingy too!
From what I have seen this would not stop these companies advertising against the Apple keyword, just from using Apple brand names in their ads. My feeling is that Apple is looking to defend is quality image and as you know Google ads that work usually imply some type of discount such as “cheap Apple computers”, “Cheap iPods” etc. Apple are probably seeing this as underminig the quality of their products by marking them as cheap.
I have to say I think they have probably gone the only way around this they could to remove the “cheap”, but it really hasn’t hit the mark I don’t think. I have had this discussion with people at my work and they will not use the word “cheap” in relation to our products, prefering ‘cost effective’ or some such term which actually means nothing to anyone.
I would be interested in getting feedback on the term cheap. In my opinion if you apply it to a product that is of high quality, it simply infers a reduced price. What do you think?
October 1st, 2008 at 10:12 am
I think I would view the Adwords action by Apple in light of their recent increase in retail enterprise in Australia. Apple seem to want a tight control over retail both online and instore. I am not sure this a bad move for Apple but I can’t say the same for independent Apple retailers.
However it is interesting to see how one of the oldest online retailers conducts business in this day and age, perhaps they know something different..