We're excited to share that we've been mentioned in an article as one of the top 10 Internet Marketing companies in Dallas.
at Level Ten Web Design wrote an last Thursday discussing the popularity of internet marketing. There are thousands of searches being done every day using the key term "internet marketing". So obviously, someone is looking for our services. We're just happy that a huge company like LevelTen thinks that we're doing all right. Thanks Neil!
The Plot: I had my car worked on this past month. Took it to Midas for a tune-up and they did a wonderful job, I was impressed (no small matter!). I even registered for my appointment online which earned them extra points. I left pleased with my experience and ready to recommend them. But then.... it happened! (dun, dun, duuuuun)
The Villian: A week later I'm sitting in the middle of dinner, 6:30pm on a Thursday night and my cell phone rings. I'm expecting a call from a client so I excuse myself and answer. The man on the other line works for Midas and wants to know if I will take a survey.
The Dilemma: I wanted to give Midas a nice review but my family was waiting for me and this didn't seem like a good enough reason to be rude. So I politely asked, "Is there some way you can email me a survey? I'd love to give you feedback but I'm in the middle of dinner."
"It will only take 5 minutes!" he promises.
Grudgingly I agree and spend ten minutes on the phone.
The Conclusion: My immediate reaction was one of resentment. How dare they call my personal number in the middle of the evening! And why bother me on the phone when they have a perfectly good email address which I'm more likely to respond to? I made my appointment online so obviously I'm open to interacting with them that way. It seemed like case in point to me.
The Other Side of the Coin: After stewing on this for about a week I decided I could see their point of view. Its easy to ignore an email. Its much harder to ignore someone on the phone. And it has a "personal" (if you can call it that) touch.
The Other, Other Side of the Coin: However, more and more people don't answer numbers they don't recognize. Quite a bit of resentment still exists towards telemarketers, and even friendly phone calls can get lumped into that category. So maybe they need to offer an incentive so people will take the survey online... it still probably costs less than having someone call and then correlate the data. You only have to write one email and direct everyone to the same survey.
The Conclusion: Over all, I still think email would have been the best way to contact me. And Midas lost an awesome review because it. I can see their side, but I think more people lean towards email nowadays or even text messages!
The Question: What do you think? If your business uses surveys how do you distribute them?
I saw a neat blog post on twitter from (or on Twitter) called . After reading I had to agree, Asher made some great points. And I said so. Then one of my other followers, the insightful asked if I was going to post about my own reasons and I said sure. And, without further delay, here they are:
1. Too Self Involved. If you follow me, I'm going to browse your twitter feed. If every single post you make is about you and what you did and how awesome you are, I won't follow. I like to see responses, retweets (RT), or any kind of conversation. Unless your posts are particularly informative I'm not going to bother.
2. Spammy. If I do happen to follow you and then notice that you tweet 15 posts all at once on a regular basis I'll probably stop following you. Its not even that you're not interesting, its just annoying. And normally it just ends up being spam.
3. Blog posts only. If your Twitter feed just exists as an RSS outlet for your blog I'm probably not interested. I'll just subscribe to your blog instead.
4. Follow ME! If you ever twitter those words, I'm not following you. Especially if you're new to twitter and that's all you're posting. C'mon, don't waste my time. To me, twitter is networking, and I want to learn something about you or what you do.
5. SalesTweets. I think its great to promote your business and your website but if you aren't reciprocating anything, its not fair. (See #1)
And my bonus reason: 6. You stopped following me. Every month or so I review my followers. There are people on Twitter who will follow you, wait for a return follow and then stop following you, just to boost their numbers. Its a pretty low trick, and its easy to spot since usually they also have one of the 5 above symptoms.
What makes you not follow someone, or unfollow someone you've been reading? Write a blog post about your top 5 reasons and drop a link! And if you twitter, .
The center of the internet, in case you didn't know, is
But all joking aside, where do you think the center of the internet is? In the past, most
people might say a search engine like our friends at
.
Or perhaps your browser is central to your online experience. Of course that is very important and I suggest if you are still using internet explorer, please consider switching to firefox.
I think the center of the internet, however is quickly becoming personalized. If you own an antique bookstore you don't need to be as big as Amazon. The Niche website is coming into power and with it, the power of small business.
Google hit an all time high . They accounted for 67.9% of all web searches. Which just goes to show, advertising with someone who can put you on 30 search engines... not the best way to use your resources.
NEW STUFF:
Over with the links, under blogroll, I've listed Blogs I've Helped With. Right now there are two. These are people who I suggested getting a blog to or physically helped them set it up. Right now we have Joan Cole who has a neat project she's blogging about, her new green dream home. Also, I linked to Big Al. Big Al creates delicious Texas BBQ rubs. He has information about himself and his products and is planning to list meat-tastings and other events. Check them out!
Last but not least, if you haven't seen . Check it out. I'm sure I'll blog about it soon. But if you interested, you can there.
