{!date dayname+0}, {!date long+0} Dear {!firstname_fix} As I write this my 11-year-old son is half-way up some Welsh mountain. He is on a three-day school trip to the Brecon Beacons and as we waved him off yesterday morning, he was obviously full of excitement, looking forward to the adventures that lay ahead. It will no doubt be a welcome change to all the studying recently for the annual "SATS" exams. But as the parents gathered at the school gates, some of them were clearly worried about the potential dangers - and as one father wisely commented, some of them were projecting their anxieties onto their children. It is a reminder that whatever you do in life or work, you affect the thoughts and feelings of others, just as they affect you. Sometimes when we are in the office we might forget that; and our worries about meeting our own deadlines, for instance, can rub off on those around us. Perhaps, like that wise father in the playground, we should take more care about what we project onto those around us.
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED: How do you deal with negative Tweets? Forgive me if you can hear me laughing. I'm not chuckling at the question - for which I thank Andy for asking me at a meeting this week. But rather I'm gobsmacked at the crass stupidity of the British legal system. Yesterday a bunch of lawyers - backed by the courts - took out an injunction against Twitter. The lawyers represent a footballer who has one of these controversial "superinjunctions". Indeed, I have broken the law by telling you that because we are not supposed to know the injunction exists - let alone the fact that the footballer's initials are "CTB". But the action against Twitter means that the American company is required to reveal to the British courts if any of their users have broken the terms of the superinjunction. That's right - somehow the British lawyers expect the good folks at Twitter to keep an eye on the 110m daily Tweets and check each of them to see if they breach the terms of the footballer's injunction. That means that every one of the 450 employees at Twitter would need to monitor three Tweets every second of every minute of every day in order to fulfil the demands of the lawyers. Clearly, there is no hope of this being achieved - but I suspect the law firm was able to charge the footballer a nice fat fee for issuing the court order. Here's a fact - you might not like this, but here goes: some people don't like you. There, I've said it. Some people will even go as far as saying they don't like you publicly. And some people will criticise your business in writing on Twitter, or on any other social network for that matter. If you want, you can find the footballer's law firm and pay them to issue an injunction to get people to stop saying those nasty things about you and your business. Or you could save your money and do something else. The something else you need to do is to take online action. If there are negative Tweets about your business - indeed if there is any less-than-positive coverage of your firm on the internet - you need to make it all disappear. The "trick" is to publish so much positive stuff, to get your colleagues, customers and contacts to add as many good Tweets about you as they can. Eventually, the "Twittersphere" becomes dominated by those positive mentions, meaning the negatives become less visible. Today I am speaking at a conference in London about the whole concept of "digital customer service". Essentially, I'll be talking about the importance of online communications vehicles like Twitter in getting positive messages across to customers. And the more each business fills the web with positives, the less attention the negatives get - which in turn means that when customers do need to complain, they do so in a positive atmosphere which makes customer service an entirely different venture. Can you imagine being in customer service for a bank at the moment? Not an easy job. But the web is full of negatives about banks, with hardly a positive in sight. What the banks need to do is fill Twitter, for instance, with positive messages; but they largely ignore the web - hence all we see are the negatives. If your business receives negative publicity on Twitter, the way to deal with it is to make it disappear by surrounding it with so much positive stuff, no-one can see the negatives - even though they are there.
WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK: Not everyone uses the web like me - or you..! I was talking to a client earlier in the week and the issue of time management came up. They wanted to know how did I manage to keep up-to-date with all the constant changes going on with the internet. I explained what I did, in terms of reading blogs, checking news sites and so on, but my friend said they would never be able to do that; they would waste too much time getting involved with all the reading. It transpired this individual was a radio lover and kept up-to-date with news and information by having the radio on almost the whole time. And when they weren't listening to the radio, they were downloading podcasts to listen to in the car, or on their iPod. The conversation reminded me that some people are auditory - they prefer listening to reading. But others, who like reading, prefer to do it all in a "catch up" kind of way. They save all their reading in a big pile and allocate something like a Sunday morning to get through it all. Unlike me - who reads constantly throughout the day online - some people prefer not to do that, instead consuming only a "digest" of the information they need all in one go. Others, of course, are visual people who watch TV, spend hours on YouTube and so on. It is all a reminder that whatever content you deliver you need to have it in various formats. Not everyone will want to consume your material in the same way. Which is why I should remind you of my weekly digest of my blog and website content...! If you don't like visiting my blog every day, or don't have the time or inclination to do so, then you can get a weekly digest of my content from http://uklik.me/gjweekly. You will get several pages of material every Saturday morning in PDF format, or in Kindle form or in "ePub" form for Sony Readers, iPads and so on - you decide. The service is completely free of course - but it means if you are a "digest" kind of person you can keep up-to-date without ever having to visit my blog.
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AND FINALLY: From this week's blog... How to succeed online the Mashable way The twenty-five-year-old Scot, Pete Cashmore, is an internet superstar; six years ago, aged just 19, he started a humble blog, Mashable, which is now one of the world’s most influential and most widely read websites. This weekend he entertained an exclusive audience of 300 people at Disneyland in Florida at “Mashable Connect” a conference and networking event to which you cannot buy tickets – you have to be invited. Mashable is a phenomenon, but it is not entirely unexpected.... Read More About how Mashable has succeeded online at: http://uklik.me/kFpNqU
Kind Regards
Graham Jones Web:
grahamjones.co.uk Tel: +44 118 336 9710 If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter than you can delete your name from the mailing list by clicking this link: {!remove_web} Affiliate Links: Some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links providing me with a small commission when you purchase the item. However, I only use affiliate links for products which I personally value. |
