FBO: Treat Your Viewers Like Your Best Friends

Sunday, September 7th 2008 by Shanel Yang

[For “FBO: Why Should Millions View Your Blog?,” click here.]

This part of the “FBO” or “For Bloggers Only” series is actually NOT JUST for bloggers, but FOR ALL entrepreneurs, employees, and nonprofit organizations seeking to raise funds to support their goals.

If you want millions of viewers, readers, customers, clients, members, etc., then you’ll want to follow along as we go through, one by one, the rainmaking secrets provided by Jeffrey J. Fox in his book How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients.

TREAT YOUR VIEWERS LIKE YOUR BEST FRIENDS

Who’s your best friend? A childhood chum? Someone from school? A family member? May I suggest someone who has never let you down, never left you in the lurch, and will always being there for you in the future, whether good times or bad: YOU!

Treat yourself as your own best friend because you are and always will be. Then, treat all your viewers/readers/customers/clients/members/donors as you would treat yourself under similar circumstances because that will make you a rainmaker.

A. FOX’S TIP NO. 2 FOR ALL RAINMAKERS

Fox’s Tip No. 2 for how to become a great salesperson, or rainmaker, is: “Always answer the question, ‘What would I want if I were the customer?’” He writes:

The first commandment of getting and keeping customers is to treat each customer as you would treat yourself. Do you like to be overcharged, underserved, put on endless hold, overbooked, told your room isn’t ready, falsely promised, shipped late, ignored, not thanked?

Always put yourself in the shoes of the good customer. Answer the question, “What would I want if I were the customer?” The answer is what you should strive to provide.

This is important when dealing with the upset customer. When you are the upset customer, you want a full, uninterrupted hearing, you want to deal with someone with the authority to fix the problem, and you want a fair resolution. You don’t want to be sent a copy of the company’s warranty policy. You don’t want to be told to send another sample upholstery to the factory, get yet another professional couch cleaning, or be told the stains are of “indeterminate nature” and your claim is denied.

Remember, good customers are demanding. They may expect more from you than you believe is appropriate. What you want or how you want to be treated may not be good enough to satisfy your customers, but it’s a good starting place.

Deliver on your promise and you’ll bring rain.

B. APPLYING FOX’S TIP NO. 2 TO BLOGGERS

If you want to become an A-list blogger, apply Fox’s Tip No. 2 above to your blogging business by asking yourself, “What would I want if I were the viewer?”

1. How to Handle Emails

How would you like to be treated by your blog if you were a viewer/reader? If you wrote an email to your blog, how would you like it to be handled? Would you like it to be ignored? How about responded to with an impersonal, business-like, canned, and, worst of all, group email reply? Would you brace yourself for the flood of annoying email advertisements and solicitations? Or, would you like to receive a prompt, personal, polite email response from the owner of the blog himself/herself?

That’s what I do for everyone who emails me about this blog or to request a free copy of my ebook. And, other than asking those folks—and only one time—to sign up for the RSS feed if they want to receive the latest articles as soon as they’re posted, I never use my readers email list as a marketing tool. Rather, I see it as a mutual networking tool for me and my readers/friends. This is my network of readers/friends, whose emails I would only use if and when I want to announce some big personal news, such as a new ebook or speaking engagement, that might be of real interest to them. And, they are welcome to do the same with me. That’s it. The email medium is more private than blog posts that can be viewed by all, even casual passersby who are not interested in such personal messages.

We don’t like to be harassed to buy and do all kinds of stuff just because we signed up for a free ebook, monthly newsletter, or anything else without realizing we were going to be bombarded with unsolicited ads and notices. We don’t care if everyone else is doing it, we don’t expect that kind of treatment from our best friends.

2. How to Handle Comments

If you allow comments on your blog, do you treat the viewers/readers who leave any as you would yourself or your best friend? Would you like to be thanked for your time and effort? Would you like a thoughtful answer if you asked any questions? Would you be pleased if the blogger took at least as much time to respond to your comment as you did to write it? I know I would be pleased! Which is why I do all of these things for my readers who have commented kindly on my blog, each of whom I appreciate very much and strive never to take for granted!

By the same token, in order to take great care of your “good” viewers/readers, you must weed out and delete all comments that do not give good value to your loyal viewers/readers and, therefore, do not add to the overall purpose of your blog:

a. SPAM COMMENTS: Designed to make viewers/readers click on links taking them directly to internet pages—sometimes fake blogs—set up to sell products/services or to earn the “blogger” money from the disproportionately high number of ads on the “blog” compared to the paltry content, if any, provided for viewers/readers.

b. INTERNET TROLLS: Commenters who try to post controversial, irrelevant, or off-topic messages just for the heck of it. They’re annoying to your regular viewers/readers, so don’t let them hijack your comments and take over your blog.

c. INAPPROPRIATE LANGUAGE: Offensive language in an otherwise acceptable comment can make the entire comment unacceptable. I don’t want to put words into anyone’s mouth, or take any words out, either, by editing others’ comments (not even for typos or grammatical errors), so I am left with only two choices: post it or delete it. So, if a comment contains too much profanity, I simply delete it.

3. Keep Your Promises

In the blogging business, as with all businesses, there is an exchange of goods or services between the blogger (business) and the viewer/reader (customer/client). For a supermarket and its customers, the exchange is clear: the goods for sale in the store are exchanged for specific amounts of cash from the customer.

What is the exchange between your blog and your viewers/readers? You provide lots of quality content to your viewers/readers free of charge in exchange for their loyal following. How do they show their loyalty? They sign up for your RSS feed, view/read all your new posts, provide links to their favorite posts from their own blogs if they have any, and generally spread the word by saying good things about your blog. Not too different from any other type of business. If you like a new TV show, you become a fan, watch it whenever you can, and tell others about it.

Now, what would happen if you went to your supermarket and they suddenly stopped carrying all your favorite items? Or, what if they changed all their prices without notice? Or, how about if they kept changing their look, procedures, or employees without any apparent reason? I’ll bet you’d find another supermarket to give your business to—real quick—even if you had to drive further away to do it!

Did your supermarket ever formally promise you to not do those things? No. But there was an implicit trust and understanding between you and your supermarket that as long as they kept doing the things that made you go there in the first place—or doing them even better!—you would keep giving them your business. If a store does whatever it wants whenever it wants without regard to its customers, it violates the trust of its customers—which means it will soon have no customers.

Think of your blog as a supermarket of images or information that you are providing for your customers, your viewers/readers. The implicit trust and understanding is that you will continue to provide the same quality of images/information—or better!—to them on your blog in exchange for their repeat business, their continued loyalty. This is yet another reason to think carefully about the kind of blog you want to start. If you choose to start a blog about an area that you are not truly passionate about (see “Content is King! What Does that Mean?“), chances are you won’t want to produce content for it, day in and day out, for at least 5 years.

For example, if you start a blog about, say, cute cat photos, be sure to keep blogging about that very limited topic in order to keep your implicit promise to your viewers who have grown to love your blog exactly as it is. You might be able to get away with adding, say, cute dog photos once in a while to mix things up, but your loyal cute cat photos viewers won’t be happy if you stray too far from your original promise. Best to start a new blog about cute dog photos if that’s your new passion; but, keep your first blog true to its original vision. Whatever you implicitly promise your viewers/readers (number, quality, length of posts; theme, layout, color scheme of blog; or, your own personality as presented on your blog—sense of humor, style of writing, set of morals or other beliefs, etc.), keep your promises!

4. Tell the Truth

Nothing kills a friendship faster than a lie exposed. When you find out that your best friend deliberately lied to you for no good reason, how could you ever trust that person again? The answer is, “You couldn’t.” And, neither can your viewers/readers trust you if you deliberately mislead them and they find out. So, either be 100% sure they’ll never find out (which you can never be), or don’t deliberately mislead them. I take the easier route, which is the second choice.

5. Don’t Make Excuses—Apologize and Make Amends

If your best friend is upset with you, what should you do? Listen carefully to them, asking questions as needed, to make sure you understand what you did that upset them. Then, if you believe you did something wrong, first, apologize sincerely without making any excuses. You can explain the circumstances if that helps; but no excuses. (If you do not believe you did anything wrong, but merely made a mistake, at least admit you made a mistake.) Second, make a specific offer to make amends. By “specific,” I mean state exactly what you would like to do and when to make things right again between the two of you. If they accept your offer—which is your second chance—whatever you do, don’t blow it! You won’t get a third!

How does this apply to blogging? Every possible way you can imagine. Bloggers are human, too. We make mistakes. We make poor decisions. We have bad days. We may neglect our posts/emails/comments. Or, we might try new things that are not in the best interest of our readers. When this happens, the only acceptable solution is to simply—and quickly—admit fault, accept responsibility, and make amends.

If you’ve neglected to keep up with your previous frequency or quality of posts, fess up to that and make a new sincere promise based on what you truly believe you can and will deliver from now on. If you can’t keep such a promise, then don’t make it. Promises you can’t keep are worse than no promises at all. Be true to yourself first, then you can be true to your readers. No, third or fourth chances!

CONCLUSION

Remember, always treat your viewers or readers like you would like to be treated in the same situation, or like you would treat your very own, beloved best friend.

If you would like your own copy of Rainmaker someday, here’s what it looks like.

[For “FBO: Viewers Don’t Care About Your Problems,” click here.]

[For entire “FBO” or “For Bloggers Only” series, click here.]

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