If you’re on the internet you’ve had negative comments.  It’s part of the internet culture, for better or worse.  We looked at responding to negative comments in a previous post.  But are there benefits to negative comments?  Could your brand be improved by receiving negative comments? Surprisingly yes. Negative comments give you two benefits. 1.  Negative comments let you address legitimate problems.  Let’s face it we aren’t perfect.  We make mistakes.  Release defective products.  And don’t always have the best customer service.  If you bring your meaning to your work, then you care about quality and service.  Wouldn’t you rather address the problem ...

With all of the privacy changes to Facebook and the growing ease of finding people online, one of the growing areas of business is something called “online reputation management.”  The idea behind it is simple: you want to control how people see you online.  We probably all have embarrassing pictures of ourselves from some point in our lives (mine mostly involve the chicken pox).  Do we really want a future employer to see that? So companies are making a lot of money offering services to “manage your online ...

Social Media is all about the interaction between expert and audience, company and customer, blogger and fan.  It’s that dynamic that sets it apart from writing a book or producing a TV show.  Yet when we open up the conversation we’re bound to hear from people who don’t agree with us. The internet is not always filled with calm, reasoned people.  If you’ve ever read comments on YouTube you know exactly what I’m talking about.  People take great pride in ripping apart things they haven’t spent any time thinking about.  We call them trolls. But there’s also a group of people who ...

Why is our first reaction to reach for the lawyers? If you haven’t heard, the Apple / Google wars heat up.  Both of these companies are poised to become huge players in the emerging “super phone” market.  Which means that billions, if not trillions, of dollars are at stake.  This is why Apple’s lobbing of legal grenades is so important.  With filings targeted at Google’s phones (specifically the HTC models), Apple is saying they won’t take iPhone encroachment lightly. This isn’t new. Apple and Microsoft used to be at war.  ...

Permission marketing is what is driving the success of the internet.  At least that’s what I believe.  For instance, I think that it’s an honor you are reading this post.  I don’t think I have the right to cram things down your throat.  And I believe it literally costs you something to pay attention to what I am writing (or else why do we say pay attention?) I don’t have a right to any of that, I need to seek your permission (verbally or otherwise) to earn the privilege of ...

Even in the days of instant email, instant videos and instant oatmeal, some things are just too slow. this weekend I ordered a new mouse for my computer.  My old mouse, which I have owned for more than a decade, finally died.  So after much deliberation I finally settled on a Logitech G500.  I had considered a more expensive Logitech mouse, but decided it wasn’t worth the $30 or $40 difference. Well Amazon “knew” I was looking at mice and today sent me an email announcing a sale for ...