As taste, needs and standards differ from one person to the next, having everyone appreciate a company or product or person is impossible. At a point or another, negative comments are about to emerge, via email, via the phone or publicly as comments to web sites, blogs and articles about a certain business or business person published on outlets allowing readers to post their opinions. Some are caused by something we did, others just come from differences of opinion.

There are many ways to address negative comments, depending on what triggers them, who and where posts them and each and every company’s strategy. But regardless of how we respond to negative comments – explaining a situation or its circumstances, challenging the person who authored the comment, apologizing or trying to change the subject, knowing when to just let go, be the bigger person and move on is also very important. Continue reading

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When it comes to social media, a lot of things don’t happen simply because people are afraid to ask for them. You don’t get enough stumbles or tweets or shares on Facebook, your questions go unanswered, and you think it is because people don’t like you or your content enough. The truth is that people might just not see a certain tweet or blog post from you. Most of us follow several blogs and accounts and have our own work to worry about. As much as we try, we miss out on a lot of important things in this information overloaded virtual world of ours.

If it’s something important that you would like to share with the world, why not ask your community for help? If they follow you, that’s because they find what you have to say interesting. They have retweeted and shared your thoughts before, so why not ask them to do it again?  Continue reading

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Guest blogging is one of the best ways to get a blog or website known and target new audiences, we all agree with that. Welcoming guest posters is also a great way to provide fresh content to your readers and target the crowds the invited author already appealed to. By analyzing these two sides of the guest blogging scene, you can easily tell this is a win-win promotion practice.

No wonder it has spread throughout the blogosphere and it has created a need for the proper tools! A while back I wrote about the launch of My Blog Guest, a place where guest posters and blog owners could meet, connect and see how they could help each other out. It looked promising and I decided to try out Ann Smarty’s project and see for myself how it worked. Continue reading

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We did not need a new report to know that a well written customer review of our products or services is clearly more effective than a poorly written one. We did need to know though, that negative, but smart and well written negative reviews have a better impact on future buyers, creating trust, when compared to positive messages from customers that cannot write correctly. With the announcement of this finding, along came a renewed debate on whether it was OK for PR professionals to edit reviews.

Of course we would all love it if we could log in anywhere online and edit all customer reviews even if all we could change was their spelling. But once you edit, the authenticity of the comment in question is not a given anymore. And as there have been some many rumors, accusations and sometimes evidence of PR companies faking customer reviews, the line we’re walking is extremely fragile.  Continue reading

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I have recently ran across some articles about the cost of press releases. While the authors were throwing numbers and averages, no one took the time to also explain what you actually pay for. A press release costs X amount is a limited way of putting it. What does that price refer to in the end? Here are a few things you should consider when analyzing the price of a press release:

You pay for press release writing

The actual press release has to be written by someone. Unless you already have the text, you pay for the service of having a public relations professional writing it for you. Or editing and rewriting it if you have a rough draft of what you want to say. Continue reading

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