Matt Baril

As I'm working on a post that touches on 10 of the many based-on-nothing Social Media rules we can found all over the blogosphere, I was wondering what your take was on this. Which one, of the following 10 so called rules, do you think deserve the first place for the most irrelevant, ridiculous and wrong rule? Feel free to express your many feelings in the comment section.

The poll has been closed. See the poll archive to see the results of this poll.

I'm finally reading The Long Tail, Revised And Updated (affiliate link), yes I know it was about time, and I realized Anderson explained very well, and in economic words, something I've been fascinated about and which I used a lot for my 28 business ideas: aggregators. After reading Anderson, I think I've come to a better understanding of the true power of aggreagtors for building communities, as well as its power for new potential ventures.

Aggregators are great for many reasons and they benefit everybody, people who create them, people who use them, and even people who get their content aggregated. Aggregators filter part of the junk out of the useful stuff and most importantly, they help build communities. But aggregators are only one part, and here is what I believe is a better overview of where aggregators fit in.

Anderson says 3 things have made long tail economies possible:

1. Better access: This is provided by new technologies such as Internet, cloud computing, cheap hosting, cheap Internet access, etc. New technologies have empowered your browser and it allows more people to easily reach out and connect with you.
2. More stuff: Here the aggregator comes in handy as it is its job to fetch the most relevant products/services/information and deliver them to you.
3. Filters: If you have no filters, it means you have an easy access to a great deal of stuff, which by definition will be mainly useless to you (it's an aggregate of niche products that don't appeal to the mass). You need tools to filter out what's not aligned with your tastes and a good CMS (Content Management System) will help you do just that.

What Anderson doesn't say however, is that once you have content, users and filters, you've created a platform. From a business perspective this is a very good news, because you can build a platform with little resources: a hosting contract, a domain name and a CMS (drupal, magento, joomla!, etc.) and you're good to go. The keys will be to find your niche and build up a community, two things that are easier said than done.

For the skeptics, there is definitely a strong business case for a platform, because you're adding value by offering a large selection of sorted products, connecting people with similar tastes to one another, and creating more value from the users through reviews, ratings, recommendations and word of mouth (free marketing). It also means that you are getting rid of the less profitable and more difficult part of creating innovative great content and focus on building a community around your platform and its products/services. It reduces risks in two ways, on one hand the initial cost is lower than a typical venture that creates content or goods, and on the other hand, a platform can adjust to new tastes much quicker since it can easily scale up its catalog.

To conclude, a good example of an international company who has been very successful doing just that is Amazon.com. They've even been a step further by offering what Anderson calls an Aggregator-for-hire. They basically offer other vendors to use their platform which means they don't even have to bother fetching content.

I've recently found my niche and I'm working hard at getting a platform up and running. Do you have yours?

Woa! Life has been hectic and full of nice surprises in the last month or so and has kept me busy, too busy to get some articles for this blog unfortunately. I’ve started working for SAP, the German international software company, I moved downtown in a nice condo on the 12^th floor (woohoo!), I finished my contract at Elastic Path for the Olympics, my entrepreneurship class is almost over and finally, my team and I are almost ready for the IT Case Competition in Singapore at the end of this month. All this has kept me away from blogging and Social Media altogether and I dearly miss it, but it looks like I might have some time to get back to it at last! A post is coming up and in the making J

Cheers,

Currently working in a customer service job, one thing that seems endless is customers calling in to vent and use their anger to threaten, manipulate and extort. This is a situation that any community builder will have to face sooner or later. It might be because you posted an article that some people profoundly disagreed with, it might be something you said in an email, a presentation you gave, something you promised that didn't happen, etc. You have 2 options in such a situation, either you stay calm and listen to the person, or you just get angry yourself and try to end the conversation as soon as possible. In a digital context, that would mean you don't bother replying to the comment, emails, tweet, Facebook message, etc.

I recently had the chance to talk to a really nice customer who had herself a long experience in customer service, and she told me that little trick that I just love. The rumour has it that the golden rule in Customer Service is "The customer is always right", but I strongly believe this is wrong and it can be a slippery slope to tell anyone they're right when they're not and it can seriously harm the company or your brand. It doesn't mean you have to tell them they're wrong though. One thing that has become standard and is taught in most customer service training is "Never interrupt a venting customer". People just want to vent and if you listen to them and agree with them, it's fascinating to see how many of them just calm down very quickly, thank you and end the conversation. For the more "challenging" customers, one sentence can come in handy and give the conversation a new direction: "How can I help you?"

Listen to the customer, agree with him/her that what happened was very unpleasant and offer your apologies, summarize the situation by recognizing the customer's pain, but also explain the situation from the company's point of view. Make sure you end by saying "How can I help you." Here is an example:

Customer: This is the worst service ever, I placed my order 5 days ago and your website says 3 days delivery. I want my money back otherwise I swear I'll go talk to the media about your false advertising and crappy service! This is outrageous! You're quite fast to take the money off my credit card, but when the time comes to deliver on your promises that's a whole different story.

CS Rep: I understand this is very disappointing, and I would feel just the same if I were you. You were hoping to have this order delivered today right on time for your daughter's birthday, but the package hasn't arrived yet. Your order was sent within the 2 business days as promised on our website, but it was unfortunately held at customs for 4 days which is the reason why you still haven't received it. The good news is that it's now on its way and will reach its destination tomorrow according to [enter delivery company here]. I understand your frustration and as a loyal customer I believe you deserve the best service. How can I help you?

While this alone won't solve everything, it's most likely to change the tone of the conversation and put the customer in a different mindset, trying to cooperate instead of fighting with you. When building a company, a blog or your personal brand, it's not the way you deal with your fans that will set you apart, but the way you can successfully deal with people who hate or are really angry with you, what you do and waht you say. Everybody can be nice to their fans, that's not very difficult. Converting an angry customer, reader or user in a fan is however the best advertising you can possibly get. If someone has been ranting about you for some days and then changed his or her mind, it will have a profound positive impact on the people they have talked to about you. You'll need some marketing, PR, psychology, diplomacy and self control to be successful, but all the effort is worth it.

I haven't posted an article for few days, mainly because I'm a little bit at lost right now. I've been reading the so called best Social Media gurus' blogs for some time, I've been buying and reading books, I've been using LinkedIn, Twitter, this blog, I've been attending Social Media events in Vancouver, but it seems something is wrong. I think a lot of bullshit is being said about Social Media and I don't presume to have the answer or hold the truth, but I'd like to see a beginning of a conversation about these issues. I wish current Social Media gurus were taking Social Media more seriously. I wish we could see real debates on Social Media issues and uses. I wish more people were questioning what these gurus are saying. I wish we could have a real and open discussion about Social Media. I made a list of 10 things I believe are wrong about Social Media, but are currently being widely spread. I'll blog about each point over the next few weeks in a special series called "Redefining Social Media Rules."

Here is my list of what I believe are the top 10 bullshit rules about Social Media:

1. Publish often
2. Engage people in a conversation
3. Be available, all the time
4. Publish short posts, or break a long one into many smaller posts
5. Add value
6. Be a content creator
7. Build your tribe
8. Use your common sense, Social Media is obvious and self-explanatory
9. Connect with people in your field
10. Work hard at it and Social Media will pay off

I'm sure you've heard and come across things about Social Media that were total bullshit. What are they? How do you feel about the current positions and opinions that most Social Media gurus hold, does it actually represent the reality? Did I forget some rules or are there some that shouldn't be in the above list? I'll be blogging on each of these 10 rules in the next couple of weeks and try to explain why I believe they're wrong.