Remember your business… and keep it real.

It is a sad state of affairs, but the more we rely on the internet for business and communication, the easier it is to forget that we are still interacting with human beings. One of the earliest tenets of good business was that if you wanted customers to keep coming back, good customer service was really important. Just because the world has changed doesn’t mean this no longer applies. In fact, when considering your online reputation, I would suggest that it is more important than ever. Your offline reputation and online reputation are not mutually exclusive in any way. You lose one, you lose the other, and vice versa.

In working for a marketing agency, and for customer experience management clients like Satmetrix, I couldn’t agree more.

Unfortunately, like any marketing strategy, all too quickly marketers have begun to find ways to ‘shortcut’ the system. Just like they did with search engine marketing, new strategies are coming out to get more Twitter exposure or increase the number of friends you have on Facebook. There are thousands of widgets out there to mass submit yourself to social media sites. People are thinking up ways to force others to talk about them. It won’t be long before there are white hat and black hat social media marketing techniques, just like SEO. And guess who loses out, again? That’s right. The customer.

Why do marketers assume that the only way you can actually get results is to buck the system? I know we live with a culture of instant gratification and overnight results, but why does this have to be at the expense of actually providing customer service, customer value and going the extra mile occasionally? With all of the time and effort spent mass submitting your blog, you could have done something genuinely good for a customer, who is so happy that they can’t wait to talk about you. Surely that is what it is all about?

Just last week, James Baggott at Car Dealer Magazine was offered a spare car from Skoda, complete with lunch in the boot when he mentioned he was without a working runabout and didn’t have time to get lunch. Granted, VW Group spotted an opportunity for a great story in offering a ‘random’ act of kindness to an automotive journalist – but it’s clear they understand what being social all about. And a long time before the whole Giraffe Bread thing from Sainsbury’s, Julian Metcalfe from Pret A Manger may have started it all back in 2009.

I think Seth Godin really hit the drawbacks on the head in his post about trust and reciprocity, Trading Favours. Thankfully, the social web is self-policing for those that don’t. Unlike the search engines, which need to constantly re-write their algorithms to ensure that the results returned are the most relevant ones rather than the ones that some clever marketer out there has managed to cheat to the top, social media is continually monitored by the masses. If people don’t like what you are doing, or think you might be using the system for your own ends, they can just as quickly bury you. Or worse, ignore you.

Eventually, if all you do is get-rich-quick marketing without backing it up with some good, solid service and value, the only reputation you will really achieve is a surface one. If you want to build a reputation that is lasting, you have to remember that you are dealing with people, not a bot or machine. And in that respect, despite the advent of the internet, nothing has really changed.

Ben

Ben is a Senior Creative with a penchant for all things digital at Quick-Thinking. Copy writing and art direction aside, Ben also heads QT's digital team, delivering online and social marketing campaigns with clout. Proudly, he also writes for Technorati.

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