Eggblogg

Transparency is scary

Last night I was giving a short talk for the Federation of Small Businesses West Sussex branch, on doing business on the social web.

One attendee claimed he just didn't see the point of wasting all that time tweeting, blogging and chatting, and besides, putting himself in the buyer's shoes, he maintained "When I'm buying something, I just want to know about how good the product is, not whether the staff like Jane Austen novels or whether the boss made the tea this morning!"

He was particularly against the idea of allowing people (or even encouraging them) to air their complaints in public, for example via a Twitter customer service account.

My feeling is that on the social web, everything you do has an impact - not just on those you're dealing with, but on everyone who sees or gets to hear about it. If people have a gripe with your service or product, yes, seeing that might put off a few prospective customers, but if you are then seen to be helpful, to put things right, to deal with the customer promptly and fairly, that will create a lot of positive feeling.

If people only see positive reviews and comments it can look like a cover-up. If they see a mix of positive and negative, well, they can make up their own mind. I for one don't believe every negative comment I read on the web!

Transparency is scary, but time and again I've seen it work for those daring enough to go there.

Interesting online marketing articles I've been reading lately

Just a few of the many interesting and useful articles that have caught my eye recently.

The ever-readable Seth Godin on the damage done by misleading headlines or subject lines "Is it better to get a click and then annoy someone, or better to only reach the people who care?"

Getting people's attention on the social web - where do you start? In this video interview Scott Rosenberg argues that the way to be heard when everyone's talking is to listen... 

How do you write effectively for the web? Not a new post, but still useful. A massive number of online writing resources gathered in one place.

Jason Falls argues that there are four styles of marketing on Twitter - I love this piece and I'm sure I'll be talking about it in a blog post soon.

Coca-Cola recently released a new social media policy, and Andy Sernovitz is impressed ... (includes a video of Coke's Andy Brown talking about it.)

Why I loved Gary Vaynerchuk's 'Crush It!'

Do you ever see those tabloid-shriek business books about how to work less and become a billionaire by using the internet, and think 'oh puh-lease'?' Or get a bit fed up with the self-promote-merchants who scream about how much they LOVE their work, how GREAT their business is doing, etc etc? Or, when you do give in, buy their book/seminar/product you then feel short-changed?

Happily, this blog post is not about that kind of experience. I've just finished reading Gary Vaynerchuk's 'Crush it! Why now is the time to cash in on your passion' and loved it.

Not because it delivers plenty of good, solid advice and ideas based on what Gary has done and learned in the process of building his business, although it does. 

Not because it echoes a number of my own core beliefs, such as the internet being as transformational as the printing press, although it does.

Not because it's to the point, easy to read, witty, and written just as Gary speaks, although it is.

The real reason I loved it, and what made it stand out for me was that it seems an honest book. By that I mean not just authentic, but really walking the talk, and what's more it's in the moment. Just as Gary claims not to ever do a second take on his Wine Library TV, this book seems to have benefited from inconspicuous editing. He admits he dictated the entire book, and that is undoubtedly a major part of its charm.

There are moments of thinking aloud, such as the section on Flickr - "It has a ton of passionate users, although I'm not one of them.. photographs don't speak to my DNA," admits Gary, but by the end of the paragraph he's starting to change his mind. "In fact, now that I think about it, it's insane that I haven't done this already. Anyone who cares about wine should be able to find me on Flickr, so I'd better get onto that."

Crush it! is inspiring, uplifting and great fun. It reminded me of all the things I plan to do but haven't yet. I'd better get onto that.

2010: the year of customer retention?

Customer retention never did sound very sexy.

I've never found it easy to tell people that I help with 'customer retention' - it's usually met with polite but blank looks. Sometimes I say 'I help keep customers coming back', but even that never has the excitement of 'I help you get more customers!' -  even if I then go on to talk about how retaining customers means increased profits, blah blah.

No. For many people, marketing means SALES, and for sales you have to GET MORE CUSTOMERS, they say.

So I really enjoyed the lead story in New Media Age this week - according to the new Lightspeed Online Shopping Report, it seems that the percentage of people planning to shop online rather than offline has dropped by 1%. The first drop ever.

Seems like online shopping is no longer a novelty, and people are starting to get fed up with poor online customer service, fulfilment issues and poorly performing websites. So, this year is apparently the year of customer retention. Bring it on!

I'd be interested to know other people's opinions - why do business owners prefer to focus on customer acquisition? Are poorly performing ecommerce sites to blame for people going back to the High Street?

Photo of Harry Rosen from Senior Money Memos

Happy New Year... what's in store?

It's New Year's Day and I'm doing what many business owners do at the start of a new year - taking stock generally and thinking about changes ahead in 2010. I've read quite a few of those 'top ten predictions for 2010' - not all of them do I agree with or know enough about to comment. But here are some of the themes that do interest me...

1. Mobile technology & marketing will continue to improve - more competition for the iPhone, better apps, smarter marketing initiatives targeted purely at mobile users. There's a whole generation accessing the internet purely on mobile phones. 
2. Social media will move more into the marketing mix rather than being seen as an exotic (or needless) add-on. I think small businesses will surprise us here - unlike in the early days of the web when corporates led the way, there will be little or no time lag in adoption of new social media tools and ideas by those small businesses that 'get' online marketing.
3. Real-time search will gain in significance, and this will have implications for search optimisation and paid search campaigns. Businesses will start demanding immediate visibility in searches and be looking for new ways to achieve this (which leads us back to point 2).

I also was heartened to see Market Leader's January 2010 edition focus on the networked economy, the increasing importance of consumer feedback loops and the need for honesty rather than marketing spin, especially as these are the kinds of messages I've been giving business owners throughout the year.