Blogging is about having a voice. It’s about being heard. And it works.

You might want to praise someone. You might want to complain. Do it reasonably and without sounding like a raving lunatic and you just may get a response.

You should get a response because companies and people should be listening to what others are saying about them. The term people often use is egosurfing but I think that misrepresents the importance of it. The word “ego” has some negative connotations. I’d prefer if we called it “knowing what the heck people are saying about us” — but that’s too long and doesn’t fit into a slick acronym.

The key here is this:

Those companies that DO respond will gain more loyal customers, increase their customer base and be more successful.

Those companies that DON’T respond will lose all their customers to the companies that are responding.

Here’s a simple diagram to understand the basics of how listening to the blogosphere and responding works. It is simple. But, companies need to recognize the value and act quickly to get onboard.

By virtue of blogging, whether companies respond or not, we are being heard. Companies may not be listening but the blogosphere is definitely tuned in. We’re putting ourselves out there and practically begging companies to care. If they show us they care, we’ll be more loyal, more eager to spread the gospel, and actively help those companies succeed. We’re opening the door, businesses just need to walk through.

Recently, I wrote a post hoping to be heard. It was to Gilad Gafni, who wrote a WordPress plugin, yes-www. It’s designed to help with SEO, link building, etc. Definitely worthwhile, I thought. But I discovered a bug in the plugin, and couldn’t find a way to contact Gilad easily on his blog. So, I wrote about it here.

Gilad responded. The bug was fixed and I setup the plugin. Not only that, but Gilad added a very obvious contact me link on his blog, which was previously missing. So not only did Gilad fix the bug in his plugin and make me a happy customer (and others like Rick who were using it too) but he made himself more accessible after I mentioned the lack of contact information on his site.

I haven’t always been so lucky. MarketingSherpa ignored an email I sent them asking for help (back in June.) I wrote about it on my blog hoping some keen-eyed person there would see it. No luck. I could have followed up with another email, but I feel in this day and age if companies don’t respond after a customer emails them, why should the customer have to hunt them down?

[tags]customer service, egosurfing, feedback, marketingsherpa, marketing sherpa, gilad, yes-www, blogging, blogs[/tags]