People have the habit of complaining about products and services online. When the complaints are relevant and an apology is needed, company representatives often post them on the blog where the initial problem was revealed. While some are great and solve the problem while both gaining the support and admiration of the blogger in question, others fail. After looking into a few of these apologies and trying to understand where people most commonly go wrong, I have rediscovered the art of writing effective replies to people’s problems.

But before I start, if you’re wondering why you should apologize in the first place, it’s because news travels fast online, if the problem is significant, there are great chances more people will complain and all that negativity will pop up when potential customers look you up online. You shouldn’t apologize for nonsense and give credibility to shady bloggers and nonexistant issues, but when the problem is real, you need to solve it, apologize for the inconvenience and let people know it has all been taken care of.

Here are a few tips for writing apologies that will help your company and not worsen the situation instead:

1. Recognize the problem and give it due consideration

Some apologies fail because while they say the “I’m sorry”, they fail to focus on the problem and the discomfort experienced by the customer. Instead, they rush through the apology and the unpleasant situation and focus on what the customer should have done, the proper channels to report the problem and how they can solve future problems. This is all wrong because if you’re replying, it’s clear the online piece of posting has reached its goal of making the issue known. Writing an apology that says this is not the right way and you won’t do much about it makes you look bad!

Instead, show sympathy for what they went through and recognize there was a problem on your side. Don’t try to cover it up with procedure mambo-jumbo.

2. Carefully explain what’s being done to solve the problem

Make sure your reply statement focuses on what you’re doing, not what should have happened when the customer noticed the issue. You may say it’s an unusual behavior, but focus on how you’re going to fix it, not how this is not typical for your company. The person in question won’t care, and those reading or following them won’t either. They will sit quietly and wait to see how you handle it and what you plan on doing.

3. If there’s a better way to report issues, express it while showing empathy

Don’t rush into listing 5 ways in which the customer should have reported the problem. Yes, it’s important for them to know they could have solved things faster, but make this part a side note and ask them nicely to follow your procedure in the future, never try to force it on them. They need to see why they should go through the trouble of doing as you ask rather than publish an angry status on Facebook, for example. Focus on the benefits of complaining to you directly and not to the world – quicker replies, professional assistance etc.

4. If you’re offering free stuff, don’t make it look like a bribe

Some freebies might seem like a good idea for a quick getaway. But if it looks like you’re trying to buy them, it will backfire. Make it sound like what it really is: compensation for the trouble they’ve been through, for the time they’ve wasted, etc. It has to be clear that this isn’t just a way to make the problem disappear, you will still deal with it, solve it and make sure it won’t happen again.

And here comes the most important part:

5. Write it like you mean it!

You might follow all my prior suggestions and you might still fail because you can’t make the person you’re addressing feel like you really mean what you say. They need to feel you really are sorry, you realize they are pumping money into your company and that you need them, while they can choose someone else, and that you actually are going to look into the issue and get it all sorted out. The apology needs to sound personal and genuine, not a cold piece of corporate writing that gets posted as a reply to all online complaints.

Have you written or received apologies? What’s your take on the subject and which are the tips and tricks you’ve discovered?

If there is one thing I’ve learned about PR is that there’s always something new to learn. And you find lessons in all possible places, such as learning about word of mouth from stray dogs. One of the best resources for new things to learn are your clients. While working with them, you’ll discover PR mistakes and PR goldmines. You will brainstorm and get to implement ideas that you’d never considered possible.

But while this is obvious, the link to knowledge run deeper. When you work with a client for a longer period, you get to know their partners and their clients. You learn about their issues, the mistakes they made and what they did that worked as a charm. If they come from different parts of the world, you will be receiving extremely valuable tips on intercultural communication.

So when you’re getting ready for your next meeting with your client, their customers or their partners, remember to keep your eyes and years open. I for one have learned a lot about crisis management from clients who’ve never been through a crisis, but whose target market was prone to PR disasters

What valuable PR and marketing lessons have you learned from your clients, your partners or from people you’ve worked with?

The purpose of pitching a story is to get coverage for it. That means that if someone offers to write about the topic you’ve proposed and asks for the product you mentioned or simply for more info, you need to reply to their emails. Not keeping track of who you’ve pitched to is a bad idea in such a case. Especially if instead of following up, you resend the same pitch and fail to reply to the second inquiry.

If you don’t know how to keep track, here’s a simple idea: get a list of names and emails of people to contact. As you send your message to them, mark them in a different color. If they reply and need more info, use a third color. It’s easy and a bit playful. And if you’re good at mixing colors, it looks good too.

Following up is a must. For both those who have shown interest and for those who’ve not replied. Those interested will actually publish after you give them what they need to do so and a friendly reminder with some interesting details might help others decide to publish your story in the end.

Why is this such an important matter? As it happens, lots of pitches are released in the wild – as a recent comment by Karen Swim also shows – and bloggers’ emails are never replied to. For example, yours truly received an email asking her to review a business book. The book seemed interesting enough, so I replied, asking for a copy. Of course I never got one. Judging by the semi-standard message, I wasn’t the only one who received that email. And  I can bet I wasn’t the only one not to get a proper reply. Which translates into missed opportunities.

Pitching is not always a single-action task. Sometimes you need to follow up, provide more information, be able to answer additional questions. In all honesty, most times it’s not as easy as just sending out an email. If you’re not going to seize all opportunities and focus on getting as much coverage as possible, don’t do it in the first place. You’re not only missing out on something really good, you’re also making sure you get yourself and your client one of those nasty, negative  images.

In need of Marketing and Public Relations advice and services? Check us out and get in touch! We can definitely help!

What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

The first week of spring is officially here and we have some chirpy blog posts for you to read. How you find them as inspiring and energizing as a sunny spring day.

Drew McLellan shared some amazing marketing insight after learnign a few tricks from a dog whisperer. Now that I’ve read the lessons, Drew, could you be so kind as to teleport the dog whisperer here, I think I need some help with my lab!

The newest, coolest thing when going to a conference is to live tweet it. So how exactly do you effectively present to a room full of tweeting birds? The answer comes from Tamar Weinberg on Pistachio.

Do you want a custom design for your blog? I know I did and my dream came true. But before you imlement this project of yours, please stop to consider a few issues explained by Alex Cristache of Blogsessive.

Stuart Bruce discussed PR, SEO and the fact that public relations, while employing quite a lot of search engine optimization, is not really about SEO, it’s about reputation.

We’re all obsessing about elevator pitches. While doing so, Frances Cole Jones, guest writer at Women on Business, point out that we overlook the importance of the FAQ page and the great results such a page can deliver.

What do you do when you want to launch a new product or service and have no idea what customers would think of it? Daniel Secareanu suggest the simplest and best solution: ask your customers.

You’ve all seen your share of teasers before something new hits the market. Michael Martine of Remarkablogger shows us how to get an audience drooling for a blog that doesn’t exist yet. His approach seems a lot more effective than a criptic add!

Google rankings involve a lot of things. It’s a secret recipe everyone’s after. And one of the reason no one has discovered it yet is that it’s learning and adapting to new tricks. Aaron Wall noticed a new trend: Google started placing heavy emphasis on branding.

When organizing an event, keeping the audience interested and excited about it is critical. Barbara Rozgonyi shares 9 ways to keep events alive with social media.

And we’re closing this week’s edition with a business puzzle from Corina Saceanu. Where’s the money?

What great posts have you run across last week? Please share them in the comment box!

The moment you start getting more traffic on your blog, those harvesting it for their own petty interests will show up instantly: spam commentators and trackbacks of doubtful quality. While comment moderation is something most bloggers are paying attention to, as it is easy to implement and dedicated plugins make it a bliss, there’s a different story for trackbacks.

First because having your blog quoted on a different site generally means your writing is appreciated and spread among new readers. Most of the times it comes from blogs with common interests, from bloggers who just happened to run into your article and love it or from friends helping you out in your promoting endeavors. Plus, if it’s a quote and if it gives proper credit, there’s no harm done!

But there are two types of link-backs I’ve ran across that can harm a blog more than you can imagine. And there are two things you can look for when trying to prevent such mischievous usage of your content:

• what quote is really linked to your name or blog name
• what else the blogger posts on the page where you’re quoted

Why is this important, you might wonder? I’ll share my experiences with you to better explain my point.

Case 1: What was it that I wrote about again?

I do keep an eye on recent links to my blog. I think it’s nice to visit those reading my blog and to thank them for the link love. It’s also a good way to catch little thieves. So one day I wanted to get to know this blogger who had just linked to one of my posts. Imagine my surprise when I saw my blog was credited for an article that had nothing to do with me, while stating that someone.com had written my own post. The quote and link technically matched, but practically the wrong name was misleading. I googled that .com person to find out their content was stolen in the same manner and that they had written the post I was credited to. And this practice was repeated for all posts I found on that blog

I left a comment on the thief’s blog, asking to have my blog linked to the proper content. I also alerted a few other bloggers about what was happening. I deleted their trackback from the post in question, but I don’t think any of this stopped them from stealing content.

Case 2: Inappropriate content posted along with the excerpt and the trackback

I have been managing a niche security blog for a while now. One of my more popular articles was one day quoted by another blog. Looking at the blog link, I first thought it might be a legitimate blog, as it appeared to also be covering security, but from a different angle. But when I followed the link to read a few posts, I found some rather upsetting content. Before getting to the actual quote, I had to get through a dozen thumbnails of videos of people fighting. Judging by the snapshots, they looked pretty cruel. Not to mention that their headlines were racist.

While I can’t do much about them linking to my article, I can make sure I don’t send any traffic their way! But I still am bothered by the fact that posts I worked hard on are associated with amateur videos of people with extremely violent interests.

Why Does This Happen so Often?

Not all blogs use moderation for trackbacks. And if the number of such back links is high, they are harder to monitor. That means these leech-blogs have lots of incoming traffic. The only proper measure to take is to make sure we all double check trackbacks. If no traffic is heading their way, they will need to change tactics. I am not naive enough to believe they’d suddenly have principles and act on them. But I do think it will make it harder to take advantage of other’s efforts and reputation.

I am sure there are not the only two ways to harm blogs through trackbacks. Are there any resembling situation you’ve ran into and we should all be aware of? If so, feel free to share them here.

Picture this! You find out about or stumble upon a really great new blog. You read a few articles and really like them. One of them is actually on a topic you’ve heard of before and were anxious to talk about with someone else. So you go to the comment box and try to post your thoughts. And then it happens: you’re asked to sign in. No matter how cool the blog is, your online time is still limited, creating accounts leads to profiles and to other steps you have to skip. What do you do? Sing in or click away?

I usually click away. If the blog really interests me, I’ll add it to my reader, but I won’t comments, so half of what’s so great about blogs, instant conversation, exchanging opinions and building connections, is completely lost. So here’s a list of reasons not to ask your readers to sign in before commenting:

1. You waste to much of their time. Yes, they only have to register once, but given yours is not the only blog they’ll ever discover, overall it’s too much.
2. While worrying about the password and ID and possibly confirming they account, they might be loosing interest in the actual comment and just click away.
3. It makes you look lazy as moderating comments is not that difficult, especially if you have the additional plugins. The alternative is that you give yourself way too much importance, and in some cases that’s worse.
4. Because it is quite annoying at times.

Conclusion: I really don’t want to create profiles for half the blogs I interact with. And I am not alone. So I recommend moderation instead wih all my heart