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?

Recently, at a networking event, the subject of Twitter and its usefulness came up. Being a huge proponent of social media as a whole, I immediately listened. I overheard one person say, "Why should I bother using Twitter? 16 year old girls aren't interested in my business."

Of course my initial reaction was laughter. Twitter has its fair share of teenage girls but this assumption was completely incorrect. I noticed it first on an impromptu survey done by TheBusyBrain (Mike Johnson) on his blog. It was a simple survey, just asking his Twitter followers to answer their age based on ten year segments. Mike's survey shows people in their 30's as the largest age group on Twitter, followed by 20s, 40s, 50s and teens taking fifth place.

Of course this survey only had 1500 or so people vote. So after this discussion I did some hunting for more statistically accurate numbers. Check out this post from Hitwise. It says 63% of Tweople are male and 25% of users are between 35 and 44.

I have to admit the accuracy of the smaller survey surprised me, though I'm pleased that Twitter isn't overrun with pubescent girls. The point here is that the people I network with in real life were basing their ideas of social media off of assumptions. Research is your friend. Know your demographic and aim for it. Do your own surveys with your clients, ask them what they use the web for, why they would read your blog, etc.

My Challenge: Survey 30 clients or possible clients of yours, ask them what social media they use. Let me know what kind of results you get!

Image by Smith

Let's start the week with a simple little survey. What do you think the most important part of an online marketing strategy is? It is a good website? Great content? SEO (links, keywords), paid advertisement, social media, a brand name recognized offline? Let's talk about what you think the heart of an online marketing campaign is, or what it should be.

I'm very curious about what the "key" is. I want to know what Veribatim as a company should focus on to make our clients happier. I want to discover what people feel is important so I can spend more time blogging about those things.

Just back from vacation so I'm start my week with discussion. You hear from me all the time, now I want to hear from you!