WEB BUSINESS SOLUTIONS

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Took the family up to Port Macquarie on the NSW North Coast recently so my daughter could play in an annual soccer tournament. Last year we stayed at Beaches Holiday Apartments, a top facility if you’re looking for Flynns Beach accommodation. Unfortunately, this year we left our booking too late and they were booked out. So an alternative was found, a resort known as Flynns on Surf.

First impressions weren’t great…cockroaches in the kitchen as soon as we walked in, more in the bathrooms, and the second bathroom had practically no water pressure. Still, we overlooked this as everything else was generally good and we were close to Flynns Beach where the team were meeting.

At the end of the tournament the coach - who was also staying at this resort along with several other families from our team - decided to have a team get-together at the resort’s recreation area. But, apparently it was against the rules for non-guests to use the facilities. This is understandable, and the owner was well within his rights to make an issue of it. We should have at least sought his permission beforehand. Our mistake.

But what left us totally stunned was the way Basil…he even had a similar stature to John Cleese…decided to handle the situation. Instead of quietly taking aside one of the guests and saying “If there are people here you have invited who are not guests you’ll have to ask them to leave” he proceeded to shout at the whole group… in true Basil Fawlty tradition…and demand that any non-guests, who he humiliated by making them raise their hand, vacate the premises immediately.

That was bad enough, but he then started yelling at the kids in the pool, saying if they weren’t guests they must get out of the pool immediately. Now, if you want to piss off a parent big time, just yell at their kids.

Basil then left and returned half an hour later, when most of the group had left but a few were still cleaning up, to ensure his demands had been met. More angst. More confrontation.

Now, what Basil seemed to forget was that many of the people in that group were his PAYING CUSTOMERS, attending an ANNUAL EVENT. The rest of the group were POTENTIAL PAYING CUSTOMERS also attending an ANNUAL EVENT. A smart “customer service professional” would have seen the opportunty and said to the non-guests “I’m glad you’re enjoying our facilities, although we don’t really allow non-guests to use them. Maybe you’ll consider staying here next time.” He could also have said to the coach “Why don’t we see if we can do a special deal and book the whole team in for next year?”

As it was, it’s highly unlikely any of our team will return to Fawlty Towers. 

So, how does this relate to the online world?

Your website is not the only way your potential customers find you online. In days gone by, people would relate their experiences to their friends. Bad enough, if the experience was bad. But now they express their feelings online. They make comments in forums. They blog about you (just like this). The effects are far-reaching and permanent. Try Googling “Dell Hell” and you’ll find references to a bad customer service story that happened 4 years ago. And even a company the size of Dell are powerless to stop it.

Social media effects companies large and small. Customer service affects every business.

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A recent post on LED Digest raised the issue of organised voting up of content on social media sites. One subscriber had suggested that LED readers might be able to devise a system where each subscriber could submit and vote on other subscriber’s content. So in response to that, another subscriber designed and put up a page which he named SICoop (The Slightly Inappropriate Co-op for Shilling Social Media Sites.)

This concept of organised voting up of social content isn’t new but you need to be very cautious about how you execute it and participate in it. Most social media sites track your participation. The sites you submit and vote on, comments you make, groups you join and friends you make, are clearly visible to the entire community.

The first site listed to be “shilled” was the SICoop page itself. So, if you were to submit this “Shilling Social Media Sites” page to social media sites, what would that say about you as a member of that community? Once you’re marked as a spammer the damage is done and there’s no turning back. Take the second URL I saw listed on SICoop. What is that? Seems to be nothing more than a copyright notice and legal mumbo-jumbo. Trust me, NO genuine social media user is going to submit that to StumbleUpon, Propeller or any other social site. Submit it to Digg and you’ll likely get banned. Or worse, your domain will be banned and no one else will be able to submit any of your content.

There’s no shortcut to success on social media sites. You have to gain an understanding of how they work and become a trusted member of the community. These guys aren’t stupid. They can spot spammers and attempts to manipulate them a mile off. If you vote up a page which exists for no other reason than to game their system then you’re just asking for trouble. A StumbleUpon “I like it” click is very powerful. It truly is a personal recommendation, unlike a link in the eyes of search engine. When a SU user checks out your recommendation, and they like it, they’ll check out other stuff you’ve voted for. If they like what they see they’ll check out your profile (with links to your site) and become your “fan”. They’ll start to trust you. But submit a site for “shilling social media sites” or a copyright notice, that trust will evaporate. They’ll start clicking the thumbs-down button and before you know it you’ll be shown the door.

It’s quite OK to network with other members of a community such as LED Digest. LED is one of the best old-style email discussion lists out there and I read every issue. But I’m not going to risk my reputation on SU by voting on a page just because it was written by another LEDer, and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to do the same for me. However if that member were to post a good article on their blog – whether it be about web hosting, SEO, marketing or any aspect of doing business online (which is what LED is all about) and I’ll gladly vote for it. The concept of LED users helping each other is fine, but you have to be smart about how you go about it. Simply putting up a page where you add your URL to the voting list isn’t the best way to achieve the desired results and could do more harm than good.

I recently joined a membership site called Social Power Linking where I’ve learned an awful lot about social marketing. Part of that membership is a “buzz” group where they are setting out to achieve the same thing as SICoop. I haven’t actually participated in it yet (not sure if I really want to yet), but there are very strict rules on how it operates and ethical standards are maintained for the good of the community. The guys who run it have been doing this for years, successfully, and really understand social marketing. One thing I have learned from SPL is you do NOT want to shill social media sites.

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Blogger is no more. After creating several new blogs with WordPress I realised just how much better a blogging platform it is than Blogger. Easier to manage. Easier to configure. Easier to customise. And most importantly, WP outperforms Blogger in the search engines by a country mile. So it’s out with Blogger and in with WordPress.

Using WP’s “widgets” it was a simple matter to add links to my previous Blogger posts (under Web Development and Marketing Strategies in the right panel) by using an RSS Feed widget. I’ve also added a feed for my Affiliate Sales Programs blog, created with WP as well.

Web Business Solutions - the Blog, is an extension of my Web Business Solutions website. I’ll be blogging about site building, web design software, SEO, web marketing, link building, web 2.0 and social marketing.

Come along for the ride. Should be fun!

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