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The Disappearing Testimonial

David — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 19:28:17 +0000

Testimonials from real customers and clients are the lifeblood of new business referrals for many businesses. A sincere, honest and real-world review can go a long way towards making up the mind of the browsing potential customer. This fact is arguably the single most important driving force of online marketing today. As the world becomes more interconnected via the web, the opportunity to attract leads from those who are new in town, shopping for a new provider or “just seeing what’s out there” becomes critical to a new, growing business.

Who is deleting legitimate customer reviews?

Review websites have been popular for several years, with Yelp being perhaps the most well-known of the review websites. However Yelp has a dirty little secret (some might say, many dirty little secrets!) The problem is that a new, authentic customer of a business, who leaves a legitimate review on Yelp, might find that review deleted for no apparent reason.

The seemingly capricious review deletion policy of Yelp is becoming more well known throughout the retail and B2B world and is causing a lot of hair-pulling and Yelp-bashing on the web. The reason Yelp deletes the reviews is debatable (and in fact known only to those at Yelp) but is most likely related to the problem of fake reviews. Yelp’s reputation is on the line and thus, they take an aggressive stance on the possibility of fake testimonials clogging up their system.

However, the potential for deleting legitimate reviews is arguably greater than the problem of illegitimate reviews. This is causing some great consternation among business owners.

Fortunately there are many other review websites on the internet, and with Google now indexing reviews with greater enthusiasm than before, these review websites are becoming more visible than they were previously. And fortunately for business owners, most of these review websites have a much more liberal stance on leaving reviews in place. Here is a list of some of the better and more popular review websites:

The bottom-line is: don’t let Yelp push you or your clients around. There are many great alternatives and if these alternatives are used, the opportunity for control of customer reviews by any one review website will be greatly diminished.

Grand Opening Pricing

David — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:35:30 +0000

BizKicker.com is proud to announce our very special Grand Opening pricing, available for new clients until October 1st, 2010. Don’t miss this chance to get in on the ground floor and stomp your competition!

The BizKicker online marketing system is ideal for busy professionals on a budget who want to get ahead and stay ahead of their competition on the web. BizKicker includes a fully update-able website (you can even update your site from your iPhone!), web hosting, email and ongoing search engine optimization, a service heretofore unattainable at this price-point.

Please see our Services & Pricing page for full details.

A Great Free Way to Edit Your BizKicker Photos

David — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:09:13 +0000

If you need an easy way to manage and edit photos, check out Picasa by Google. This is a great tool for editing, resizing and sending photos by email, posting to Flickr, etc. Picasa can really make your pictures look great. Sharing your best photos with friends and family is as easy as pressing a button! Definitely worth checking out.

BizKicker Beta Launches!

Bizkicker Admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:57:04 +0000

BizKicker is proud to announce their beta launch as of September 1st, 2009. BizKicker is scheduled for official launch on July 1st, 2010.