When you were in high school, nothing was more important than your reputation. What others thought about of you meant everything. Many people learned a very important lesson in high school about reputations. Once soured, it’s almost impossible to overcome it. Once given the title of class floozy or dirt bag, that’s it. Four years would not be enough time to overcome it.

I got into a conversation today with a lovely independent consultant at the SMX conference in NY. She was a mature savvy marketer and she had a nice rolodex of small and mid-size customers. The conversation was largely about local data management and the overwhelming amount of effort required to clean up the ecosystem for her clients. Dirty data – one of my favorite subjects.

While talking, she brought up the topic of consumer reviews and how she believed that reviews are the next big data issue that needs to get tackled. We talked about Google reviews and, of course, we talked about Yelp.  Continue reading →