Virtual Impax

Effective Strategic Digital Marketing

Archives for June 2008

Blogs…Credibility…Trust

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Blogs are a GREAT way to build credibility and trust with your prospective customers/clients. If you’re selling e-books or copy paper, building credibility isn’t important. However, if you’re selling something of substance such as your time and expertise, then building credibility is the most important “marketing” you can engage in.

The thing is, the reason blogs are such a GREAT way to build credibility and trust is that it’s hard to fake expertise over the course of a hundred or so posts because when you blog, you reveal yourself.

This morning, I saw on my iGoogle that the RSS feed that the blog of an author I respect and admire had been updated after several weeks of inactivity. I had heard great things about this guy and even though I don’t know him personally, he already had a substantial balance build up by reputation in his “trust account” with me.

When I discovered he had a blog, I subscribed to the RSS immediately. However, his posting to his blog is spotty and his posts didn’t seem to have much “body”. However, he’s got a nice trust balance with me, so every time he posts, I’m there. I’m reading but I’m definitely not commenting. After all, what could I do to add to a conversation with someone of HIS caliber?

He began with the tired blogging excuse “I’ve been busy.” OK.. I’ll buy that. After all, he’s already got my respect and trust. However, he then launches into the tired MMO (make money online) tactic of “look how rich I am.” He writes about how he’s property shopping for a 2nd home and he’s posting links to lavish builder’s sites in a warm climate.

OOPS! His trust account balance just went to zero in my book.

In today’s post, at the bottom, I saw an offer for a product -a product which I would have bought… had there been ANY trust left in the account.

Contrast that to my experience with Monika Mundell who maintains the The Writers Manifesto.

I stumbled upon Monika’s blog and subscribed to the RSS feed. I began reading her posts and after a while, began to comment. I’m not a freelance writer, but I am interested in honing my writing skills and her posts were instructional and well written. Then, I saw Monika begin posting on another blog to which I subscribe. She is writing great posts like Make Money with Freelance Writing but the interesting thing is, while it’s still “her writing” she has successfully assumed the “voice” of this established blog.

NICE!!!

I’m swamped yet I have a new project I’m nurturing so I hired Monika to write the articles for me. We connected via email and a few days later VIOLA… I have 8 great articles ready to go, even though the past two days have been “no shower” days for me! She did an INCREDIBLE job. It’s like I wrote them (after reading all her posts and following all of her “rules”)… but I didn’t – she did.

I’ve been watching Monika blog for a while now and by watching her, I could tell she was walking the walk. However, in just a few months of subscribing to the “highly hyped” writer’s blog, I can see he’s all talk and no walk.

Blogs are a great way to establish credibility and trust… even when you aren’t aware that people are watching!

Viral Marketing and Your Business

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For those who don’t know, viral marketing is when you create a marketing piece which recipients naturally want to “pass on” to others.

For example, when an employee of an Indianapolis, IN suburb flower shop put out a sign with a serious spelling error, it became an viral marketing piece. (See the photo here at Funny Marketing Blunders: Flower of the Month)

This example shows one of the key elements for “viral marketing”…it includes a powerful image.  The example of the above situation is a “you aren’t going to believe this unless you see it with your own eyes” type of marketing blunder.

It also illustrates another “viral marketing truth”…. use humor.  If it’s funny, people will be prone to pass it along.  (Fortunately, the flower shop wasn’t selling tutoring services!)

Funny is hard to pull off for most of us… but there are other tools which can be put to use in the creation of the “viral marketing” campaign.  Viral marketing campaigns tend to live on the edge… in the land of the extreme if you will.

Another viral image that found its way to me is this one:

viral marketing image

The only difference between this “viral” picture and a “viral marketing campaign” is that this picture isn’t “selling” anything.

That’s the biggest problem with most viral marketing campaigns, it’s hard to sell and be “viral” at the same time.

Viral requires extremes and most businesses aren’t comfortable venturing into the land of extremes.

Both Digg and Stumbleupon are both sites blogs and businesses use to try to ignite various viral marketing campaigns.  Caroline Middlebrook offers a great example of creating viral marketing campaigns for StumbleUpon in her post Stumble Bait – Harnessing the Viral Power of StumbleUpon.

Her advice is good no matter WHAT type of viral marketing campaign you want to create.

Do You Need a Blogging Absence Excuse Letter?

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It happens to everyone who maintains a blog… life happens and your blog goes on a temporary “hiatus.” Often, the blog owner will issue a “blogging absence excuse letter” which goes along the lines of:

  • “I’ve been really busy… too busy to post to my blog”
  • “I’ve been really sick… too sick to post to my blog”
  • “I’ve been traveling… so I couldn’t  post to my blog”
  • OR.. the absolute WORST Blogging Absence Excuse Letter I’ve seen:

Dearest Blog Readers:

Sorry there have been no posts lately. I have been out of town all week learning (oddly enough) to blog.  Look for new posts, material and blog responses soon!

I’ve change the content to protect the blogger’s identity, but this post is currently the last post to the blog and it is dated February 2008.  By the way, there were only a couple of posts to the blog before this one!

BORING!  BORING!  BORING!!!  These blogging absence excuse letters are boring and destructive!!!

According to Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger.net, writes in his post Excuse Posts- How to Let Your Blog Go #6

The problem is that when you post a few posts like in a row it has an impact upon your readers and any sort of momentum that you might have created on your blog.

He also writes:

While I occasionally include a little personal information in my posts this information is generally shared in a ‘by the way’ type form or as an illustration to an ‘on topic’ post. As a result if something happens in my life that prevents me from blogging then I generally don’t post a post about it (unless it’s a very major thing – something that hasn’t happened yet thankfully).

Darren goes on to give you several tips for how to blog when you can’t blog.  It’s a great post, a must read for most bloggers!

Most of the time, if you aren’t able to blog you probably don’t need to offer a public apology.  The exception to this rule is if your readers begin to email you to see why you’re not blogging.

I have a client who lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa who hasn’t posted to her blog in a few weeks.  I know darned well why she isn’t posting… her entire town is under water!

When she gets dry and has power again, she’ll be able to regale her readers on her experience of surviving the great flood of 2008.  Meanwhile, her priorities are to get her life back to a semblance of what it was pre-flood.

However, maybe you don’t have a good reason for why you haven’t been posting to your blog.  You haven’t survived a flood, a hurricane, a tornado or any other natural disaster.  Then I encourage you to at least make up a good story before posting your blogging absence excuse letter.  Rather than offering the lame excuses offered above (including taking a class on blogging), try the following:

  • “Sorry I haven’t posted.  I’ll be posting ALL the gory details of my Alien Abduction (complete with pictures) after the nice gentlemen at Area 51 return my cell phone.”
  • “I forgot to bring in the Sunday paper last weekend. When I found it on Monday, I thought Monday was Sunday.  I’ve been running behind ever since!”
  • “My time machine is malfunctioning.  My trip to 2030 did not return me to my exact time of departure as I had planned.   By the way, sell all your stocks and buy jars of chunky peanut butter and brownie mix.  Turns out, the currency of the future is rare food.”

If you have a great blogging absence excuse post  that you’d like to share, PLEASE feel free to leave a comment with your best.  (I’m sure you can do better than I did above!)

Carbonite Online Storage Review

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customer serviceBack in April, I got an email from my FTP software people offering a free 30 day trial of Carbonite Online Storage. I signed up and when 30 days was up, my backup still wasn’t complete but I signed up anyway. I had worked during the backup and hadn’t noticed any drag at all of either my system or my online experience.

On May 8th, I signed up for 2 years of Carbonite service. On May 22, I entered my office, turned on my computer and was greeted with the dreaded blue screen of death. My hard drive was dead.

I packed up the beast and dropped it off at my local computer repair shop. (C&W Computers in Stuart, Florida but the link provided to their website now loads some spammy site trying to get you to run an online virus check. UGH!)

Mark (my favorite tech at C&W Computers) went to work diagnosing the problem and I went home to a business that was now officially “on hold” until I could access my files.

But I had Carbonite! YEAH! I also had purchased an Alienware computer to serve as a business backup, so I installed my software onto the beastly monstrosity. Once the software was installed, then I tried to transfer my Carbonite backup to the new PC.

The process of transferring the subscription was fraught with problems. The password I set didn’t work… so I tried to retrieve my password using their system. They sent the password recovery email, but it included a code that wasn’t needed on the password recovery page… and didn’t send the code that was required.

PLEASE NOTE:  I TRIED TO NOT “BOTHER” CARBONITE AND USE THEIR AUTOMATED CUSTOMER SERVICE OPTION.  IT WAS NOT FUNCTIONAL AT THE TIME.  IT IS MY SINCERE HOPE THAT THEY HAVE WORKED THAT “KINK” OUT OF THE SYSTEM.

So, finally, I pick up the phone and call. I am greeted with a message that tells me

a) I am the first caller in line and

b) for another $20 a month, I can get my calls answered immediately.

I then spend the next TWENTY MINUTES on hold listening to beg notices to upgrade to VIP customer status which also lets me know that I’m the “first” caller in line.

IF I HAD NOT HEARD THAT THERE WAS NO ONE ELSE WAITING… I MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN UPSET!!!

In the end, I did get through, I did get my password reset and I did backup the files to my other PC. However, I still have a really bad taste in my mouth over the whole VIP customer service deal.

A little more than 2 weeks earlier, I had paid a fee to use their service for 2 years. I had tried to use their “hands free” password reset option. I picked up the phone as a last resort… only to find I was being asked to pay MORE for customer service.

Carbonite, you should have offered me the priority service information BEFORE I purchased. Heck, better yet, why not include PRIORITY SERVICE for ALL of your customers!!!

Carbonite did a great job of backing up my files. Carbonite DOES NOT back up your software though. It doesn’t back up your email either. However, it did restore the backup of my data files to my new pc over the course of a week.

IT WAS – IN A WORD – A LIFESAVER!!!

In all fairness, the guys at C&W were impressed by the amount of data I have on my PC… which is why they set me up with an external hard drive AND Symtantec Backup Exec. It’s backing up EVERYTHING I need, not just the data files.

It cost $500 to have the guys at C&W Computers in Stuart, Florida replace my hard drive and set up the new backup option. Carbonite cost less than $90 for two years of service.

However, in the end I’m happier with C&W Computers in Stuart, Florida than I am Carbonite…why? Because C&W Computers in Stuart, Florida included VIP customer service in EVERY sale!

I want to be clear – I understand that customer service is a bitch!!!  Customers are unreasonable at times in their demands.  However, I don’t think I was being unreasonable in expecting to be able to retrieve my password without calling customer service.

POST SCRIPT NOTE:  This blog post is an example of “the internet never forgets”.  The date on this review is June 21, 2008.  Carbonite has had more than a year to address the problems outlined above.

It’s now more than a year later and I’m still getting comments and page view on this post.

Carbonite was johnny on the spot responding to this review and I hope they’ve “fixed” their automated password retrieval problem in the meantime.

I’ve left comments open on this blog post so that if you’ve had a GOOD experience with Carbonite, you can leave it here.

However, if you want to leave comments about this review, you MUST include a VALID email address to get your comment approved to appear here.  If you don’t use an email address that I can use to contact you – then your comment won’t see the light of day.

Treating Your Guinea Pig Clients Well

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One of my “gifts” is the ability to translate “geek speak” into plain English. As a result, a lot of my clients are people who know very little about the internet.

I’ve always been a “teach them to fish” kind of a gal and as a result have had several of my clients “outgrow” my services. However, I’m still on call for when things get really messy. That’s what has happened with one of my “graduates” recently.

This graduate is embracing the new online video revolution. She made contact with a firm hoping to become a leader in providing services for what they call “e-training”.  She signed up with them and as a result has found herself in the position of being a guinea pig client.

She is well aware that she is their “beta test” client but contacted me as the project is nearing completion.  I haven’t contacted them, don’t know their side of the story so I won’t be providing details.  Let’s just say that what she was promised in the beginning is nothing like what she’s getting in the end.

In the beginning, she thought she was getting her own web hosting account where she could deliver her own series of e-training videos.  In the end, she found she was actually buying a small strip on their website.

When you launch your business, your first few clients are by nature guinea pig clients.  These are the kind people upon whom you will learn to practice your craft.  Treat these guinea pig clients well as they will be your source of client referrals for years to come.

In the case of the firm above, my client has nothing good to say about this fledgling business.

They say that the difference between customers and clients is that you sell customers something, while clients come under your care.   Long live clients!