CHICAGO March 12, 2013 Premier online marketing firm Loud Interactive has announced a new collaboration with the award-winning interactive agency and digital consulting firm AlphaZeta Interactive.

The collaboration combines the content producing talent of Loud Interactive with the eCommerce partner AlphaZeta to create the ultimate web traffic stimulant. Recognizing the convergence of content and commerce, the partnership will include shared expertise on white paper reports, collaborative consulting, and regular blog posts for AlphaZeta by Loud Interactive employees.

“Loud Interactive is a rising start-up and we are excited to partner with them as they grow and expand,” said Michael Davies, CEO and President of AlphaZeta Interactive. “We hope this will be the start of a great collaboration for the city of Chicago and beyond.”

The partnership looks to offer companies a resource to gain their products visibility in a highly competitive market. A strong SEO and social media plan like the consulting offered at Loud Interactive paired with AlphaZeta’s effective marketing solutions and custom content management will drive conversions and ultimately lead to higher returns.

“Working with AlphaZeta will be a great way to ramp up the branding influence of Loud,” said Brent Payne, CEO of Loud Interactive. “We contribute our SEO and social media expertise and they bring strong branding and digital consulting knowledge — we will learn a lot from each other and our clients will be better served because of it.”

Beginning in March 2013, AlphaZeta Interactive and Loud Interactive will begin a series of initiatives to expand the outreach of the two companies. Combining business development opportunities and educational outreach the two consulting firms will look to expand their digital impact on the business world.

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About Loud Interactive
Founded in early 2012 Loud Interactive is an online marketing firm specializing in social media and SEO consulting. Loud Interactive looks to empower businesses and brands to grow and reach their maximum potential. In the competitive world of online marketing it can be hard to stand out from the crowd, but they make sure your brand is being heard. www.loudinteractive.com

About AlphaZeta Interactive
AlphaZeta Interactive is an award-winning interactive agency and digital consulting firm. We match digital know-how with marketing savvy to bridge the worlds of brand and business. We live by results, leading clients from Aon to Motorola in the evolution from transactional to transformational relationships. Leveraging ideas into actionable experiences — for commerce AND conversation. Beyond professional. Beyond personal. Human. Visit us online at www.alphazeta.com

Everyone knows what it means to Google something, but are you familiar with the word “scroogle”? Microsoft launched a campaign in November to make Gmail users more aware of scroogling, a term they coined to describe the process in which “Google goes through every Gmail that’s sent or received, looking for keywords so they can target Gmail users with paid ads.” For advertisers the “Scroogle” method can be one avenue to pay for leads. This combined with paid search could be a one two punch towards strong conversions.

Over the past few months Microsoft has attacked “scroogling”, claiming that it is an invasion of privacy and even affects non-Gmail users who have simply sent e-mails to Gmail accounts. They created a petition on their website “scroogled.com” to stop Google from going through e-mails for the purpose of targeting paid ads. However, the petition and the campaign have been relatively unsuccessful. Of the 3.5 million who visited the page, only 115,000 signed the petition. Although they surpassed their goal of 25,000 signatures, KQED claims that Microsoft purposely set the goal low so that they could greatly exceed it. Microsoft heavily promoted the campaign with an ambitious ad blitz of TV spots and social media ads, making their amount of signatures rather unimpressive.

Critics of the “Scroogled” campaign denounced Microsoft for creating it as a ploy to convince Gmail users to switch to their e-mail service Outlook.com. They also point out that people have a choice of which e-mail provider to use and are not necessarily being “wronged” as they have the ability to switch whenever they please. Many Gmail users have commented that they do not mind being Scroogled because they enjoy the perks of Gmail (Google+, Gchat, Drive etc.). Plus they understand Google is using software to find keywords in e-mails, not having their employees read personal correspondence. Some even find being “Scroogled” to be useful, asserting that it helps save money by leading them to personalized products and services.

Despite recent speculation that the “Scroogled” campaign is coming to a halt, a Microsoft spokesperson issued the following statement:

“Scroogled will go on as long as Google keeps Scroogling people. We know Google doesn’t like it when the facts come out. Chapter two of the consumer education campaign has shown people care about their privacy… Stay tuned for the next chapter.” techcrunch.com.

We can only speculate as to what Microsoft has in store for the “next chapter,” but the spokesperson’s statement leads some to believe that the future of the campaign will become more aggressive in nature.

So it basically comes down to this: can companies take advantage of targeted ads without associating themselves with any negative push via the “Scroogled” campaign. For more information about paid search, Google, and SEO consulting reach out to Loud Interactive.

Chances are if you have been checking out Loud Interactive’s Facebook page, you may have noticed several of our infographics over the last couple of weeks. Infographics (visual representations of data) have proven to be an effective medium of capturing social media attention. Although infographics have existed for centuries, they are now seeing a resurgence of relevancy.

Why?

Infographics are great ways to help people visualize and collect data without making users read paragraph after paragraph, key in the fast paced meme age. They are aesthetically pleasing (essential to effective Facebook/online targeting) and allow for information to be presented in a creative and individualistic manner.

According to Marissa Brassfield of PayScale.com, your infographic will have the potential to reach 15 million people. Tweets, LinkedIn posts or Stumbleupon updates generally reach less than 100 times that amount. In fact, the editors of TopMarketingSchools.net found that a traditional tweet gets an average of 62 retweets, while an infographic gets an average of 587 retweets.

Here is an example of one of Loud Interactive’s recent infographics:

An infographic to help you learn about infographics.

What am I seeing?

There are many different elements that make up a successful infographic, but here are some of the most common:

1) Graphs/Charts. Apparently you can use those seemingly pointless lessons you learned in math class. Graphs and charts convey information quickly and easily, and appeal to both visual and mathematical thinkers.
2) Icons. There are plenty of these simple pictures that are recognizable and often universal. These icons will give viewers an idea of the presented information before they even have to read anything.
3) Colors. Choose a color scheme that is relevant and fun while still easy on the eyes.
4) Words. You don’t have to write a five paragraph essay. Identify key words and your most pertinent information, and make sure that they are emphasized. Short & Sweet does the trick here!
5) For More Information. Draw people to your product/site/page by including your URL, Twitter handle, Facebook address, etc., where they can go if they want to learn more!

How did Loud Interactive make that?

Many companies offer both free and paid services and programs that allow you to design your own infographic. We use Piktochart, but we would also recommend checking out visual.ly/ and infogr.am/.

Piktochart offers many customizable templates that allow you to easily create your own infographic. You can choose from the seven free designs or become a prime member to gain access to their 90+ templates.

Visual.ly has templates as well, but also has a unique feature. You can sign in to various social media accounts and Visual.ly will create infographics for you based on your personal data. For example, you can connect to LinkedIn, and Visual.ly will create a resume infographic.

Infogr.am is especially useful for designing infographics that display numerical information. The Online Chart tool helps you create many different types of charts and graphics, including pie charts, bar graphs, word clouds, and maps.

Check out the different sites and see which one meets your company’s needs. Have fun!

An infographic to help you learn about infographics.

This is a guest post. Want to write a guest blog post for Loud Interactive? Send us an email about yourself and what you’d like to write about.

About the author: Chris Campbell is the CEO of Review Trackers, a simple yet powerful online review monitoring platform for local businesses.

You run your business brilliantly. It doesn’t matter. Someone somewhere is going to give you a bad review. And that review is likely going to end up on the Internet.

I’m not being cynical. That’s just the way it works: you can’t please everybody. There’ll always be a customer who isn’t happy. And in the age when consumers can also quickly become online critics, unhappiness can lead one to post bad reviews of your business on popular online review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Citysearch, and Foursquare, among others.

This is why it’s so important to have a plan in place for handling bad reviews – because, sooner or later, they’re going to happen. Here’s what you can do to minimize the impact of these reviews, and to keep your online reputation as spotless as possible.

Respond quickly. If you ignore a negative review and let the fire spread, you risk losing potential customers who are on the Internet to check out what other people are saying about you. That’s why it’s so important to respond in a timely manner.

You can do it by writing out a public reply to the review – so others can see that you’re paying attention to feedback and trying to solve customer problems. Or you can do it by responding privately (by phone, direct message, or E-mail) to your online critic, who is likely to edit the review or write some positive follow-up if and when you manage to turn his or her frown into a smile.

Don’t lose your cool. Getting a bad review can feel like a punch in the gut, especially if you’re very passionate about what you do. However, it’s important to keep this passion under control and not let your emotions get the best of you. You can’t get involved in an online catfight.

After all, the Internet is not written in pencil; it’s written in ink. You don’t want to say something that you’ll regret later on, and you definitely don’t want to do something that will hurt your reputation even more. So relax, breathe in and out, say “Goosfraba!”, and respond as politely, professionally, and patiently as possible.

Tune in. If your customers are going online to say what they think about your business, you’ve got to be able to find them. You’ve got to listen in. This is particularly critical for business owners with multiple business or store locations. By monitoring online reviews, you can put yourself in a great position to engage with, listen in, and respond to your customers online.

Say thank you. It’s important to recognize the trouble that a customer took to write and post feedback (negative or positive) on an online reviews aggregator like Yelp or TripAdvisor. So say thank you. I promise: you’ll lose nothing by doing it.

The most successful businesses always listen to and value what their customers have to say. In fact, showing how appreciative you are of constructive comments and unsolicited feedback can go a long way in building trust among your community of existing and potential customers.

Learn from criticism. The great thing about today’s online review sites is that they can serve as a platform for identifying which areas you can improve in, and for figuring out how you can do better.

That’s why I recommend you take a look at online reviewers who actually have valid gripes about their experience with your business. Take their comments in and be as objective as possible about what they’re saying. You’re likely to gain extremely valuable insights along the way, and you’ll learn not to make the kind of mistakes that can damage the reputation of your company.

Don’t respond. Not all bad online reviews merit a response. If an unhappy customer is not being constructive – and is just being incredibly grumpy – don’t waste any more time trying to change his or her mind. You can always trust your own community of happy customers and loyal supporters to see through the hate and stand by your side.