Crastinate

Dear Blogger,

Over the years I have become more and more involved in the world of social media to the point where my entire career and much of my personal life revolves around the business of social media. I have also been lucky enough to have met and become friends with many amazing people in the industry including some very well known bloggers. Most of these people (well, some of them) are smart and deserve the attention they are getting. There is, however, a noticeable trend amongst these “celebrity” bloggers which I not only find annoying, but find to be antithetical to blogging as a whole.

The beautiful thing about blogging is the ability for anyone to get in the game. Anyone can be famous. Bloggers are supposed to represent the little people’s voice. So many bloggers made their name off the backs of the poor customer service and indifference to customer satisfaction of large corporations. The people finally had voices to back them. Bloggers are now recognized with having real influence. With influence and power, however, often comes greed.

Recently I’ve noticed many bloggers (I won’t point fingers) that seem to think they’re better than everyone. They think they deserve free passes to conferences. They think they deserve free cell phones or free software. They think they deserve to be treated as upper class citizens because they can wreak havoc with their dinky little site. They think their 50,000 unique visitors a month (if that) gives them some sort of clout.

Let’s be clear about this. Companies give freebies to small-time bloggers (which 99.9% are, and yes, that includes you) to flatter you. They know that almost all of what they’re providing you for free is a waste but they realize that the aggregate of this blogger outreach might have a real impact. The aggregate is where the value is. You, by yourself, and your dinky little site, aren’t worth anything by itself.

So next time you’re complaining that a hotel won’t give you a late checkout or that the airline won’t let you on the flight when you show up 30 minutes before the flight (when they clearly tell you to be there two hours beforehand), don’t complain and act like they did something wrong. Their customer service might suck but your attitude sucks. You’re not famous. You’re a blogger. You represent the people. Start acting like it.

I recently used the blind search test whereby you search for a term and the site spits out results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo without telling you which search engine provided each set of results. It then asks you which one provides the better results. Surprisingly, for most of my searches I chose Bing. So I decided to switch my default browser in Firefox from Google to Bing and see if I like it better. Bing didn’t last long.

The next day I saw a job posting that seemed interesting and I wanted to learn more about the position. Unfortunately the listing was posted by a recruiter and I always avoid going through recruiters (it’s much better to speak to the company directly). So I do what I typically do. I copy two sentences from the posting and put it in quotes to find the exact job posting elsewhere, hopefully with the name of the real company.

Bing – 0 results

Google – 2 results

Google had picked up the job postings on two other job boards, one of which had the company’s real name and not that of the recruiter. It seems to me that Bing is a pretty good search engine but Google indexes more sites more often (this is just a guess based on my experience). I switched back to Google for now. I’ll check back in a couple months and do some more tests.

Man, that was a boring post. Sorry about that.

Many users have developed  a significant following on Twitter. We should expect many of them to want to cash in on their new <cough> “popularity”. Company sponsored tweets were inevitable. The debate over sponsored tweets is gaining some steam. Some arguments are just ridiculous and here is why.

I’m amazed by how many people think Twitter will save the world. I was recently watching a stream from Jeff Pulver’s 140 Character Conference where one of the presenters criticized the potential of the Twitter community. Not only did the crowd boo, but someone from behind the camera actually said, “He’s crazy. We’re going to cure cancer!” This is what many Twitterers believe. They actually think they’re changing the world by retweeting funny links or getting an @ mention from Rainn Wilson.

Let’s be clear about this. Twitter has become an incredible source of public conversation. It has many uses, especially for marketers, and should be seen as such. The collective information that is gained from Twitter is where the value is for the world. The individual pieces of that collective is usually mindless drivel. It’s sort of like a Monet. Zoom in and you can see random little strokes of color. Move far enough back and take all the strokes together and you get a masterpiece.

Regarding sponsored tweets, many feel that sponsored tweets sullies the Twittering world. Some feel that sponsored tweets should be required to disclose that the following tweet was paid for by <insert company here>. These people want to regulate social media conversation similar to the way print publications all put the word ADVERTISEMENT on top of a sponsored article. The argument for this is that now readers will be able to decipher quality content from advertisement.

Where do I even begin with this ridiculous argument. What some are talking about regulating is freedom of speech. Tweets are not made by a company or part of any profitable exchange of information. Tweets are words you scream out your digital window. That’s it. The idea that any requirement or regulation can be put on them is preposterous.

Furthermore, this debate goes to the heart of the ridiculousness surrounding Twitter. Popular TV and radio personalities make lots of money and are very influential. Popular Twitter personalities, if that’s all they have under their belt for being noteworthy, are not at all influential and are probably not making a dime off their social media addiction.

Companies such as Izea, TweetROI, adcause, and Twittad are trying to take advantage of this opportunity gap in Twitter marketing. I commend them. Forget about what the Twitter-crazy social media addicts are saying about sponsored tweets ruining Twitter. Twitter will be ruined if we don’t allow these companies free reign. If Twitter REALLY wants to keep tweets ad-free than it will allow ads to show up on Twitter pages and pay people for the traffic they give the site. Otherwise, don’t complain.

There is a list somewhere of people who are banned from certain casinos. Usually this is because these players have found a way to beat the house by somehow breaking the rules. It’s not illegal, but casinos lose money with these people and have no interest in having them continually win more than they lose. The business equivalent of these people is my friend Jerome (names have been changed).

Jerome will complain to EVERY company that he thinks he can get something out of. He claims to have good reasons for this but all his friends know the truth. If he drinks a Snapple that tastes funny, he calls to complain and gets free Snapples. If he goes to a hotel and sees another person’s hair, he demands three free nights. Amazingly, many of the times he gets what he wants, or at least more than you would ever expect a company to give up. Jerome recently complained about Kenneth Cole shoes that he had for a few years and were starting to wear out in places that he felt shouldn’t have worn out. After much back and forth with customer service, he was able to get a $250 gift card for new shoes. His original shoes retailed for $200. I know, amazing.

Market research has shown that happy customers are repeat customers and it seems to have become standard practice for companies to give in to the Jeromes of the world because the additional cost will be made up by good word-of-mouth for quality customer service and repeat business.

Another friend of mine, Kyle, had his backpack replaced when he was in 7th grade by Jansport because a hole developed. To this day (he’s 28 now) he continues to buy products from Jansport, including his latest laptop case. This is an example of customer service that made an existing customer, a loyal one.

The world of social media has blown the communication channels wide open. No longer do you have to go out to find the right number to call or person to email. Brands are looking for you. If you own a product, that company wants to have an online connection with you. Complaining about a product to a customer service representative is as easy as writing a 140 character message. The Jeromes of the world love it but the Kyles get screwed. All the legitimate claim holders will be drowned out by all the Jeromes of the world.

In a perfect world, customer service would be transparent. Defective items would be replaced and false claims would be ignored. That isn’t how the world works. People are greedy and take advantage of big business (yes, big business is sometimes the victim). Utilizing social media is an amazing new approach to customer service. If a company isn’t careful, however, it could easily backfire into losing the quality customers amongst the crowd of irrelevant ones. To reinterpret a line from “The Incredibles”, “If everyone gets excellent customer service, then no one does”.

UPDATE: Regardless of my warnings, here is a good post by Tamar Weinberg as to why companies should be utilizing social media in their customer service initiatives.

All this media attention on Twitter reminds me of the buzz surrounding Digg in 2005. One of Digg’s biggest issues back then was how easily one could get a story to the front page. What people haven’t been talking about yet is how easily Twitter can be gamed.

It’s quite easy to become a top trend on Twitter. All you would have to do is hire a couple hundred people to keep on using your company/brand/product over and over in their tweets. Sounds like something a couple of hundred Russian kids would do for $1 apiece. Digg, to this day, acknowledges and fights ways of spamming Digg. I’m waiting for Twitter to step up to the plate because everyone knows that those top trends are being gamed daily.