Yes, common sense! What we should really take for granted is becoming as rare as miracles. People are so hasty in pushing their own agenda that there’s no time for courtesy, for being nice instead of completely selfish and oblivious of the fact you’re addressing a human being.

Never mind the poor texts sent through email, blog comments and all other channels. Never mind the “what’s in it for me part”! That’s a whole other level of refinement. I really mean the basics of social interaction. Like saying hello, using someone’s name, saying thank you and goodbye. Yes, I am talking about making that other person feel a bit more valuable than just a blog name and an email address you’ve just ticked on a long xls file.

This is becoming so rare, it scares me. OK, you have no time to look for my name, although you can see it on every post I publish. I get the pressure of long to-do lists. But use a ” Hello” or a “Hi” or just “Good morning”! Thank me for allotting 5 minutes of my time to your email or message, then drop a copy/paste line such as “Best regards” or “Have a great afternoon!”.

Either PR people lack all common courtesy skills, or they think bloggers are vane, sub-human creatures that don’t need hellos, but need their ego-boosting pat on the back. Something like saying you chose them because they rank well on some fairly popular site. By the way, try to use a site they actually show up as top dogs on!

I tend to believe it’s the first theory, because such thoughtless messages are also sent to journalists, business partners, customers and whoever else they might come in contact with, not just to bloggers! I understand the fast-paced, Internet-bound world we’re living in has turned us into creatures talking in text message and instant messaging slang. But even on Twitter and messenger we stop to say hello!

Let’s return to the basics! Let’s be nice and thoughtful, act like human beings and have a tidbit of common sense! It’s good PR

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I have never been against people attempting to make money online. On their blog, on their Twitter account, it really does not bother me. If I like their content and their way of thinking, I trust them to make interesting recommendations and to post ads that won’t make me run away.

The trouble begins when people are so wrapped up with making some money that they forget all about their brand in the process. All bloggers, business or not, work hard to promote their blog, to position it and build a brand for it. And then when they have enough traffic they want to have some income in exchange for their hard work. But why kill your blog’s brand for a few bucks when you could get said money without loosing trust and readers?

If you want to advertise, advertise something related to your blog or that might interest your readers. If you talk about web hosting, you can advertise designers, web copywriting services and other such services. But if you start promoting a teeth whitening formula, you’d lose. Why is it a bad decision? It makes you look easy to buy and a bit desperate. People who read about web hosting don’t care about teeth whitening in their web hosting dedicated time. They might want to read about it on the beauty/health/make your self pretty blog they read every day.

The purpose behind monetizing your blog or twitter stream is to actually make money! You need to find the products and services that would make your readers click. They have to think you had a great idea recommending something like that to them. They would have to trust you with that recommendation. Your expertise is part of what convinces them to give that ad/review or any other form of advertorial a second thought. That’s what brings you more money at the end of the day.

Yes, branding is tough. But the advertisements you choose actually help shape your brand. They position you in your niche to some extent. Choose to say your brand helps people and makes expert recommendations. Not that your brand couldn’t care less and would promote anything for the right price.

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Sometimes we are reminded of the big secrets in the business world by what appears to be the most unrelated situation. My house is fairly new, some of the residential complex is still being built and it’s quite empty most of the time. As it happens to any construction site, stray dogs come and never leave. No one is working right now, because of the weather, so no one can feed these dogs. They are starving and one of them keeps visiting me.

So what could I do? Feed her (I discovered it’s a girl), of course. But real and quite a lots of dog food was required; luckily I had help . She kept coming and then other dogs showed up. I now have three that come by at least once a day. And my friends pointed out how word spread when the dogs started enjoying a good meal.

And then it hit me. When building a WOM strategy, we think of engaging customers, of enabling them to better spread the word, reach the online communities and help them discover our products or services. This is wrong because we should always start with a question: Is our client satisfied? If it’s yes, spreading the word will be easy.

Customer satisfaction should always be the number one priority. Making what they have to say known always comes second. Simply because you really don’t want your customers to say „Oh, well, they’re ok, most of the times!” You want them to say awesome, great, or legendary when they speak of you. Don’t you?

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The pressure is killing us, I know. Our clients want something done yesterday and all at the same time. I know it’s hard completing everything on time and making it perfect. But like it or not, the devil is in the details! So stop focusing on the major ideas only and pay attention to details as well. The reason is simple: not doing it and making little mistakes slip in makes you look sloppy! No one will care that you were all tired and stressed and the phone was ringing non stop. They will only care that you had typos in every paragraph of the text you have delivered.

I’ve happened to come across quite a few invitations, press releases and announcements, all hurried and sloppy-looking. Typos, text format inconsistencies, important details not mentioned, overlooking negative meanings that could be linked to a whole event concept, poorly chosen locations, you name it, they’ve got it! And this makes the PR people behind it look really bad, although they are quite good at what they do.

But coming up with the plan is one thing, implementing and delivering it is another. And the great ones do all of these steps perfectly. Think of it this way: your press release, your advertorial, your event invite, your email might get to your future customer. They won’t care about anything but the fact that their name might be misspelled in your next press release. Or that their event name will be trashed online. And they won’t be there to listen to excuses.

We’ve all been there and overlooked something. Have we all learned from it? Are we all paying more attention to such aspects? Unfortunately, no… But we could start today!

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