Your web site visitors can be manipulated. Indeed, successful web sites do this with great care. They lure you in, almost hypnotically, and get you to do whatever it is they want, such as buy something from them.

Copywriting expert Joe Vitale is the pioneer of "hypnotic writing" in which he suggests the use of words to help "hypnotise" your readers into doing your bidding. Imagine that - being able to get your web site readers to do whatever it is you want.

True enough, the words are important, but the "whole package" you present to people also makes a difference as to whether or not they are going to be persuaded by your material. And make no mistake - your web site's job is to persuade people. It might be an obvious bit of persuasion, as in getting them to buy something. Or it might be more subtle, such as convincing your readers you are an expert.

Recent research suggests that the pictures that accompany your text are also part of the persuasion package. This study looked at how people perceived popular media stories on psychology. When a picture of a brain scan accompanied the story, the information was given more credibility by the readers. In other words, they were more persuaded by what they read because of the "scientific" image that accompanied the text.

This suggests that people have an expectation of the kind of image that "accurately" portrays a subject. That expectation may be stereotypical, but it is there. So, if you own a web site and you try to sell from it, or persuade people of your views, how much attention do you pay to the choice of pictures and other images?

It may well be that by choosing images without much thought, you are having a negative impact on your likely sales. Once you know the kind of pictures that your audience will find more trustworthy and which add credibility to your subject matter, then the more likely it is that you will persuade your web site's readers to accept your position.

Often, imagery is down to the design team - but how well do they know the images your audience expects? By choosing images that look good - but which don't connect in the right way with your readers, you could actually be reducing your sales potential.

Joe Vitale is right that we can be almost hypnotically persuaded by words; it appears that pictures also play a part in our beliefs. That means if you spend lots of money on getting the copy right on your web site, you probably also need to spend similar amounts on getting the pictures right.

Oh, by the way, did you notice the "scientific" image at the start of this article? Subtly that has made it more likely that you will accept my point of view.

Labels: internet, internet marketing, internet psychology

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Researchers at the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California have just published their report on the consequences and benefits of children going online. However, embedded within the report are some interesting facts that every online business needs to think about.

Firstly, the annual study shows a dramatic shift upwards in the use of "online communities" of all kinds. Plus it reveals the kind of online groups that people are joining. Even though "social networking" sites are popular, the researchers have discovered that the most popular online communities are those related to specific hobbies.

What this tells us should not be news, really, but it is...! Internet users are interested in specifics - not generalities (as the graph above shows - taken from the research web site). If you are a train spotter you want to join a group of like-minded train spotters, not a general group of people and then have to hunt for the train spotters.

In other words, the Facebook model of all things to all people is clearly not pleasing the majority. Add to that the recent revelation of a loophole in the security at Facebook and you might begin to think its days are numbered. Perhaps they are. However, if they take the example of Ecademy, things should be OK.

Ecademy continues to thrive because it is focused and because of its huge network of topic specific clubs. They may not be "hobbies" as the USC study suggested, but it points to the fact that social networking's future lies in ever more specific groups, rather than general groups.

So what does this mean for online businesses? It suggests that you need to set up, or take part in, relevant clubs. Say, for instance, you were a mobile phone manufacturer. Where would you put help information? On your own web site? Yes, but where are people looking for such information? Well, not on your web site. Instead, as the research shows, people are beginning to get focused on the community nature of the Internet.

So if I were a mobile phone manufacturer I'd have a user group for each model on Facebook, I'd have a club for my users who happen to be Ecademy members, I'd go along to Marzar and upload some documents and set up a group. In other words, rather than trying to get your people to come to you, use social networks to go to your people.

Far too many business web sites are standing on the sidelines trying to attract people over to them. The problem is, those people are much more interested in what they are doing. If you want to get their business, you have to go over to them. And they are spending increasing amounts of time in social networks and topic specific groups and forums. So that's where your business needs to be as well.

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You will make more money if you get inside each customer's head; really get inside and start to think exactly like they think. We all know that marketing is about providing what people want, but new research, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that we need to do much more than simply finding out basic needs and desires.

Psychologists in Chicago at Northwestern University looked at the comparative value of empathy and perspective taking. Their investigations showed that during negotiating sessions, those individuals who showed empathy towards their "opponents" were less successful than those who undertook "perspective taking".

Empathy is not enough online
In psychological terms, empathy means the ability to have an emotional connection to someone, to be able to gauge their feelings and react appropriately. That might seem sensible for sales people and for anyone trying to negotiate. Indeed, you'll find plenty of sales training material suggesting that you work on your empathy.

But the researchers discovered that "perspective takers" had much more successful negotiations. Those people who can perform "perspective taking" are able to consider a situation from someone else's viewpoint. It is much more than empathy, which merely deals with emotion. Perspective taking allows you to think like your opponent. When you do this, you are considerably more successful than merely being empathetic.

So what does this tell us as Internet Marketers? It suggests that simply knowing what your customers want and connecting with them emotionally is nowhere near enough to be sure of selling. Instead, you need to see your web site and all your sales materials, emails and so on, from the customer perspective.

Connect with your customers
And how can you achieve that? It means you have to really, really, really get to know your customers. Talk to them, ask them questions, find out as much as you can about them. Be with them, go where they go, join the clubs they join. The more you understand your customers and the more you connect with them the more you will be able to start thinking like them. And once you do that, you can take their perspective, resulting in more sales.

Labels: internet, internet marketing, internet psychology

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Trainers are available on all sorts of Internet subjects. Want to learn how to do "SEO" (search engine optimisation)? well, there's a course on it. Like to discover how to "monetise" your web site? There's a course on that too. Perhaps you'd really like to learn about corporate blogging. Well, guess what, you can have a training course for all your staff on that as well.

However, new research on obstetricians confirms what I've long suspected - that training courses themselves are of little effect on their own. The study, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine shows us that training courses had little impact on the practice of doctors.

From old to new
Here's what they did. The researchers wanted to see how doctors changed their practice from the "old ways" to better, more modern methods. In one group of hospitals, everyone was put through their paces on a training course. A second group merely had one doctor who was trained who then had to "spread the word".

It turned out that where "spreading the word" was four times more effective in getting a change in practice than training everyone. So why might that be? Two reasons. Firstly, the message was delivered via a "social network" of peers, making it seem more "natural". Secondly, the new information was delivered by someone the doctors knew and trusted - one of "them", rather than some unknown trainer.

The implications of this study should not be underestimated. We learn more from our peers and our social groups than we might think. Indeed, think about how you learned about numbers. Was it at school? Or was it as a toddler with your Mum singing songs like "one two three four five, once I caught a fish alive" and counting out Lego bricks with you? Numbers are learned socially. How did you learn language - in a classroom, or by learning from those around you? Yes, you've guessed it - socially.

Improving your online business
So what does this all mean for your Internet plans? The study suggests yThe same is true for what we learn about the Internet and how to apply it in our business. We discover more things by talking with our peers and colleagues about running an online business than you ever might in a formal training course.

ou need to mix with other businesses doing the same as you. Go to networking groups in your industry; make sure you are in all the relevant associations and club, join online social networking groups, like the Internet Marketing Club, to share your knowledge. Social learning is much more likely to have an impact on your business performance than formal training.

Labels: internet, internet psychology, social networking

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At May 02, 2008 2:26 PM  Abhishek said…

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Your friends like you; honest, trust me, they do. If they didn't like you, then you wouldn't like them and, hey, you wouldn't be friends. Web sites are the same; if they demonstrate they like you - by providing exactly what you are after - then you like them. It's simple really, give your audience what they want and you are home and dry.

So, why oh why is that so few web sites do that? They tell us all about themselves - and frankly, we couldn't give a stuff could we? Sign on at Amazon and the first thing you see is a list of books all suited to your personal preferences; the site is about you. Is there material about Amazon itself? Sure, but it's tucked away.

You see, Amazon knows about relationships. They know that to build a relationship you have to ask questions. Imagine how difficult it would be for you to get new friends if you were never able to ask people a question. It would be impossible. But you can't ask any old question. To build relationships you need to ask questions that allow people to provide you with information about themselves.

Amazon does this in subtle ways - you provide them information on your buying preferences, but also in answering their questions such as "do you want it gift wrapped?" They know from that whether you are a "fluffy" person or not - and that helps them direct the right kind of materials to you. In building friendships we do the same. We ask questions that help us create a picture in our mind of the kind of person we are dealing with.

So, tell me why today when I went to the Internet World exhibition at London's Earl's Court was I faced with so many people who were unable to ask me the right questions. The questions I received were useless in helping the exhibitors find out anything about me; as a result they were unable to build any kind of relationship with me.

For instance, if I got asked once I was asked a dozen times "are you looking for more traffic for your web site?". I answered "no" every time, at which point I was met with a stunned "oh" and a "well thank you anyway" before they moved off to the next victim. But what if I had been asked "how do you get people to come to your web site?". I have to give more information - and then they could enter into a dialogue with me about how they could help me get more of those kind of people.

I wandered around the exhibition for over two hours noting what was happening at each stand. Apart from the fact that most stands had almost no visitors (they were all at the various presentation "theatres"), most of the people wandering around were doing just that - wandering. When I did overhear people being accosted, just like me they were all asked completely closed questions, making it almost impossible for the exhibitor to build any form of relationship.

No doubt the exhibitors will go away with a huge pile of business cards and say it was an event worth going to. I doubt it - except for one company, Huddle. This is an online collaboration and project management system that incorporates social networking principles.

However, Jon Landau from Huddle was different to almost every other exhibitor I met. He asked me several open questions and engaged in conversation with me. In other words, he treated me as a human being rather than a "prospect". Interestingly, the Huddle stand was amongst the busiest; no surprise there.

Do I know if Huddle is better than its competitors? No. Do I think it is? Yes. How do I judge it? On the fact that the company, through Jon, engaged with me. And that's why most web sites do not work - they don't engage. Most web site are rather like those hapless exhibitors at today's Internet World, asking closed questions and letting me pass on by without engaging. That's what most of the world's Internet traffic does. It stumbles across a site, which asks "do you want to know about us?" - a lovely closed question to which we all say "no thanks". But the owners of those web sites measure their success in terms of the number of visitors they get, just like today's exhibitors counting business cards into the small wee hours. It's one measure, but not a very good one.

Far better for you to really engage with people. Not only do you get more business, but you get more recommendations. You might have noticed I spent a couple of hours in a large exhibition centre and only found one company to recommend. Now what does that tell you about the Internet World?

Labels: internet, internet marketing, internet psychology, social networking

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At May 02, 2008 8:53 AM  Mark Lee said…

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, claims today that the technology is merely in its infancy. It's almost 17 years since the first ever web site was published (6th August 1991), so you'd expect the web to be a spotty teenager.

The first British newspapers can be traced back to the 1620s, but they only really entered the "modern" world with colour printing in the 1990s, almost 400 years later. Who would have thought in 1620 that you would be able to print something in colour from a picture taken on the other side of the planet just a few hours later? So in age terms, 400 years on, newspapers have probably only recently entered adulthood themselves.

At any moment in history, people like to think they have all the answers, have solved all the problems and have advanced their technologies as far as they can go. Those first inventors of stone age tools probably were unable to predict the microchip. And so it is today; those of us heavily engaged with the Internet world like to think we are working with the latest technologies. Come back in 1,000 years and take a look...!

From the Stone Age to the Microchip
There is one problem, though. To get from stone age tools to the microchip took thousands of years; to get from hundreds of copies of flimsy black and white newspapers to their international production in colour took hundreds of years. But to go from an idea about hyperlinks to online shopping and downloadable products has taken less than 20 years. In other words, the development of Internet technologies is much more rapid.

So what does this mean for your business? It means that even though the web is in its infancy, you cannot afford to sit back and wait for it to mature. The changes that keep happening are taking place so rapidly that you need to keep up. Rather like a 5-year-old child nowadays - if they didn't mix with their friends and keep up to date on the world around them, they would stagnate into people who could not take part in society.

Your business is the same as that toddler. Take part, in full, in the Internet now and learn as much as you can every day about it. That way you will be able to grow with this infant. Stay on the sidelines and before you know it that child will have developed into something completely different and unpredictable - and your business won't know how to mix. Taking part with web technologies is no longer optional.

Labels: future, internet, internet psychology

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At May 01, 2008 3:56 PM  Kat said…

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Some people are avid social networkers and build up huge numbers of "connections" and "friends" online. Take a look at Thomas Power, the Chairman of Ecademy, for instance. He has over 15,000 contacts in Ecademy and almost as many in LinkedIn. Does he really know all those people? If you think he's in a fix, consider Ron Bates - LinkedIn's top networker who has almost 40,000 connections.

Facebook appears to limit the number of friends. Steve Hofstetter, for instance, managed to amass over 200,000 friends, but was cutback by Facebook to a puny 5,000. Charlie Rosenbury reportedly had a similar reduction in his friends list. These limits are probably more to do with the loads on Facebook's servers than anything else. But it does raise the question, why do people have so many connections and friends online?

You would have thought, for instance, that with all the hype about online social networking that teenagers would be avid networkers. Indeed, the media coverage would have us believe that MySpace and so on are full of spotty youths. However, a recent report on teens and social media suggests otherwise.

Networking teens are already social
The research behind the report shows some interesting facts, according to Dr John M. Grohol. He points out that only 6 out of 10 teenagers who use the Internet have a social networking profile. But digging deeper into the statistics he reveals a more interesting fact.

The teenagers who are the most connected and active in online social networks are also the most socially active offline. In other words, online social networking is not perceived as different. These individuals are "naturally" social and do social things online and offline.

You would have thought that spending ages on Facebook, MySpace and so on, the online social networkers would not have time to spend with their friends offline. But it seems the reverse is true. The more that people network online, the more time they spend with "real" people.

It was fascinating yesterday when I sparked a debate in Ecademy about going for quantity rather than quality in the online contacts you have. Some people were dubious about going for raw numbers. However, my anecdotal evidence is that the more social you are, the more success you have in several areas of life, including business. No, there's no science in this, just a hunch.

But take a look back at Thomas Power's numbers. He has tens of thousands of online contacts. Yet he is one of the busiest offline networkers I know, attending dozens of meetings each month. So is he, like the research suggests, naturally social? Certainly.

The evidence is mounting that online social networking is merely an extension of our natural inclination to want to be with other people, just for the sake of being with other people. Those individuals who see social networking as something different or just for teens are missing out. If you like meeting people offline, you will love it online. And if you like people and you have thousands of online connections, you will like it even more, because you will take the time to meet them, since you are naturally social.

Labels: internet psychology, social networking

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At April 29, 2008 9:50 AM  Rob Watson said…

At April 29, 2008 10:06 AM  Graham Jones said…

At April 29, 2008 11:46 AM  Maria Koletsi said…

At April 29, 2008 12:03 PM  Graham Jones said…

At April 29, 2008 2:03 PM  PennyPower said…

At April 29, 2008 3:09 PM  Graham Jones said…

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Teenagers write more now than ever before. Just think about it; when you were a teenager you probably only wrote at school, doing your homework and then on thank-you letters your Mum made you write. All your other communication was spoken.

But things have changed significantly and dramatically. Nowadays, teenagers write vast amounts. Not only do they write at school, they also write text messages, email messages, notes in social networking groups, blog postings, forum entries and so on. Teenagers have never communicated so much in writing.

And that means it is going to have a real impact on all our futures. What's revealing, according to a new report on teenage attitudes to writing, is that teenagers do not perceive all this written communication they do as writing. To them it is all just chatting to people.

Different writing styles
Indeed, most teenagers have different writing styles - one for their person to person communications worlds and another for formal writing at school. But the subtle perceptual change that writing online isn't writing means that the words on this page will be thought of differently depending on your age. And that means virtually every business online is going to have to adapt. As those teenagers enter the jobs market, they are going to find a disconnect between the kind of writing that all businesses engage in and the type of writing they perceive as the online norm.

Businesses need to write more informally to engage younger people - not to dumb anything down in any way, but to actually connect with them. Otherwise they will pass you by, ignore the jobs you have on offer and set up in competition with your business, engaging all those other people who no longer see writing as writing.

Teenagers love writing online, the report shows; and the fact they have an audience is a significant motivator in encouraging them to write more. But because they don't perceive it as writing, the online writing they will do is bound to be different to what someone my age is used to.

Adapt or die
Written communication has been much slower to change than the spoken word, which evolves rapidly. Now that teenagers have made the switch in thinking as to what constitutes written communication you can expect to see much more rapid changes in text based materials. And that means your business must adapt; otherwise you will be speaking a foreign language in your own country.

Labels: future, internet, internet psychology, social networking

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Bloggers are not special people, though if you look at some blogs you might be amazed at the output of these individuals; when do they sleep? Some bloggers write several very long articles each day; others blog with loads of little posts throughout the day. It seems as though all they do is blog.

Blogging brings your business several benefits, such as search engine visibility and use by the media to help with your publicity. However, when faced with the barrage of blogging from prolific authors it is somewhat off-putting. Indeed, whenever I speak with audiences about blogging, the most frequent question I get asked is about how often do you "need" to blog and if blogging is a daily activity, how on earth do you get so organised to be able to do that?

Having a constant stream of blogging ideas is something I have written about at ProBlogger. But even if you do produce loads of ideas, how do you physically write them? After all there other competing demands on your time.

The answer is in the way your brain functions. The cells of your brain work by connecting to each other. However, they also need to know is this an important connection or not. If you only blog occasionally, your brain cells can't get to grips with this activity. They're not told that blogging is important. So, your brain assumes it isn't - and the result is you only blog occasionally, which is worthless.

Your brain strengthens the connections between brain cells when the relevant activity is important. So how does your brain get the message that something is important? Repetition. The more times you do something, the stronger those connections become between the relevant brain cells. When those connections are strong, the associated activity becomes easier and is more memorable.

So, the way to ensure you blog every day is to strengthen the neural pathways associated with blogging. To do this, set a time in your diary that you can definitely make every day for the next three weeks. Then, every day, without fail, write a blog entry at the specified time each day.

After three weeks, your brain's blogging pathway will have been strengthened by "habituation". In other words you have made it a habit and your brain won't be able to stop doing it. Make blogging a habit and it then becomes so much easier to do. The problem for most people is they give up blogging after a few attempts and they haven't laid down those strong neural pathways. It would be a bit like having you first driving lesson over and over and over again. You managed to learn to drive a car because you had several lessons in quick succession.

Do the same for blogging; make it a habit by repetition and you'll be amazed how easy it becomes to blog every day. You just have to be strict with yourself in the first three weeks.

Labels: blogging, internet psychology

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Today is the worldwide (apparently) Earthday. You knew that this morning if you strolled along to Google to discover the logo had changed. In fact for every Earthday for the past seven years, Google has changed its logo in honour of Earthday.

The idea behind Earthday is to mobilise people to take action on the environment. But it is likely to have little impact. The day has had scant attention here in the UK and the British media hasn't rushed to cover the topic. And the reason why isn't hard to see.

All you need to do is visit the Earthday web site and you will see immediately that this so-called "global" day is really only taking place in the USA. It's rather like the "global series", which is a match between the USA and Canada. The American view of "worldwide" appears to mean it covers ALL of America...!

OK, I know, I'm being stereotypical. But, take a look at that Earthday web site. The phone number is a USA number and we are being urged to call our "representative" or "senator". But outside the USA, we don't have them. Equally, all the headlines at the bottom of the page are American, not global. Dig deeper into the site and you discover that there are international projects taking place and that over 1 billion people worldwide will be celebrating today's Earthday.

But, the immediate American focus of that front page means that instantly people elsewhere in the world think "this is not for me". In the fraction of a second people take to make their mind up about a web site, this one simply screams "I'm a page for Americans" - hence the rest of the world may look away.

You only have half a second to engage people and make them want to read more of your web site. If you are promoting a global environmental day and you want to attract international audiences, making your site so obviously American from the outset could work against you. Equally, if your web site needs to attract middle-aged builders or young women interested in knitting wools, make sure you site shouts out "this is for YOU". Attention spans are getting shorter and your site needs to make an immediate connection with your target audience.

Sadly, the Earthday site which has so much global potential signals it is only for Americans in that moment when people visit. Make sure your site sends out the appropriate signals for your target audience, otherwise you will lose business.

Labels: future, internet marketing, internet psychology, politics

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At April 23, 2008 9:02 AM  Rob Watson said…

At April 23, 2008 1:35 PM  Hjörtur Smárason said…

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Phil Calvert is a marketing expert who encourages everyone to market themselves "live" at seminars and other events. But he also says that blogging is the equivalent of live marketing because it places you in front of a large audience.

Indeed at an Ecademy event he explained to the 250-strong audience that social media of all kinds were now essential to anyone doing business. He went on to say that he is involved in over 30 different social networking groups and leads 50 different clubs on Ecademy. So it poses the question, when does Phil find time to do any work?

One person said to me at this event that she was far too busy working to do so much online social networking, blogging and group activities. So can you do too much online? How much time should you spend online compared with actually running your business?

Well, here's the rub. People like Phil have realised that the online world is the real world. People who claim that they are too busy running their business to do social networking are still thinking there is some kind of separation between the Internet and the "real world". But there isn't.

Online and offline have now merged; few people aged under 25 understand why older people think there is some kind of barrier between the two. To them, the Internet is "where it is at" because - well, just because.

In the good old days of business - the 1990s - there used to be armies of sales staff who travelled up and down the motorways simply knocking on doors and seeing people. Then, back in the office, there were account managers, who spent all day on the phone, simply chatting to customers making sure all was OK. There were also client liaison officers whose task was to keep people happy, that's all. Indeed, back in those good old days, bank managers spent most of their days just meeting customers, chatting with them and taking them out to lunch.

Then along came the Internet and businesses saw a way of saving cash. Sell everything online, they thought, and we can dispense with half our sale staff, we can manage all the accounts using some kind of online database and a couple of clerical people and we can have an Internet controlled call centre somewhere cheap, so we can get rid of all those client liaison people. Whoopee, we'll be rich, they thought.

But along with the savings businesses have made as a result of Internet technology, there has also come a cost. All those sales staff, account managers and client liaison staff did a hugely important job - relationship building. As relationships dwindle, so does loyalty and businesses now have to constantly get new customers.

Online, now, thanks to social networking, blogging and so on, you can build and maintain relationships. The tools of Web 2.0 have replaced those endless streams of sales calls and account management meetings with clients. So, those companies who see social media as something that is a time waster for their business are rather missing the point. What Phil Calvert does is not a waste of time, rather it is essential for the success of any modern business. All those social networking engagements build relationships - just like the sales calls of the past.

If you see the divide between the online world and the "real world" you are unlikely to think that social networking or online clubs are the way to go; indeed you will see them as an unnecessary intrusion into your time. Younger people, in particular, expect online social networking and if your business does not do it - and you've dispensed with those older ways of relationship building - well, you can probably say goodbye to your business fairly soon.

Extensive online social networking is no longer a "nice to have", as Phil Calvert has shown, it is an essential activity. Either that, or re-employ all those sales teams and account managers. Which is more expensive? Extra staff, or a few hours online each week? You decide.

Labels: blogging, future, internet, internet marketing, internet psychology

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At April 22, 2008 9:54 AM  Hjörtur Smárason said…

At May 08, 2008 10:27 PM  john said…

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The BBC has been pioneering the use of the Internet for several years. It has invested huge amounts of cash in its new media strategy and is seen as having real leadership position for the way it has incorporated the Internet into what was a rather fuddy-duddy organisation.

Now, though, it has started openly censoring user contributions to its web site. The Radio 2 presenter Sarah Kennedy has made several gaffes on-air, some of which have drawn public criticism. Audience members had made their feelings known on the BBC web site; but not any longer. The BBC has now announced that user contributions about Sarah Kennedy are banned.

At first sight this appears to make sense. After all, you would want to protect your employee and your investment in them. You might think that the negative views are minority positions anyway and so they shouldn't be given an unfair hearing. There again, if you were the BBC, you might not want your own web site to contain negative material about your organisation.

It's a new world online
Welcome to the new world BBC. We are going to have to live in a world where we do carry negative material about ourselves and our businesses on our own web sites. Audiences expect it; no longer is the biased, one-sided, overtly "promotional" view of a company or organisation acceptable. People now expect honesty and openness. Censoring the views of your audience is red rag to a bull, these days.

If the BBC had thought for a second they may have realised that online it is not possible to censor views. You might ban them from your own web site - upsetting your audience in the process - but you can't make those views go away. There are already a couple of anti-Sarah Kennedy groups on Facebook and a search amongst blogs finds a huge array of negative criticism of her - not much positive.

In the past we could have "buried" such negativity. People may have written and complained or phoned in with their criticisms, but the "public" would never have known. Organisations and companies have been able to sweep under the carpet all the negativity about their business for centuries.

Not any more. Even if you ban such negativity from your web site, it will surface and be made very public, very quickly. Businesses will avoid that situation if they accept negativity on their own web site. Transparency is the new order of the day - online you avoid that at your peril.

Labels: blogging, internet psychology, social networking,