Seriously.

Google has chosen Kansas City, Kansas as the first city in the country to get Google Fiber, the highest speed internet broadband.  The internet speed is said to be up to 100 times faster than what the average American has now.  Somewhere, an Amish person just shed a tear.  Anyway, Google had this to say in their PR:

In selecting a city, our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and develop relationships with local government and community organizations. We’ve found this in Kansas City. We’ll be working closely with local organizations including the Kauffman Foundation, KCNext and the University of Kansas Medical Center to help develop the gigabit applications of the future.

Congrats, Kansas!  You’ve officially perturbed the rest of the 49 states you beat out.

…okay, just kidding, but Facebook Questions is taking a step in that direction.

Above is a sampling of my friends’ Questions and answers.  As you can see, the questions aren’t life changing yet.  Facebook says, however, that they are looking to help users aggregate opinions about restaurants, places to visit, new music to listen to, etc.  This could be in the same vein as sites like Yelp! or Google Local reviews.  Right now, though, it looks a little like FormSpring without the anonymous aspect.

Questions was tested last summer and now they are looking to give it to everyone in a faster and easier way.  Try out Facebook Questions and let us know what you think.  Do you think this will take off and become the new favorite use for Facebook?  Do you foresee it being a good way for your company to interact on Facebook?

Meet Melissa.

She’s the new Manager of Client Services at Visiture.  She was born and raised in Baltimore and has now relocated to Atlanta.  She will be heading up our client communication (this means you’ll be hearing her pretty voice on weekly and bi-weekly calls) and producing our reports. Melissa is a great addition to the team and we’re so happy to have her!

Unlike video extensions on PPC ads, this is an entirely new “standalone” platform.  You can try it out by typing in a new release and watching the trailer without leaving the search engine results page (SERP). They also have installed a lightbox player, but for some reason the search for Arthur didn’t yield the same as for Hop: How does a company pay for this click?  Well, it’s a flat rate (you don’t bid) because the targeting is taken away.  In other words, the Google algorithm determines when someone is probably searching for your movie (and thus, the trailer).  Watching the trailer doesn’t charge the company, but clicking on the full website does, just like viewing products in the product extension doesn’t charge, but clicking on a product and being redirected does. So what does this mean?  Well, right now, the media ad platform is relatively small and just being used for big movie companies to promote spring releases.  How could a video help you in the future?  It could certainly be a way to set yourself apart from the competition, especially as a B2B.  Either way, it’s definitely an exciting update.

You’ve seen it a million times.  You type in a store, product, restaurant or service company and you see negative reviews.  Maybe someone had a bad experience with shipping, their meal, customer service, etc.  There is no way that your business is going to be able to please everyone 100% of the time.  The sad thing is, though, these reviews and negative comments can creep into the search results pages when someone searches for your brand name.  There are two ways to combat this and we highly recommend doing both:

1. Nip the situation in the bud. Many nay-sayers are just disgruntled customers, not evil-doers.  The best way to put them in their place is to fix the issue.  An example would be to reply to the negative post, whether it be on a review site or a blog.  You can respond with kindness, explaining what really happened and offer some kind of recourse.  The faster you do this, the better.  If someone tweets something negatively about your business, try replying to them and asking what you can do to make the situation better.  The Internet offers a lot of anonymity, which allows for people to be kind of mean-spirited, but they are likely to change their tune if they see you care.

2. Increase positivity by promoting your business on social networking sites. If your brand presence is big on the social networking sites, you will succeed in overshadowing a bad review or two.  This means “liking” other businesses in your community, retweeting your followers and influencers, and/or commenting on relevant blogs.  Generally just being apart of the community will earn you some serious likability points, and it’s a great way to keep in touch with your customer base.  It also makes it easier to search for problems involved with #1.

Companies that do a great job at this:

Chobani :: Crazy Dog T-shirts :: Bits of Lace :: Potat Spot