This Will Go on Your Permanent Record…Conducting Yourself On-line

Today’s post is a general, but very important, aspect of running a successful business online. That aspect is: How you conduct yourself in your online transactions in places where customers could be (are!) watching.

Of course, good customer service is essential to a successful business. However, that is not what I’m talking about here. I am talking about your social life on-line.

Most likely (hopefully) if you sell online, you are active in a forum or two, write for a blog, maybe have a myspace page, comment on other blogs or have other areas where you publicly interact (on-line). As I’ve talked about in the Drive Traffic to Your Site series, this is good for business. That is, unless you conduct yourself in a way that people won’t want to interact with you or worse yet, buy from you.

Arguing, gossiping, insulting and just having an overall negative attitude is a sure-fire way to lose customers. And yes, your customers read the forums that you post in. And yes, your customers read your blog, hopefully.

Think about forums and blogs that you read. What is your reaction when you read someone complaining or being highly opinionated on a topic where you feel the opposite way? How likely are you to buy from them? That doesn’t mean their work is undesirable but we are human and we are wired to align with those whom we agree and distance ourselves from those whom we don’t. The best bet is to minimize your behavior that will cause the latter.

Now, I’m not telling you to not be yourself. We all have opinions…some of us stronger than others. We all have bad days…some worse than others. We all have customers that can be difficult. Shoot, we may have even been the difficult customer and spouting out about it at some point.

What I am telling you, is to bite your tongue in public (on-line).

Here’s another analogy: Imagine walking in a store (online forum) where an artist (forum member) is having a trunk sale. All the artist (forum member) is doing is talking about the terrible customer they dealt with last week, or another artist that makes really average work but gets a high dollar, or how much they love or hate the politicians in office right now. Does that make you want to buy something? Or ask where they’re teaching next? Does it make you want to interact with that person? Perhaps if you agree with everything they are saying you will align with them and maybe buy something. But consider, that for every person that agrees there is probably one that disagrees. That equals 50% chance of customer loss.

This holds true online. And worse yet…on line it goes on your permanent record. Your words are archived forever. Working for lawyers for years I learned to not put things into writing that didn’t need to be put into writing. Not that I always adhere to it but it’s a rule that I try to live by.

When you’re having a bad day or someone has done you wrong it would be so easy to go blog about it and you sure would feel better. Or to go to a forum and have someone to commiserate with. But remember, in 24 hours or a week or longer, you may look back and wish you wouldn’t have written what you did. And also remember, if your name or web site is attached to your identity online, people can/will search you and those things will appear in their search.

Basically, what I’m saying is, don’t spout out publicly if you can help it. If online communication is your only outlet, use email, private message, instant message or pick up the phone and call someone. Also remember though that those things can be forwarded to other people or published in any forum. If you love to blog, write it in a word processor and don’t publish it. Sometimes just writing will help you feel better.  Use the 24 hour rule and don’t publish or email for 24 hours when you’re feeling negative.

There is also, always, another side. There are people out there that do all of these things and are very successful in their businesses. (I do ask you to consider how many of them there are compared to those who aren’t that way). If you still choose to take the route opposite of which I write, you better have killer work and marketing genius because your job will be twice as hard…or half as successful as it could be.

Remember, you can be charismatic, entertaining and engaging without being controversial but it’s also true that no publicity is bad publicity. As always, the decision is yours and I hope to provide food for thought. So what are your thoughts? Have you ever thought about this? Leave a comment!

Tagged as: forums