I used a lot of my recent ISBDC conference information and you can check all those facts over here – stuff like Facebook being up 700% and how communication has risen 18% in overall time online.  Those are big numbers.

ICR and SMPS people were a great group and I really enjoyed speaking to many of them afterwards.

I would also like to share with you the slideshow deck and a few videos I referenced.

I really enjoyed the Kevin Kelley panel discussion and I believe it’s a must watch for those of us interested in where the internet is going and why it’s so important to get involved online now instead of later.

I gave the group some good nuggets and some specific takeaways that may be relevant to your company.

Here’s some of the nuggets:

• The internet is not the silver bullet for marketing but the connections you make now will digitally last forever. And the relevant connections you have, the more chances of someone finding you.
• Social media is just one tactic of online marketing. You should have overall integrated marketing strategy in place then you can use the social media tactic – if you don’t have this, then how do you know if it is working with you?
• Being a valuable community member is more important than just talking about yourself and your company online.
• Going out and signing up for a Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook account is only part of what you can do. There is a etiquette and language you must learn and follow to be a respected community member.
• So many times businesses sign up for these “free” tools expect them to work with little time or planning dedicated to their success. You usually get out of it what you put into it. If it sucks, then maybe you should look at yourself instead of the tool.

Here where the takeaways:

• Set specific goals with constraints and measurable items of return.
• Put in place a schedule. This will help develop a routine and habits and answer the question of “When do I have time to do this?”
• Figure your expected ROI. Your schedule should answer to the ROI you expect. Which is determined by the goal you laid out in the first step.
• Take sometime to explore the different tools and keep an open mind to how they can fit in your day. I did not learn this overnight but made mistakes and discoveries and learned from them both.
• If you are uncomfortable about communicating, why not just start by listening to what is going on.

Chris Brogan (I’m a big fan of his) just left some great tips on his website.  Check out these 19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day.  They are great.

Feel free to call me at 317.218.0500, tweet, facebook, linkedin, or email me for further advice as you discover these new tools.

I’m using a friend’s business as an example. It’s a vein treatment center located in St. Louis called Vein Skincare Institute. She is answering the first of my four questions. This is not how many questions we ask during an investigation of a company. It’s just used for her as an example.

With her four answers, we’ll start working a strategy online that can help transform her business. Instead of surviving, she’ll thrive and grow and, eventually, change the world. Or at least, the world of vein treatment.

1. What are your business goals? This can be a lot of different answers but to me I really try and get them to tell me the obvious. It’s funny how many people talk about branding and awareness and all of that – which is important but more important is “I want to sell my product or service this many times.” You should know that number. It will drive everything that you do. Write it down in big letters.

Here’s her answer.

We are a full service vein treatment facility (phlebology) for problematic veins on the legs primarily; but we treat had, face and truncal veins as well.

We have a rather large tool box of treatment options, including injections, laser, intense pulsed light, and surgery.

While we have many other skin deep beautification services (laser hair removal, fotofacial rejuvenation, skin peels, permanent cosmetics, laser removal of tattoos, brown spots, birthmarks, etc), our main focus and that which drives our business is the treatment of problematic and unwanted veins.

In other words, if we grow our vein business, then the other services will grow thru cross-sales after confidence is gained after vein treatment, or patients see and hear about other services while in our building or webspace.

Our business works by attracting patients to our expertise, where they will receive a no charge consultation from a medical expert, followed by a summary meeting with a sales/marketing specialist, hopefully an appointment made, treatment to follow usually in multiple visits over several months, then after successfully addressing the initial concern, maintenance future regular visits…with multiple opportunities at various points to market to this population for cross-sales and referrals.

We mostly run with one full time physician and a very part-time physician, a nurse and an ultrasonographer. The business was designed to be a 2.5 fte physician, and 2.5 nurse/laser tech facility, ie lots of room for growth.

Optimally I would like to see 3-5 new consults for veins a day, and “close” about 70% of them for treatment. I would like to generate about 25 surgeries per month (some patients need injections only, and some need surgery and then injections).

So this is a long winded answer to your question: basically we would like to average about 4 new consults a day.

This number would generate a cascade that with consult/sales/treatment and follow-up including marketing, would give us very successful numbers!
I’m glad that she followed my advice about a specific number in mind. So I immediately wanted to know what they averaged in the past. Sometimes you’ll find a client that wants to jump from zero to max right away. So I wanted to know what the reality is compared to the expectations.

She got back to me with this answer. 246 consults last year.

So let’s guess that there are 260 work days in a year and minus out vacation and holidays so that would probably take out 30-40 days.

On the low side 220 work days at 246 consults. That’s a little more than 1 a day.

She wants me to quadruple that? Wow, that’s ambitious. I asked her how that breaks down and she replied with this.

We have our peak periods we call it “vein christmas” (that’s kinda creepy) that runs from Feb thru May so we tend to get the greatest # of consults around that time.

Here is the brk down since 1/2/08 to 2/26/09

jan 16 consults, Feb – 10, March – 36, April – 36, May – 27, June – 27, July – 12, August – 12, Sept – 15, Oct – 2, Nov – 13, Dec – 11, Jan – 12, Feb – 17. Yes pls quadruple the number!

If we go on the basis of last year, we need to move quickly right now because “vein christmas” is just starting.

Next we’ll go over Question 2. What is your current marketing strategy and how is it doing? What are your tactics to complete that strategy. You should have a record of what you are spending and how you are spending it and what it is bringing in. ROI is very important for each individual piece but don’t kill something just because it’s not performing as an individual (you should know how it is integrated with all of your marketing efforts).
I love strategy and tactics – so this will be a fun one.

Setting up Google Analytics

1. You have to have a gmail account. BTW, I love gmail. I switch off Microsoft Outlook in Jan and I won’t be going back. It’s like when I switched from skiing to snowboard. With the flexibility and ease of Gmail, there’s just no going back. And you should also have a Google profile. They are easy to set up and you can link to your websites and other profiles on the web. Check out mine at Don Schindler Google Profile.

I would also recommend that you set up a gmail for your business. I use this gmail account for lots of different pieces like Adwords, Adsense, Analytics, Checkout, etc…because then you don’t have to worry about mixing personal and business accounts.

2. Go to Google Analytics.

Go to Google Analytics

3. Do the whole “Sign Up now” thing.

Google Analytics Sign Up Page

4. Then put in your root website like http://www.yoursite.com/ and your time zone.

Put in the URL of your website

5. Fill out your personal info and select your country.

Put in your Personal Info

6. Agree to their Terms of Service.

7. Then fill out the rest and Google will give you a code. It will look something like this.

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-7611885-1″);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>

Google will give you the code.

8. Then you take this code and put it on every page of your site. This can be done through a footer file or part of your template (as long as it is not inside a frame). Or you will have to put it in manually on every page.

9. Once you’ve put the code in and uploaded the file or all the changed pages onto the site, then click “Continue”

10. Status should change if you’ve set up the code properly. This one doesn’t because I don’t own www.yoursite.com. If yours doesn’t change, then click Edit and then click Check Status on the top right of the page. This will allow you to ping Google and check the status of the page.

Google Analytics Report Page

If you still have problems here, go out to your website and click on “View” in your browser, then select Page Source. Do a search for “google-analytics”. If it doesn’t show up, then you don’t have Analytics on the page and you need to check your code.

That’s basically it. Once it says, your status is OK then you should start seeing visitors. Here’s a look at the dashboard of my friend’s site.

Google Analytics Dashboard Top

Well, discuss how to read Google Analytics next time.

What questions do you have about digital marketing?

OK, I’ve been gone a while. I apologize. I had a very large client with a very large budget and I needed to focus on them completely. But now that the major presentation is done, I can go back to all the other things I was doing along with my job as a digital strategist at MediaSauce.

I get a lot of questions about what I would do with this or that on the web. Does Twitter work? How should I be using Facebook or Linkedin? What is the best way to get my site seen by Google? (This one is near and dear because I believe that if Google can’t see you, then you don’t exist.) All good questions but there’s a lot that I don’t know about your company before I start recommending how you should be using technology.

So when I ran into an old college friend who needed some help, I thought this would be a great way to showcase what it is that I do and how I would do it. The kind of marketing that I would do for her company most likely isn’t exactly what I would recommend for yours. But the basic principles behind it would be there and you may learn something new. I always do.

Some people call me an expert and I will tell you that I don’t think of it that way. What I am is someone who learns all the time and I’ve probably got more experience at doing digital than most people (I’ve been in the field since 1997 – professionally since 1999). Maybe that is what makes an expert in your mind. But I don’t like the term “expert” out here on the web. It changes too fast and too much for anyone to really get it down to an established formula.

That being said, let’s get back to Digital Marketing 101.

There’s a few questions that I need to know from you about your company. I have a 44 question document that I usually run down when meeting a company for the first time. But I also have a shorten version that we’ll use here. These questions are a summary of the 44.

1. What are your business goals? This can be a lot of different answers but to me I really try and get them to tell me the obvious. It’s funny how many people talk about branding and awareness and all of that – which is important but more important is “I want to sell my product or service this many times.” You should know that number. It will drive everything that you do. Write it down in big letters.

2. What is your current marketing strategy and how is it doing? What are your tactics to complete that strategy. You should have a record of what you are spending and how you are spending it and what it is bringing in. ROI is very important for each individual piece but don’t kill something just because it’s not performing as an individual (you should know how it is integrated with all of your marketing efforts).

3. Who is your competition both online and offline? Knowing your competition well will help you position yourself differently and craft your message. You should know their market share as well. If you can’t find out on your own, buy the research. It is marketing dollars well spent and can save you from making a bad decision.

4. Who is your target audience? Get as much information on these people as possible because it will influence all of your marketing decisions from messaging to channels. Demographics, Male/Female, Age, Education, Income, Ehtnicity, Regions, Psychographics, etc…

Now, come on Don, that’s it. Nope, that isn’t it. There’s a lot more but to do a full blown evaluation (which this is not). This is more for the Do-It-Yourselfers and the one-person marketing teams that many, many businesses have right now.

I don’t have the answers to my friend’s business right now, but since she has already given me FTP access to the site, I’m going to do what I always do first.

Set up Google Analytics to figure out what’s going on on their site.

How do you set up Google Analytics and then be able to read it? I’ll tell you next week.

We are a company that will find out what you want to do, find out what your audience really wants from you and then if a blog fits our strategy – well then, we’ll suggest you start a blog.

But that being said, I am a big believer in blogs. Right now, blogs are very good at doing lots of great things on the web.

What is Princeton Premier

Driving traffic (#2 from the guys at SEOmoz.org)
Spurring conversations – Check out Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
Giving business a real voice and personality (Chris Brogan and Bob Rhubart’s Comments
Search engines love them
But they can also suck. Here’s a good list for knowing if your business blog sucks.

We measure our business blog by the traffic it generates and the conversations it spurs. Our chief evangelist, ScottyHendo, is very, very good at getting conversations going. Some of his more intriguing ones are:

I Gave $10 to David Armano to Help Daniela and Now I Regret It
Why Chris Brogan’s Kmart Moment Matters: Personal Reputation vs. Corporate Brand

But he is amazed at how much traffic my little post about Princeton Premier has driven for our blog.

I wrote it merely as an example of how I used searching and social media to find out about a company and then make a common sense evaluation of whether I wanted to do business with them.

But the blog post itself remains one of our top posts and continues to drive traffic to the site. It’s on the first page of the Princeton Premier SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for Google and it continues to get comments.

I never really intended for it to do anything but be part of our voice to help businesses understand that if you aren’t out there in social media spaces and being a part of the conversation, others will do it for you. And it may not be the message you want.

For Princeton Premier, I think it is bad. Their site is number one but almost all the other links are blogs calling them out for being a scam.

The lesson here is make sure you are constantly making sure that you know what is being said about you on the web. I use SM2 and Google Alerts for both my company and myself.

And then if you find something bad, knowing what to do about it. MediaSauce has several solutions for this that range from contacting the person directly to establishing a siteless web presence with social media.

If you would like to learn more, just give us a call at 317.218.0500 or email.

But back to my original purpose of this post, business blogs do work if you give them time and you write about things that your audience wants and you tie it into your business. Don’t give them just fluff. Don’t give them that old school marketing spin.

If you don’t believe in business blogs, I would like to understand why. Give me your feedback and experience.

One day a buddy of mine asked what would happen if we would get a divorce. “I can’t believe you put her name there. That’s just stupid.”

Obviously, he was divorced. “It was a wedding present. My choice,” I said. “And I’m not getting a divorce.”

“But what if you do?” he asked.

“I’ll cut my arm off,” I said jokingly. But that’s not true. I would rather cut my arm off then lose her. Anyone that knows me, knows this is a fact. I’m branded for life.

So you want a brand? You want an online/offline identity that people can trust, easily recognize and bring forth an emotional connection with your customers. You want to have something bigger than yourself or your company’s name.

So you get a logo. There’s no reason to pay the big bucks. Your cousin or a friend of a friend said they could do it for virtually nothing. That’s great. I can’t believe those big marketing guys blow so much on something so simple. How hard is it to pick a design, some colors, a typeface and a tagline? This is a joke, you think, anybody can do this. Man, I should go into marketing or advertising. This branding stuff is such a scam.

Then you start using your logo. Make it small and stick it on your Twitter profile or maybe on Facebook. Can I embed this into my email? I should get some T-shirts. People would so want to wear my logo. Nike, Harley-Davidson, Apple, and me. Well, maybe not everybody but I could totally make my employees, family and friends wear it.

It’s going well for a little while. You use the logo in your print, broadcast, billboards, website, banner ads, email, packaging, POS material, newsletters, brochures, business cards, PR, civic involvement, trade show exhibits. It’s everywhere you are.

People start recognizing your brand because you are putting it with everything you do. You are delivering on the brand promise, sort of. Sometimes there are things that people want you to do that may not match exactly what you say in your tag. You wish you would have phrased it a little differently so you can incorporate these other things you like to do or need to do. Oh well, maybe next time.

But then, because you are a brand and out in the public eye, someone calls you out on not following your brand standards exactly. Big deal. This guy is just jealous because he doesn’t have a brand. Blow it off. They will go away.

Oops. Another issue. Can I really follow what I’ve told the world I would do? Am I eroding their trust? Is my brand true to me?

Your brand is suddenly a lot more than you thought it would be. And in an online world, it can be so much more. Back in the day, it was harder for people to respond directly to your brand. Now, they can define it for you especially if what you are doing doesn’t match the brand you tried to set forth. Thus, defeating the entire purpose of putting a brand out there.

Brand is so much more than just a logo, tagline, mission statment and color scheme.

It offers your unique benefit, it can personify your company’s products/services, it evokes an emotional connection with your customers and it definitely helps deliver on your company’s promise.

Brand encapsulates you or your company’s vision, meaning, authenticity, relevance, differentiation, benefits, value, character, culture, sustainability…

And you are going to leave it up to a freebie logo and color scheme from a buddy?

You need someone to ask you the hard questions.

Are you really this brand? Do you deliver on this promise every time? How does your brand compare to your competition? Can you live with this brand forever? Is it timeless?

When no one is there to explain why the logo does this funny swish thing, what emotion does it bring to the viewer?

Check out www.brandtags.net to see what people think when they see a logo? You may be surprised.

A Brand helps your customers evolve from knowing you, to preferring you, to being loyal to you, to being your evangelists.

The moral of the story is don’t skimp. Because if you do, soon you will be disappointed and you’ll want to change it. And all the brand equality you’ll built will be damaged plus the expense of replacing your logo and tags.

MediaSauce doesn’t care if you use us or someone else. Just make sure they understand what they are doing – that they take the time to research your logo/design (I have a lovely story of company that went through an entire process of discovery/design to find out they chose an almost identical logo and tag of a completing company in their industry – something the branding company should have ruled out in the first place).

Remember your brand can be as great as your right arm. Don’t put it out there unless you are willing to live with it for life.

As a follow-up, Neal Taflinger – a writer for Indy.com and Indy Star – just went through our branding process, check out his article, “Marketing Gets Personal in the Digital Age“, on the experience.

Just a few Cool Brand Resources:

• Branding Strategy Insider
• Naming Styles
• First Impressions
• The Brand Gap
• Brandflakes for Breakfast

First, an amazing client story.

J.D. Gould Company is a family-owned business. It’s been around since 1951. They make solenoid valves. It’s really hard to get excited about solenoid valves unless maybe you are an engineer but, according to the client, a lot of engineers don’t think about them as much as they once did. They are one of those things that don’t seem very important but they are. A bad valve can shut down an entire line. And that’s what happened to the an unnamed American Car company back in 1950’s.

At 2 am, the Gould family was awaken by an extremely upset plant manager. He told Mr. Gould that he better get up there right now and fix his broken solenoid valve. That it was costing the company thousands of dollars because the line was down. He expected Mr. Gould in six hours. The drive from Indianapolis to Detroit. At a fury pace.

Mr. Gould got in his car and drove there as fast as he could. He couldn’t figure out how his valve had broken but he was going to make it right. When he arrived, he was met by the plant manager, the heads of the union and a lot of executives.

Mr. Gould and the union representatives along with electricians and plumbers climbed separate ladders to inspect the valve. Upon removing the top of the valve, they all could see it was stuck in the open position. Mr. Gould said he couldn’t understand why the valve would do that and asked if there was anything in the line. The union workers claimed there wasn’t along with the plant manager. They cut the valve out of the line.

And there, sticking out of the valve, was a plumber’s pencil. Whoever cut the pipe, put his pencil in the valve and forgot it. The valve was stuck open and Gould’s valve wasn’t at fault.

But he said nothing. They put it back together. The line was functioning again. Mr. Gould drove home.

Next week, the local car dealer of the company called Mr. Gould. They had two new cars waiting for him if he wanted to stop by and pick them up. The owner of the company still tears up thinking about how proud he was of this grandpa.

Here’s the other pieces I read. Two blogs. One by Chris Brogan and his struggle with GMAC customer service. And another from Seth Godin on How to answer the phone.

Imagine what the car company would have done if Mr. Gould had not picked up the phone or not gotten into his car and drove to Detroit. Would he have gotten more business? Even after they found out it was their own problem. Would the lack of care overridden the problem?

Marketers complain to me about how the companies don’t understand what they do and how they are always the first to go when economies get tough. I sympathize. I was once on that side as well.

Marketers also understand how when a new customer comes calling, you better get it right and answer the phone on the first or second ring. You treat those new customers like gold.

But current customers, heck, that’s not your problem. That’s customer service. That’s a different department.

Well, it shouldn’t be. Marketers – the new marketers – should handle both sides of the fence. If a call comes in, whether it’s a brand new customer or your oldest, they should be handled the same way. Like the gold they are.

Every marketer knows that a current customer is 10 times less expensive to keep than to try an earn a new one. But yet they get the crappy phone calls from overseas or the phone tree from hell. Or nothing.

Want to save job your job? Then take responsibility for every customer. Use those marketing dollars to save your current customers from phone trees and incoherent operators. Use some more by giving your current customers an EASY way to spread the word about how great your company is.

And you better do it soon. Because customers are starting to realize that they have more firepower with social media. They can organize and spread the word for you or against you.

Who knows…there may be a new company car waiting for you instead of a pink slip.

TheBlackFriday.com
BFads.net
iBlackFriday.com
BlackFriday.net
BlackFriday.info
www.dealtaker.com/blackfriday
daddyodeals.com
blackfriday.gottadeal.com/
blackfriday.dealspl.us/
www.blackfday.com/

Creative Commons by Olaf

This is more of an article about the speed of Trend Marketing and the your company’s communications.

I love Black Friday; even though, I don’t shop it. I probably should but I just don’t get into shopping like that. But you’ve got to love the deals. I was in retail marketing for a few years as a marketing manager and coming up with the insane deals for Black Friday was always a good day. Even when the rest of them weren’t so great.

But here’s what I wanted to do with the Black Friday that I love so much. I wanted to see if I could grab some of the limelight that Black Friday is getting right now. You see, Black Friday, is now raising at very fast rate on Google Trends – Oct 27th

People are searching it. People are starting to look for the deals. People want to know where they will be camping next month in search for the bestest, cheapest gift ever.

So as Black Friday rises so does it’s importance on social networking sites. Technorati, Digg, etc… News outlets have articles out there. Soon it will be all over the place.

Now if my hunches are correct, I’m going to drive good traffic with my title. Now these won’t be my customers but you never know who may click over and read this article.

And to me, this isn’t black hat SEO, this is smart SEO and linking strategy. All I’m doing is talking about a hot trend and how it relates to my work.

Think about this. TV commercials spam me (not anymore since I finally got a DVR – how did I live without that before I’ll never know) in the middle of my favorite shows and nobody calls the better business bureau. Though with the way some commercials are using shock techniques, somebody should.

This is how marketing on the internet should be. Companies should be participating in the conversation, whatever the conversation is – not just what you think it should be.

What’s hot within your industry? Do you have a take on it? What if you did, where would you put it?

I’ll bet in the past you put your take in a hard copy newsletter and sent it out to the people who unfortunately signed up for it. Do you think they read it? Can they comment back to you on it?

Come on, it’s 2008. With the net, you can know what is hot in your industry or the world in general. You can put your take out immediately. People can respond to it. Amazing.

Let’s see what happens to this article. Maybe it will go through the roof – maybe it will die but it only cost me a half an hour to write. How much time did you spend on your company’s newsletter?

If you would like some help to figure out social media marketing, trend marketing, SEO, SEM, and all that good digital stuff, we could help you. Here at MediaSauce, we live and breathe it.

First thing I blew it on was the directions. Instead of taking the time – and I have some being stuck in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere in New Jersey – I worked on a few projects and watched some TV. I could have easily gone to Google Maps or something and gotten directions but I didn’t. Instead I decided to trust my original Google map that got me to the business in the first place and just reverse my way back. That was big mistake.

Second, while leaving in plenty of time, this is NY and I should have realized that there is never enough time if you are traveling in New York City. Too many people. Too many accidents. Too much frustration – there’s never the right signs. I don’t know why I trust highway signs. Even though their entire reason for existence is specifically for directions – I always seem to get better instructions from billboards.

Thirdly, I trusted my mobile phone map which just isn’t big enough and it’s practically impossible to see especially when you are trying to use it in lunch hour traffic in the city.

So on my back I got frustrated while stuck in traffic on the GW bridge. This frustration clouded my judgment when it came to reversing the directions – should I go east or west? It says west but… And then I got lost. Badly. I got stuck on a interstate that didn’t have an exit for ten miles – are you kidding? Then when I got off to turn around, there was no entrance ramp on the other side. I was now in the belly of city and not on an artery. I was doomed.

Then in frustration, I put the wrong location in my phone and my phone proceeded to give me directions that got me further lost. I was sure I was going to miss my flight.

So I called my wife and through her soothing and calming voice and her Google map, I found my way back to LaGuardia and I actually MADE my flight. Thank God to because the next one was six hours later. A two-hour trip became four.

How did I get so lost? I’m usually one of those people that have a good sense of direction and I know my way around.

I got lost because I failed to take the necessary steps to plan my roadmap. I didn’t have the right directions. I trusted my gut instead of going with a plan. Then when things didn’t work out the way I wanted I got frustrated and used helpful technology in the wrong way and it messed me up even worse.

So what does this have to do with social media and your company? A lot actually.

The big one…is that if you are LOST IN A SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD, you need to have a real good plan of where you want to go with your social media online presence. There are many routes to go but you should know which is the best one for you and it should be mapped out and on the wall. Here is where you are at. Here’s where you want to go. Stick to it.

You could easily do a blog, social community, twitter, forum, widget, video, podcast, photos, facebook, myspace, etc…but does it really make sense. How would you know if you’ve never done it?

When it comes to the online world, don’t trust your gut. Trust your research. Many, many people will call you and tell you that what they are doing is the right way – maybe the only way. You may like them. You may trust them. But don’t. Call the references. Check out the work. Do a search on them. Ask them lots and lots of questions about their methodology. They should have a plan customized for you.

Technology is not the answer. Just because it is cool doesn’t mean that it really does anything for you. You have to understand the technology (not in a bits sort of way – but what it is capable of and how it will work for you).

If things are going badly, contact someone you trust and listen to them. Their perspective can bring a whole new light to the subject you are stuck on. They could possibly guide you out of the mess you are in if you let them.

I’ll go back to NY just like you should go back to social media (if you’ve gotten burned in the past) but I’ll do it with a good roadmap (like the ones MediaSauce creates), lots of research, and access to a trusted source.

BTW, this came out today on social media. Customers want you to talk to them through it. Don’t ignore it because of the past.

You knew that was coming, didn’t you? But there are ways to push the complaint farther away from your site and out of your search results.

The first thing I would do. Go after that customer, face to face, and see if you can correct what happened. Now some people would say that there are people who are never going to be happy, no matter what you do.

I would disagree and say, “You really don’t know that until you are face-to-face with that person.”

Too many times I’ve seen emails and comments start flaming because when it comes to digital communication it is easy to forget there is another human being on the other end of that discussion. It’s almost like we are flipping mad at our computer and just letting them have it. But once they are in person or on the phone, the anger settles and people can talk in the right TONE to one another.

The other thing to do is to go to those sites that have your complaint and explain your side of things. Tell them how you’ve tried to work this situation out.

But if you can’t fix it, you can out-content them on search results.

If you have only one website on the internet (your singular web presense) on the internet, this is going to be very hard. Because you essentially have only one link or two links that will come up when there is a search for your company.

But if you have multiple web presences…say a YouTube Channel, a Flickr account, a Twitter account, an outside blog or multiple blogs, a facebook page, a myspace page, then you have a chance.

Now what I would do is start pushing lots and lots of content out on the web through these different channels – and there are a heck of a lot of more of them than I mentioned.

Also, don’t do it all at once. Space it out. Get stuff up there at least once a week.

Other things you can do is change your static site frequently. I don’t care if it costs you money because you built a site without a CMS. By not changing your content, it just sits there and Google has no reason to re-index your site.

Get involved in other people’s conversations on their sites. If you are scared of the internet, then talk to someone who understands it and can help you.

The bottom line is get more active on the internet and you can drive them down on the search results.

This is also not a great idea in theory – I’ve done this before with companies. It does work. But make sure you understand this. The same rules that apply to you, also apply to the consumer and that’s why when you step it up – they can as well. So it’s better to just work it out together and not go through this mess.

Good luck. And if anyone else has some ideas on how to do it, let me know. I would love to hear them.