All growing businesses at some point have to deal with an unhappy customer and the outcome is not always a happy customer (no matter how hard you try to turn a negative experience into a positive one).  Since the advent of blogs and social networking, it has become much easier for those unhappy customers to broadcast their negative consumer experiences to their networks of family, friends, colleagues and whoever else may be listening.  As the company who may be the target for negative rantings, it’s important for you to be prepared to compete with unhappy customers.  The best preparation…a blog of your own!

Blogging and social networking for your business allows you to broadcast positive customer testimonials to your own group of family, friends, colleagues and whoever else may be listening (i.e. potential customers).  It provides a platform for your happy customers to EASILY report on their positive consumer experience. (People are less likely to share a positive experience than a negative one, so it’s important to make it easy to report the positive and perhaps even provide an incentive for them to do so.) That coupled with enhanced search engine optimization will ensure that your positive messages about your business overshadow whatever negativity about your business that may exist out there in the blogosphere.  And the best part?  Getting your blog built is easy and cost-effective – Get Started today!

Another shout out to Seth Godin for inspiring this post.  I highly recommend that you follow his blog!

When there were old-school parking meters in New York, quarters were precious.

One day, I’m walking down the street and a guy comes up to me and says, “Do you have a dollar for four quarters?” He held out his hand with four quarters in it.

Curious, I engaged with him. I took out a dollar bill and took the four quarters.

Then he turned to me and said, “can you spare a quarter?”

What a fascinating interaction.

First, he engaged me. A fair trade, one that perhaps even benefited me, not him.

Now, we have a relationship. Now, he knows I have a quarter (in my hand, even). So his next request is much more difficult to turn down. If he had just walked up to me and said, “can you spare a quarter,” he would have been invisible.

Too often, we close the sale before we even open it.

Interact first, sell second.

After reading the above, I started thinking about how this applies to Kayne Interactive and what we are trying to achieve for our clients. We are after all an “interactive” company, so interaction is key to our business.  And with the rising popularity of blogs and social networking, there is no better time than now to evolve your marketing campaign into an interactive format.   Traditional media is one-way communication.  You broadcast your message to a limited audience and receive little to no feedback as to who was reached or the impression that was left.  Interaction on the other hand is two-way communication.   Blogs and social networking encourage a community of people to interact with one another from the comfort and convenience of their homes and offices.  The reach of your message is global, the potential size of your community is limitless, and your reader is engaged and ready to listen to your pitch (and provide feedback if they are so compelled).  All this for less than the cost of running  a traditional newspaper ad!