I don’t want to be negative about this.  I’m trying to change my ways when it comes to posting negative comments and blogs.  It’s not that I’m going to take away “FAIL” but I’m going to try and offer constructive criticism and maybe an idea or two on how they can change.

So the beef today is with DIRECTV and Sprint.  I’ve been a customer of both for a long time.  DIRECTV for the past five years and Sprint since I’ve had a cell phone (back in 1999).  That’s a long time, right?

I’ve defended both to naysayers and I’ve also pushed a lot of customers their way but I’m done.  I have to be and let me tell you why.

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[March 26, 2009] The paper brochure is quickly becoming ancient history as interactive, engaging digital alternatives are penetrating your marketplace. Now is the time to transform your sales collateral to be more effective. Let your competitors leave boring folders stuffed with paper while your sales force is delivering customized sales messages with interactive content, motion and sound to leave a lasting memory in your customers mind. Buy your tickets securely below.

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Now is the time to stop wasting your marketing dollars on expensive, ineffective paper brochures that end up in the trash or never even make it out of the storage closet.

Join MediaSauce for a fast-paced seminar to learn to discover high-impact strategies to create and use digital sales collateral for your sales force. Plus, learn about best-practices in using Internet-based marketing materials to make more impact with a better ROI in the sales process. more

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A business blog can do lots of things so it really depends on the company. I can tell you that we are not a digital company that immediately says you need a blog.

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.

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Seth Godin had a great little post today called “You’re boring“.

It’s really quick so go read it.

I run into this thing all the time with marketers taking the safe route. Especially in this economy.

Grandma Iva Lee and Paul watching TV

When you choose the safe and boring route, you make your potential clients tired. You make your staff tired. You make yourself tired. Oh, great. Here we go again. Boring story, boring brochure, boring website. Whoa, that made me tired just writing it.

The funny thing is that you choose this. You are the one that makes the decision to go for something that can change the world or at least your industry.

And don’t blame management. You may think they always shoot down your ideas but most likely they shoot down what you don’t fully believe in. That you are not 100% excited in. That you don’t fight for until you’re nothing but a bloody stump.

Don’t wait another day because if you do, you’ll lose that energy you have right now to fix this boring and tired place.

Email me and let’s figure out how to fix it.

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Several things happened last week that made me take notice. And since I don’t believe in coincidences, I had to pull it altogether in my mind.

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. more

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So here’s the secret. You can’t.

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.

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So they got you…one of your customers had a bad experience and now they are online telling the world about it.

In fact, they are so upset that they started a website or blog up and are actively denouncing your company. You went out and did a Google search and they are popping up on the same page as your website.

There’s your company and then right below it, bam. It’s that customer…the one that is really, really mad.

Well, how do you fix it so this guy isn’t second on the list behind your good name?

Unfortunately, most of the business people I talk to think that the customer is in the wrong. That it isn’t their fault and that they did the right thing. But it isn’t really about right or wrong when it comes to the damage a customer can cause to your online presence.

It’s about turning that customer into someone who loves you no matter the initial cost.

That’s crazy talk. No, not for a small business or even a large one.

I believe all you have is customer service. Today almost anyone can do what you do for your customers. The biggest difference between you and your competitors is how you treat them before, during and after they do business with you.

Everyone knows it’s 5x, 7x, 10x more expensive to get a new customer than it is to keep an old one.

And you believe that then you’ll do what it is to keep that customer happy no matter how insane you may think they are. But believe me, they aren’t insane in their own head. Make it right.

I’ll give you two examples that happened to me this weekend. One was at a sushi restaurant. I won’t mention the name because I didn’t feel that slighted but my wife sure did.

We had never been there before and had a coupon from a mailer. We walk in and there was no hostess. We waited and waited and waited. At least three or four minutes.

A large crowd of five or six came in behind us. They passed us, went to the bar. The hostess then came out from around the bar, greeted those people then came up to the hostess stand, grabbed some menus, gave us an apologizing look and said, “I’ll be right with you.”

She sat those people and then came back to us.

She greeted us. My wife said, “Did you know those people? Do they own the restaurant?”

The young girl said no. My wife said, “We were here before them. Why did they get seated before us?”

She didn’t have an answer. My wife likes things to be fair. This tainted the entire experience. We left and the people behind us who had just walked in left as well. So the very young hostess (who is your first impression for a new restaurant) just cost the owner $100 from us and probably $200 from the four top behind us.

Plus we’ll never go back. You only get one chance with my wife.

The next place we went to was brand new. A burger place with brew. I was excited. We walked in to a mop bucket unattended next to the front door. Yeah, we didn’t even look at the menu.

Two small businesses. Lost revenue. And we’ll never go back. And my wife who is at WOM machine will be very happy to pass her complaints along any time anyone mentions those two new restaurants.

So the fact that you have a customer that is unhappy and willing to talk about it online is both a very good thing and a very dangerous thing. Good because at least they are talking in an environment where you could deal with it. Like those restaurants will probably never know that my wife is hurting their business.

But onine is more dangerous than you can imagine because there are plenty places to talk (social media) outside of your site – especially if your site doesn’t even allow for that type of interaction. You know because you don’t want people talking bad about you on your site.

Here’s what one of our creative directors said about people talking negatively on your company’s site. Leigh Marino (awesome smart creative) likened those upset customers to her new puppy. This puppy liked to dig. Every time they were outside in the yard, the puppy tore up her flowers and her garden. After a couple of times at this, Leigh decided to make a space in the yard for the puppy to go to town on. A spot to rip her yard to shreds. Now the puppy was happy because he was going to rip something to shreds anyway and Leigh was happy because it wasn’t her flowers.

The idea behind this is that you are not going to make every customer completely happy. But when they do have a complaint, let them come to you and tell you about it. Let it be on your website for others to see. Then do what you can to contact this customer and make them happy. When you finally do, they will retract or if they don’t, you can let others see how you responded to the complaint and how you made amends.

But if you don’t do anything and you let that person have a voice out there on the internet without any response, the damage can be desvastating to a business.

Consumers are starting to understand this more and more. They know that their opinion of you counts more than just who they can reach in their small network of face to face friends. They can reach every single one of your customers searching for you on the net if they are smart enough about it.

Here’s some places they can do it.

• http://www.ripoffreport.com/
• http://consumerist.com/
• http://www.complaints.com/
• http://www.pissedconsumer.com/
• http://www.thesqueakywheel.com/

If it were me, I would start a free blog on blogger or wordpress to talk about what happened. I would use a URL that had their name in it. I would use the company’s name over and over to make sure the keywords were there. I would link my blog to all the sites above and anything else I could find. I would contact the local media and pitch my story to them. This stuff would probably take me a week but I’ll bet you I’d be showing up really close to their direct searches in Google. Heck, I might even buy a few adwords to make sure I did.

Sending me a cease and desist or taking me to court would be the wrong thing to do here. That would cause me to flame even louder on the net. Then my fellow bloggers would get wind of “the man” coming down on someone who is just trying to right a wrong. Then it would spread like wild fire.

Hopefully, you are seeing my point about how effective this type of consumer complaint can be and how you should be prepared to deal with it. I’m going to say it again. Make it right. And make sure everyone they talked to knows you made it right.

Next time, I’m going to write about how you can get that consumer complaint website off certain search results for your company. It takes some time and some effort but you can do it.

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One thing I have come to understand with technology and media is that everything new is nothing new at all; they’re just new ways of looking at things.  How we communicate and connect today can be traced back to how people have always communicated and connected.  Digital and social media are not that much different in their nature than to what we’re already accustomed.

This point was made clear to me on a recent trip San Francisco when I visited the epicurean delight called the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.  Held every Tuesday and Saturday mornings at the historic Ferry Plaza building, amazing selections of produce, meats, cheeses, chocolates, and other food stuff abound.  (I recommend making it your whole Saturday morning.)  The site is a beautifully restored public building with cafes and food shops open every day of the week, but they are joined on Farmers Market days by perhaps a hundred vendor stalls that ring the building.  

As I walked around the market enjoying the different aromas and flavors, I captured the scenes with my iPhone’s camera and began to realize how similar it was to the world of digital and social media.

(View a hi-res version here at Animoto.com)

The Farmers Market is a space where large corporate entities intermingle with small Mom & Pop operations on equal footing.  While the large entities had shiny, polished stalls inside the main building and were doing steady business, the real action was outside in the modest tent stalls.

Unlike the sterile supermarket (broadcast media), the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market (social and digital media) was alive.  There was a noticeable sense of excitement and buzz caused by the higher level of interaction between consumer and producer.  People brought empty tote bags and roller carts and were leaving with bounties of goods to take home.  

Most of the produce and food stalls had a plethora of samples that enticed you to experience the flavors for yourself.  At one booth, a sign read, “Sampling Is Mandatory!  (we are watching)”.  Most people running a booth had a certain range of produce or food stuffs they offered and were eager to tell you lots about it. 

For those who wanted more than just the raw materials, you could choose from a variety of prepared meals cooked fresh and made to order for.  There were even non-profit organizations who had their own stalls to promote their causes – one in particular, La Cocina, provides commercial kitchens and business advice for low income micro entrepreneurs who want help taking their food product to market. 

Inserted in this bountiful selection was an unassuming stall that was an enclosed shipping truck.  Inside was one of the most coveted service at the market – knife sharpening.  By 10am, this guy had already taken on all his orders for the day.   

As I sat down with an amazing melange of sourdough, smoked fish, capers, and fresh cream cheese, I came across one of the best musicians not on the Internet – Flat Cut F.  He was a nice guy who was sitting on a chair near some tables with his hat out.  Like the handful of musicians around the market, he just showed up and started playing.  I’m glad he did.

Inside the permanent structure, I met Karim and Polly with CleanFish and visited with them at length.  Their company has created a sustainable approach to commercial fishing that stretches from the fisherman to the distributors to the restaurants to the consumers themselves.  Everything they do is focused on making sure we have enough seafood to eat without harming the ecosystems they come from.

As I was making one final pass of the market, I noticed one stall had a line of about 45 people long.  It was the Blue Bottle Coffee Co.  I figured if that many people were waiting in line for their coffee (with a Starbucks across the street), it had to be worth the wait in line.  When it came time for my order, I asked for their best drink and got the Gibraltar, a short cappuccino served in a glass tumbler.

Enjoying my Gibraltar, I couldn’t resist starting a conversation with Jack Gold who was wearing a t-shirt that implored, “Protect Me From What I Want“, which it turns out was a saying that he came across at an art installation while he was executive director of the Providence Preservation Society.  He is now the executive director of the San Francisco Architectural Heritage.  

Before I left, I noticed there was a cooking demonstration being held encouraging the use of various produce at the peak of their season.  Right next to it were political supporters of the Democratic Party voicing their support for Obama and one who was collecting signatures to name the sewage plant after our current president.  Not too far away was a nice man from Oklahoma with a show cat and a sign asking for money to help enter a cat competition.  How often do you see those three side-by-side at the supermarket?

In reflecting on my experience, here are a few of similarities of social media and the farmers market:

• Both encourage a stronger sense of community – letting consumers meet the producers directly
• Large corporate entities and smaller entities can compete side-by-side
• It’s not the fancy stall and slick marketing operations but the quality and authenticity of the product that is most important
• The more interaction, the better: people want the opportunity to share their views and opinions
• Even low tech companies can thrive here

What are your thoughts? What similarities and differences do you see?

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With the speed at which digital media and social media are moving, most organizations don’t have a digital strategy.  Understandably, they don’t even have a budget that takes digital and social media into consideration.

Because their budgets were created for yesterday, not today, there is a financial disconnect.  What I mean is their budgets are broken into different silos for established departments and past initiatives that can block the leaders from seeing new, more effective ways of accomplishing the organizations goals.  

While most organizations have line items for marketing, sales, conferences, training, publications, website enhancements, and IT infrastructure, they were likely created with an Information Age mentality.  That is to say, that information is to be pushed out through broadcast methods, static websites, unwieldy enterprise “efficiency” tools.  

The time has come to bust the budgeting buckets and reorganize them to take advantage of the Interconnected Age:  Do you really need to spend $20,000 on a mail-out survey?  How can you justify spending $150,000 on a quarterly magazine without knowing if anyone is actually reading it?

Most central offices think they need to sit in the Ivory Tower writing their internal operational manuals and capturing best practices.  Why not create internal wikis that allow those people doing great work to share and collaboratively write the manuals for you?  

Instead of staffing and maintaining a large customer service center, why not create a user community and let your customers help each other? 

When you start to understand the possibilities of digital and social media, you’ll begin to see that it’s not that you don’t have the money, but it’s that you don’t have the money organized in the right buckets.

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So the kids and I went to check out Eagle Creek Reservoir Beach on Sunday afternoon.

I’m very proud of my oldest daughter. She has finally learned to swim (after this summer of swimming lessons). But she’s very particular about her nose. She has to have nose plugs on or she can’t go underwater. So be it. Nose plugs it is. No matter how silly she looks.

After being in the water for an hour or so, I decided to start pitching the kids in the air. They love it and it’s some exercise for me. They swim over, I count 1-2-3 then heave them in the air. There’s a big splash and a lot of laughter.

We did this for fifteen minutes or so and I was about done. So the last one is always a doozie. I threw my daughter up as far as I could and she came down with a huge splash. When she came up, her nose plugs were gone.

Aw, man. Now I’m pretty sure you all know lake water. It’s definitely not swimming pool or Hawaiian Island clear. Visibility is like six inches. And even that is questionable.

She was really upset. Now how was she going to swim?

I started feeling the rocky bottom as best as I could in the 36 inches of water. Nothing just a lot of little rocks.

After ten minutes, my brain was telling me this was a lost cause.

You are not going to find them. Just tell her you’ll buy her some more. What are they? 5 bucks or so. Is it worth it?

Maybe not? But I didn’t stop. I prayed a bit and I kept searching with my hands on the surface of the bottom.

Because of the depth of the water, it was a stretch and I couldn’t really go over a big area of the bottom. I was by inching myself along.

Finally, I thought, just go under and do a quick large scan of the immediate area.

I went under, forced myself to the bottom and reached out.

It only took three tries and I had them. I couldn’t believe how fast I found them. It was same area that I had gone across a couple of times but here they were.

My daughter was smiling and swimming again – funny-looking nose plugs and all.

So what’s the moral of this story – what did I learn?

That once I changed how I was searching, once I dove deep into that dark water – the thing I was looking for came right away.

I believe consumer insights are like those nose plugs. Often insights are hard to come by but they are extremely important.

There’s a good book by Phil Dunsenberry, “One Great Insight is Worth A Thousand Ideas” in which he goes into why an insight is much more powerful than an idea.

To find an insight in the past, we did surveys, focus groups, product testing, and/or relied on the engineers or service people to come up ways to make things better. Sometimes this works – sometimes it doesn’t. And it’s amazing how many companies bet the farm on a good idea but not an insight.

But with Social Media, you can find consumer insights. They are right there waiting to be picked like ripe fruit

If you are new to Social Media (blogs, forums, community networks), I’ll bet it looks a lot like dark lake water. There’s too much noise. You can’t spreadsheet the answers as easily as you can with organized and self-generated research.

But here’s the deal. If you dive in, dive deep and put your hands out, you going to find the answers you are looking for.

People (and this system is entirely made up of real people) will give you honest feedback if you act like a person and not a marketer.

It takes some time – but all good things do take time.

The good thing is that you can start now and catch up pretty quick. We are at the foundation level of this digital social media thing. You can cut your social teeth along with everyone else.

For all of you that think social media is Facebook and Facebook is fad, you are sort of right. Facebook is a fad but it is a pretty darn popular fad right now. Some other network might overtake it but it’s not going to be overnight. And it’s going to do a lot of the same things that Facebook is going right now.

BTW, Social Media is not Facebook. If you want a list of what Social Media is not, click here.

If you are still timid about social media, stop by MediaSauce or give us a call at 317.218.0500. We would be happy to help you. We have presentations and clinics you can attend. Most are free.

I believe after you’ve been swimming in social media for a while, consumer insights won’t be lost under lake water anymore. They will be floating in the clear blue.

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