If you work at an E-commerce company like me, you know how important  reviews are.  Reviews are an important part of any company, let alone E-commerce companies these days, which is why it came as a surprise to me when I heard that Doctors an Dentists are wanting us to censor us.

Now I have wonder, do doctors and dentists even know what a review even does?  A review opens up a dialogue between a customer and the product or service, the person just bought, be it either a negative or positive review.

This dialogue that is opened up is crucial, to not just others wishing to purchase the same service or product,  but for Producers as well.  The review allow us producers to better fine tune our product and give our consumers a choice.  The President’s under review everyday, could you imagine what would happen if we could not review the presidency? A President unchecked and power corrupted is a scary thing, but thankfully we can review his service after 4 years and decide to stick with him or pick another one, and we should have that power with anything we buy.

Once we buy a product  we should be able to review our purchase, but for some reason Doctors and Dentists don’t want us too.  I cannot speak for them, but I worry about what they’re afraid of.  In the end a review is just a natural extension of a product and service, so unless what you’re selling is bad, why worry?

I read a lot of stuff online, including stuff from other bloggers and various other tech and social media websites.  Just like any marketer, I”m always hoping to learn something that will help me communicate with my audience better.

There are tons of blogs out there though, so it can be sometimes be easy to get lost in all of the online content.  Here are four blogs, that stand above the rest for me and I highly recommend that you check out.

SEOmoz – If you are not familiar with SEOMoz you’re missing out.  The SEOmoz blog will give you plenty of tips to make sure that your website is number one in the search results and also don’t forget to check them out on Friday’s for their weekly vlog White Board Friday’s.

Brand Savant – I’m always a sucker for good research and that’s what Tom Webster’s blog Brand Savant is all about.  Though not updated on a regular basis, Brand Savant will give you the marketing research that will blow your mind and help you survive in this digital age.

ReadWriteWeb – Everyone needs that one tech and social media site they go to, to keep up with what’s going on in the world.  I prefer ReadWriteWeb as my destination of choice though there are others including Mashable, EnGadget, and ThisisMyNext.

ChrisBrogan – I’m on the top of the Chris Brogan fan club, but his blog is rather insightful with tips, ideas, and sometimes the kick in the butt that we need as marketers.

Now that’s four blogs, I highly recommend.  What about yourself?

I’m always a big proponent that you need to control your online presence.  This is true, not just for individuals but businesses as well.  A good example of why you need to control your online presence, happened to me this weekend.

This weekend my brother was in town, and our Saturday night ended up being a drive around the East Raleigh/Knightdale area.

As we were trying to come up with things to do, I remembered a bar a friend of mine had taken me too about a month ago.  I didn’t remember, the directions however, so I decided to do a quick Google search to see if I could find the place. A quick search showed me that this place didn’t have a webpage, but it did have a few online reviews and critiques, which was fine because all I needed was directions to this bar.

This also served to be a problem however, as the Google Maps on my iPhone took me to the wrong place.  So this led us back to square one, of not knowing anything about this bar and restaurant, except for the name.  They had no website and my phone wasn’t taking me to the right place,  which meant I wasn’t going to find it, and I would have to go somewhere else instead.  This is what happens, when you’re not in search.  Our attentions spans are limited these days and when you’re not in the serps(search engine result pages), you can be quickly forgotten.

So no, we didn’t go to this bar in the end, but imagine if they did control their online presence…
….people would be able to find directions for to them.
….they could show people what bands were playing on any given night.
….people would know their menu.
….but most importantly people would be able to share them.

So does having an online presence, matter?  Yes, and in a day and age when everyone has a smart phone, if you’re not online people will miss out on your company and services.