“Dell Hell” A Lesson In Customer Service: How A Blog Post Changed The Culture Of A Company
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Today I talk to you about the amazing power of blogs, their impact and reach on masses.
Most recently I was doing some research on the subject of “customer service”. I came across some past customers of dell who blogged their frustrations on how bad Dell’s customer service was.
Huw Griffiths, Jeff Jarvis’s and Tim Turner’s posts can be found here
After a little more searching, I found a post titled “22 Confessions Of A Former Dell Sales Manager”
This post was made by an ex-employee of Dell on how anyone can buy Dell computers without paying a lot. This post was filled with techniques that Dell seldom officially talked about.
This Post became so widely popular on Digg that; to stop its impact Dell sent a “Cease and Desist” letter asking consumerist.com to delete the post.
Slowly the entire consumer community caught up with this post because of Dell’s position on this whole issue.
WiseBread ran a poll where 54% of the 1937 respondents said they would boycott Dell if Dell persisted in its takedown efforts.
After seeing the increasing popularity of the post and a tremendous backlash from the community, Dell admitted its error in asking consumerist to delete the post.
In turn published its own set of confession on its blog
Back in 2004 Dell discouraged its employees from blogging, In 2006 Dell Started its own “Customer Service Blog”.
The moral of the story is: No power is superior to the social power.
You have to consistently win the trust of your customers to enhance your name and reputation.
Trust is won through transparency, honesty and openness.
Be Social & Keep Blogging!
King Of Blogging Workshop: Orientation Call Posted
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Here is the recording of the orientation call that I did with the members of my “King of Blogging Workshop”. While the call was intended for people who signed up for the workshop, I decided to open it up and make it available for everyone to listen in.
Also if you are in the workshop but missed the call here is a chance to listen to it.
Here are a few topics I covered in this content rich call:
any many more…
If like this recording, I don’t mind an appreciatory comment.
For Your Continued Success!
Srini Saripalli
Social Media Releases: A New Dimension To Online Press Releases
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If you are doing a lot of press releases and your releases are handled the traditional way(just SEO or category targeting), consider social media release options.
PRWeb kind of pioneered the use of SEO in press releases, complimenting the traditional distribution mechanisms. Countless marketers(including myself) and companies benefited from this service.
Today, PRWeb and many other release companies provide category targeting for maximum reach. While the reach is there the demand for conversion is at all time high. Buzz is taking a back seat.
Why not? If you are spending $360 for a release you better get some customers after all.
PRWeb added a new feature called “Social Media Visibility” release to its offering for sometime now. While the service is very promising and the benefits could be many, I am yet to really understand the features of this service.
Most recently Marketwire announced a new service that is somewhat more comprehensively targeted towards Social Media. While I am yet to test these features. They look pretty interesting..
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Comment box
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Distribution to YouTube, iTunes, Second Life, Pheedo™
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Photobucket and Twitter
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Facebook® tags
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social tagging options
- Technorati™ and Digg™ results
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Embedded audio summary headline
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Multiple social video and photo hosting options
You can read all about it here…
Next time when you are ready to do a press release evaulate your options and make sure you are reaching out to these social media sites like Twitter and Youtube. The more the better
Bay Area Internet Entrepreneurs Get-Together!
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Filed Under Networking | 3 Comments
For Sometime now I had been tossing the idea of doing an informal once a month get together of bloggers and internet marketers, here in the bay area
california. While SuccessEngineer.com online community is growing, nothing can beat live networking.
An in-person networking event wherein we meet, share and discuss all our challenges and triumphs on internet marketing. Here in the Bay Area, California.
A few ideas on when can meet:
- 3hour evening meeting with dinner
- Saturday Morning Hike( discussing marketing on the trails)
- Sunday/Saturday Morning brunch.
If you have some other thoughts let me know, my idea is to make these meetings fun and highly educational. Depending on the response, we can proceed further.
So please post your thoughts and ideas in the comment section, so every one can see.
Srini Saripalli
P.S: I prefer the Saturday early morning meetings on the trail. :)-
Blogging For Dollars: An Average Blog Vs A Million Dollar Blog
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You can pretty much replace the word ‘Blog” in the post with the word “Business” and this post will still make sense, even more sense I guess.
There is nothing wrong having an average or below average blog. The intention of this post is not to find any fault with average blogs( If thats the case I have to stop blogging myself) but to share a road map using which any blogger can reach higher limits.
| Average Blog | Million Dollar Blog |
|---|---|
| Blog Platform and Design takes precedence | Publishing takes precedence with focus on Usability. |
| Comments in exchange of content | Readership, Results and Remembrance in exchange of Content |
| A visitor foot print is diagnosed with sophisticated analytic tools usually for up selling | Tools play a role, but it’s the analysis that is sophisticated not the tools. Data used for Go-To-Market Strategy where Sales is a small function. |
| Filler content, Outsourced writers: The need of the hour is to stomp the search engines | Coupled with User Created Content, Highly relevant search addresses the need of the moment. |
| Sales Driven, with a Funnel Strategy. | Go To Market Driven with varied products and services. Focus on Sales experience. |
| Lead Generation for random follow-up and soliciting sales. | Lead Generation for long term follow-up, Analysis and strategic communication that encourages buying. |
| 3rd-paty ads, revenue leaks and lack of effective onsite monetization | Own Ad Platform: Sophisticated metrics that drive placement and seek higher conversion |
| Brand critical to compete in the marketplace | Reputation that wraps many things including the brand. Competition seldom matters |
| Projections Are Based on Lifetime value of a visitor/customer | More indepth client value analysis integrated with campaging tools, sales & marketing databases and hypothesis based statistical analysis |
If you liked this, please feel free to post your thoughts here in the comments section.
4 Tips That Will Catapult You From A Good Blogger To A Great Blogger
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Filed Under Blogging, Internet Marketing, copy writing | 3 Comments
When you master the concept of “Time” you can easily go from a good blogger; who writes frequently… To a great blogger; who attracts, inspires and converts.
Every time you make a post, make sure you take a minute and think how you can improve its reach, its depth and its appeal. Think beyond RSS and Blog Broadcasts, Think beyond nice graphics & pictures. Focus on readership & loyalty
Every time you conceive an idea, develop marketing outlines and see how you could maximize revenues from it. Affiliate text link embedding, Contextual Banners & Press Release driven opt-ins are a few you can pursue.
If you know you will be writing 7 articles during Super Bowl why not work ahead in time and source high paying affiliate banners for these posts upfront?
The secret to getting a lot of traffic to your blog is to blog frequently and on a consistent basis. To get indexed on search engines it makes sense to make rapid posts, ie about 2-4 posts a day.
Writing for the search engines without compromising existing readership is an art, but can be developed with practice.
Content creation takes time, often times it could take you away from other revenue generating activities. Beyond a certain point, most successful bloggers out-source this function.
Sometimes no matter how hard you try you can never get a post just right. They call it “writers block”. There are good days and bad days. Every post is like a musical performance where just landing on the notes won’t cut it. You need Symphony .
If you have below average posts in your blog, make a point of going back and modifying them on a periodic basis.
In other words give equal importance to your past posts. Please don’t disown them too quickly.
Growing up we were taught to read, write and explain everything in terms of Intro -> Body -> Conclusion. This formula works.
(Did you see there was no intro to this post, it started with a headline and continued with a body. There is a call-to-action at the end, only if you can catch it…)
If you want to still improvise on this, Try to get some copy writing aspects into your posts.
One strategy that has worked very well for me is making “Bold Claims in the headlines and substantiating it with evidence in the body”.
The other strategy I frequently use is wrapping my content around stories.
Remember every post has a life of its own.
- Every post has a power to create a Million dollar business for you.
- An article can be converted into a special report
- A special report can be converted into a case study.
- A case study can lead you to a book publishing deal a book can lead you to your own home study course, workshop or seminar
and all of them put together can make you a “Celebrity”.
Did I mention this post is the foundation of my “King Of Blogging workshop”.
Will The Popularity Of Social Networking and Marketing Fade Soon?
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Filed Under Blogroll, Featured, Marketing Success, social networks | Leave a Comment
Some may wonder is social networking will one day fade away. Among these people are those who worry whether or not the end of social networking will mean the end of social marketing.
If this were to occur there will be a number of unhappy individuals(including myself). After all, social marketing provides one of the cheapest and most cost effective methods of marketing(ignore ROI for a minute).
It can never be overstated how critically important it is to seek low cost marketing ventures because excess promotional fees can often undermine much of what a company is seeking to gain. Thankfully, social marketing provides a virtual no cost method of advertising.
Yet, there are those who are concerned that the social marketing fad will soon pass.
In addition to fears about the faddish nature of social networking, there is a great deal of negative publicity that certainly hasn’t done wonders. The recent “Myspace Beating” video has certainly not helped in this regard. But, again, critical mass has not been reached yet, and these sites are still far from collapse.
Click Here to see how new social networking sites are displacing existing leaders
It is important to note, however, that concerns over whether or not social networking sites will fade in popularity is significantly premature. Granted, there are a number of social networking sites that may be experiencing a decline in popularity.
Often, this is because they may lack the innovation visible in other sites.
This might make these “older” sites lose ground to some of their newer competitors but they are far from complete collapse.
Granted, numbers alone are not enough to make a social marketing venture succeed. Many of the people who belong to a social networking site are simply not going to spend money…period.(poor conversion)
But, there are a multitude of people who are potential clients( improvise your marketing skills).
As long as the overall numbers of social networking membership is high these sites will remain as viable marketing targets(Marketing is a number game..I call it a “Funnel Game”)
So, if you are interested in continuing social marketing for the foreseeable future you can proceed as planned(I am going the mile). These sites will remain viable as long as they provide a decent format for virtually congregating.
A Positive Outlook For List Building
(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5) Loading ...Posted on April 30, 2008
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Many people realize that list building is a major component to successful affiliate marketing. If you can amass a email list of potential customers who are also serious customers then you can definitely amass enough traffic to your site to make the whole venture worth while.
Of course, this is not something that can be achieved overnight and that means a lot of patience must be employed. But, sometimes this is much harder than it seems.
If there was anything that was paramount to list building it would be being able to overcome the boredom associated with it. Ok, perhaps boredom is far too strong of a word to use. Perhaps a more accurate word would be “repetitive”.
Basically, it takes a lot of time to build a quality list and this process can become repetitive. Repetition can often turn into boredom if one starts to lose interest in the process. Obviously, if one wish to build a solid list then it is critical to avoid these feelings of boredom.
This key to this is being able to change your state of mind when performing the common tasks associated with list building.
If you look at list building as a laborious process then you are never going to go about it the right way. Anything that is viewed as a chore is never going to be efficiently completed. In fact, people will generally look for excuse after excuse to not complete the task.
So, instead, it is better to look at the end result of your labor. In other words, instead of thinking about the task at hand it would be far better to think about the future.
That is, you visualize the huge affiliate sales you will make, the growth of your business and that huge house you will purchase. These images will most definitely motivate you to bring enthusiasm to the task at hand!
The employment of this type of visualization has been used by many professionals who speak highly of its potential for success. Even professional athletes state that visualization has helped them achieve significant performance gains.
Again, it is all about changing one’s state of mind to where it will approach the task at hand from a more enjoyable process. As with any task, there will be tedious and laborious components that lack glamour.
However, one should never lose sight of the fact that these steps ultimately lead to the end goal of a successful online business. When this is taken into consideration, these minor goals will become a lot easier to complete.
Again, it really is all about how you look at it!
Ebay Sues Craigslist: Who Broke Whose Trust?
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In 2004 Ebay acquired a stake in Craigslist.org by buying out an employee of craigslist.org who owned 28.4% of the company.
Craigslist, in a posting on its site then, said it could learn from eBay about “trust and safety issues, user feedback systems, and operating internationally”.
That was 2004..fast forward 2008.. The TRUST is broken
On April 22, 2008 Ebay reported it has sued Craigslist saying the board of directors of craigslist have started diluting the shares without its knowledge. Unilateral action by craigslist has threatened its minority stake
While the courts will decide on who broke whose TRUST, I will get busy driving more traffic and making more sales from these two sites.
I encourage you to do so too :)-
A Cool Technique To Get A Credible Back Link From Craigslist.org
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...Posted on April 29, 2008
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Here is a small video I recorded on how you can get a credible back link( that will enhance your brand and also your search engine rankings) from Craigslist.org.
Let me know if this video is useful. Just post your thoughts here..
To Your Continued Success!
Srini Saripalli