Darren Rowse poses an interesting question in asking What are Your Favorite 10 Blogging Tools? It clearly also is a topic that will generate a great deal of comment and discussion given the popularity of his Problogger blog.

It’s time for a little discussion – lets talk blogging tools. Over in the ProBlogger.com forum there’s been a lot of talk about different tools, applications, platforms and plugins that helps to improve blogs. I’m loving the different opinions and experiences and thought it’d be a good question to open up to the wider community – what are your favourite 10 blogging tools? I suspect most of us will probably include our blogging platform (Blogspot, WordPress, TypePad etc) in the list somewhere but other than that anything goes. Perhaps it’s a comments tool, perhaps a desktop editor, perhaps a plugin or widget – anything goes!

I am sure the resulting blog post with all its comments will be very search engine visible and many others will link to it.

However I am not sure that these lists of 10 that are so search-engine friendly are necessarily the most useful to readers. In this case, I can suggest a more user-friendly topic, which will undoubtedly be much less search-engine visible. I hope many will choose to comment since this could collect a host of revelations and new finds for our readers. The question we are asking is:

What is your favorite blogging tool that you believe few others may have found?

I could have nominated Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which is software to create text by dictation, and which is a real productivity help:

Dragon NaturallySpeaking gives small business and advanced PC users the power to create documents, reports and emails three times faster than most people type — with up to 99% accuracy. Most people speak over 120 words per minute, but type less than 40 words a minute. That means you can create documents and emails about three times faster with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Dragon never makes a spelling mistake, and it actually gets smarter the more you use it!

DNS does of course cost money, so my nomination for the best, least known blogging tool is to use Mind Maps to organize your thoughts before you expand on your ideas. A great free tool to use, which I highly recommend is FreeMind, which is free mind mapping software.

FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into high productivity tool. We are proud that the operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster than that of MindManager because of one-click “fold / unfold” and “follow link” operations.

If you have some blogging tool that you are using that you think is not well enough known, why not add a mention in the comments. I’m sure others will appreciate your effort.

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Post from: StayGoLinks

Best Least Known Blogging Tool

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If you find this offer too good to be true, Google Gmail did not flag it as spam so it may have some substance.  I must admit it is the first time I have received such an offer.  However I cannot pick this one up so I thought I would pass it over for a very modest 0.1% ‘finder fee’.  You will hardly notice it.  First come, first served.

First here is the BMW 5 Series Automobile. although I am sure you would not get exactly this model.

Here are the details of the offer, as I received it.  I have kept this as an image since I am sure the fediciary Agent (sic) would only want to receive genuine offers, so scammers should not waste their time.  To be very clear, this is entirely at your own risk.  As the Latins used to say, let the buyer beware.

Don’t be put off by the spelling mistakes or typos.  I pass this on for what it is worth.  The only thing I would ask in return is that if you follow it up and were to receive the cash sum quoted that you then send me the finder’s fee.  It’s a small thing to ask for such a beautiful BMW 5 Series Automobile.

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BMW 5 Series Automobile For £500 GBP

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A legacy is normally seen as a good thing to be enjoying. You might assume that a customer legacy was equally a valuable asset but that is not the way some companies see it. Customer loyalty is great but a customer legacy is a burden.

You can get a sense of that in an Interesting article on device driver compatibility in Vista and Windows 7. See how the Microsoft author feels they should be creating a sense of unease in that long-standing customer:

But essentially what you’ve done here is to make sure the customer understands that there is “potential” (latent) pain that can be avoided with Vista and that that pain may well be a lot more costly than the pain of implementing the solution. To amplify, what you’d be helping the customer understand here is that right now on XP, even though it seems secure (since they’ve likely not had any breaches or successful malware attacks or loss of data), they ARE at higher risk of malware issues (stats show us XP is 60% more susceptible).

The reason why I got onto this line of thinking was that I tried to use the new Microsoft browser, Internet Explorer v.8. It functioned so slowly that I had to uninstall it and go back to Internet Explorer v.7, which I reinstalled. Lo and behold suddenly I was having the same slow speed problems with version 7. Checking on the Internet showed others were having similar problems, but there were no apparent solutions. Then in discussing this problem at Cre8asite Forums, someone mentioned a post by Ed Bott entitled Is IE8 really fat and slow? It seemed that the problem may be associated with still being on Windows XP. He offered the following solution:

So I checked with a few colleagues on some back channels and discovered a tweak that had worked for other people. From a Command Prompt window, I had her run the following command:

regsvr32 actxprxy.dll

That re-registers the ActiveX Interface Marshaling Library, an obscure DLL that most people (even Microsoft experts) had never heard about.

This did work for me, although I have had to re-apply it a few times now since it seems that my version of Internet Explorer v.7 running on Windows XP is in some way no longer as speedy as it used to be.

Microsoft may well regard me as that regrettable customer legacy they have. If only I would upgrade to Vista, all my problems would be solved. It’s a typical product-driven approach to running a business for which Microsoft has been criticised before. However real customer loyalty only develops if companies think very carefully of their customer legacy. If as is suggested above, Microsoft is thinking more on how to incite “potential” (latent) pain among that customer legacy, it does not suggest a very healthy relationship between Microsoft and its customers.

The other aspect of this situation is that any company should Beware of Dissatisfied Consumers: They Like to Blab.

According to new Wharton research, such word-of-mouth communication should be a big cause of concern. Only 6% of shoppers who experienced a problem with a retailer contacted the company, but 31% went on to tell friends, family or colleagues what happened. Of those, 8% told one person, another 8% told two people, but 6% told six or more people. “Even though these shoppers don’t share their pain with the store, they do share their pain with other people, apparently quite a few other people,” according to Wharton marketing professor Stephen J. Hoch.

The complaints have an even greater impact on shoppers who were not directly involved as the story spreads and is embellished, researchers found. Almost half those surveyed, 48%, reported they have avoided a store in the past because of someone else’s negative experience.

Given the explosive growth of Twitter and other social media, these word-of-mouth processes are even more powerful and potentially devastating. Best think very carefully about that customer legacy and try to ensure it is nurtured as the asset of customer loyalty it could become with the right handling.

Post from: StayGoLinks

Customer Legacy – Good Or Bad

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Nothing invites customers to call more than an obviously free call.  That is clearly signaled here in North America by the 1-800 number.  Although there are an increasing number of other free long-distance telephone numbers, not everyone will recognize them.  In the same way, in the UK an 0800 number signals that certainly from a landline your call will be for free.

Even though people are becoming more used to online chat lines or messenger services or even communicating with companies via Twitter, there is nothing better than talking to a live customer service representative. The Henley Research Centre concluded that 68% of people feel that organisations which offer 0800 numbers care more about their callers.

Now BT has recently announced that 0800 numbers will soon be free to call for its mobile customers as well.  BT Mobile is the first mobile company in the UK to make mobile calls to 0800 free to dial.

0800 numbers are a popular choice of telephone number for many organisations in that they help to attract more calls. Research by the Institute of Direct Marketing showed that companies with an 0800 number can increase their response rates by up to 185%.  A number of companies provide 0800 numbers and the best will provide additional functionality that may include fax to email, IVR (Interactive Voice Response), call whisper (a voice message to the receiver of the call identifying the source) and other value-added services.

Perhaps the most visible value-added service that such a company can provide is memorable 0800 numbers.  With the right combination, callers will be able to remember the number without needing notes. It will always be a matter of individual choice as to what works best, but repeating numbers like 056 7444 or 068 8866 certainly look like winners. In some cases, particular combinations of numbers may even be interpreted as a sign of good fortune in some cultures.  Now that is clearly value-added.

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0800 – the UK version of 1-800

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Not surprisingly customer service in the telecom industry is in the news again. 

Wireless carriers are not known for their customer service – most marketing messages are about having the cool new phone or cheaper family plans – but perhaps they should pay more attention to it. It seems that Telecoms are struggling to handle complex, changing service demands. 

The result is that in the telecom market, Poor Customer Service Drains Brand Equity. According to a new study by Sametrix Inc., word of mouth (WOM) has a significant financial impact. Vince Nowinski, Sametrix’s director of methodology, puts it like this.

A lot of the emphasis in the industry is around technology and customer acquisition; there isn’t a lot of energy spent in customer loyalty. But you can’t really overcome having a large number of people saying bad things about you.

In the wireless industry the top two factors for a positive WOM are the strength of network (i.e., the product) and the ease of doing business. Detractors’ negative word-of-mouth behavior represents a significant hidden cost and net drain on the bottom line.

According to the study, a customer who recommends a company and its products (a Promoter) is worth about half a new additional customer in terms of WOM marketing value. A Detractor (i.e., someone unlikely to recommend the company) accounts for a loss of about one-and-a-third customers in terms of losses in customer retention.

The other item points out rather provokingly that Customer Service Overkill Can Kill You.

I was recently raving to a friend about the wine selection at a local wine shop. He told me he knew about the place and agreed it was top notch, but he also said  he no longer shops there.  Turns out my friend feels the wine shop staff is “overly nice.”

That also perhaps is linked with a pushy sales person who will not leave you alone, when you really prefer to take your time.

It all comes back to those fundamental words of Peter Drucker, “Help is defined by the recipient”.  The only way to find out if your customer service is right is to ask your customers. .. that is provided you as CEO have the nerve to really listen and the intention to act on what they are asking for.

It is not rocket science: what is needed is really very obvious.  If you need any further ammunition to get all the troops on side as you transform your organization into one that serves (an increasing number of) customers, here are some useful references:

• The Benefits of Being Customer-Centric 
• 7 Habits Of A Truly Customer-Centric Selling Organization
• The CEO Also Has to Be the Customer Experience Officer 

Post from: StayGoLinks

Customer Service Is Defined By Customers

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Top lists are all the rage at the end of one year and the beginning of the next year.  Some lists even go as far as 100 items but the most popular are top 10 lists.  Their popularity probably derives from that master of top 10 lists, David Letterman.  He even has a top 10 list for Barak Obama, although it may be a clever spoof.

I am not so enthusiastic about top 10 lists.  Perhaps checking one of the following top 10 lists might show you why I am of that opinion.

• Top Ten Xbox 360 Games That I Played in 2008
• VH1’s ‘100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs’: Top 10
• Top 10 Worst/Overrated Christmas Movies
• Top-10 Bollywood Male Actors of 2008

If that was not enough to still your fervor, then here is a portmanteau collection of 10 top 10 lists.

• Top 10 Top 10 Lists of 2008

If this top 10 journey has not been sufficient to convince you that top 10 lists are overrated, let me try some logic.

I am thinking particularly of top 10 lists in blog posts.  I think the mark of a good blog post is that readers wish to leave comments.  As I have mentioned elsewhere, lists should be short to work most effectively.  A list of three is ideal.  Clearly someone is forcefully expressing an opinion with only three items in the list.  Equally obviously most readers are bound to disagree with at least one choice.  Our top three list is almost guaranteed to get a reaction.  What more could you want?

Post from: StayGoLinks

Top Ten Lists Are Overrated

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A recent BPWrap post on Abu Dhabi Brand Mastery drew an interesting comment from  Mark Rollinson today.  He said:

A surprising article given the Abu Dhabi brand strategy and identity were created by M&C Saatchi and the implementation was handled by Brand Faith. I don’t recall ever coming across any involvement in the project from the Brand Union.

I replied:

Thank you, Mark, for that correction. I did research the topic and nowhere did the name of Brand Faith come up.  I have now done a specific search for your company name and Abu Dhabi and the only references that come up are in Flash such as http://www.brandfaith.com/news.swf. Such Flash News probably do not rank well in Google searches. Perhaps that’s a useful finding from this.

Although Google does index the contents of Flash websites, they are most unlikely to rank well versus the more content rich HTML websites. For example if you check what Google has in its text cache for the Brand Faith website you find the following:

 

Since the text cache shows the content that Google is working with, it is clear why unfortunately this site is not very Google visible. This seems to be the way websites in the All About Brands PLC group are constructed. 

News flashes need to be visible to Google.  If not, they are working at 25% efficiency or less.  In addition such websites should have RSS news feeds. That is the way the news flash becomes the headline.

Post from: StayGoLinks

Abu Dhabi Brand Faith News Flash

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There’s a happy vibe that comes from hearing RightNow when someone offers to help. Our eye was therefore drawn to the following headline, “VLM Airlines deploys RightNow to enhance customer self-service“.  SMM has gone with the same theme in the Marketing Right Now series giving practical steps on doing Internet Marketing effectively.

The RightNow deployment will help VLM Airlines deliver passengers an improved customer experience as they interact with the company online.

The majority of VLM passengers fly for business purposes and the company prides itself on being able to quickly and efficiently serve the needs of passengers via user friendly online booking, e-ticketing, internet check-in and short check-in times.  With RightNow, VLM customers will now have round-the-clock access to a ‘Simply Questions’ section on the airline’s website www.flyvlm.com, where they can find answers to general travel questions.

Certainly customers appreciate having instant replies when they’re looking for service.  Another approach is Interactive Chat which can improve both Sales and Customer Service.  For example, Memorysuppliers.com offers one-to-one, 24-hour-a-day chat.

With four people dedicated to chat and email responses, Memorysuppliers.com is one of thousands of ecommerce companies adding chat to its marketing and customer service mix.

What they and many others are finding is that customers are happier and sales growth covers the investment many times over.  That makes it win/win.

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RightNow Customer Service

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Computer monitors now have a bigger screens.  If you check the visitor traffic to any website, you will find that fewer visitors have screens that are less than 1024 pixels in width.  1024 x 768 is often the most popular screen size for visitors.  Web designers are usually creating websites that will give the best viewing experience at this resolution or even bigger.  Perhaps it is not surprising since that is usually the screen size they are working on.

What is often forgotten is what goes on the page.  If the whole screen is bigger, then presumably elements on the screen can be larger too.  That clearly is the thinking behind the news that iGoogle Goes Wide, Introduces Canvas Pages as Erick Schonfeld pointed out last week.

Google�s startpage, iGoogle, is spreading its wings. Today it is rolling out a new design that shifts tabs to a column on the left so that more Google gadgets and sources of content can be accommodated. But the biggest change is the ability for content partners and developers to expand each gadget to take up nearly the whole page.

Partners that are launching with expanded gadgets include the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, TV Guide, iLike, CurrentTV, and Go Comics. Google itself has created extra-wide gadgets for Google Reader, Gmail, Google Finance, and YouTube.

Another item that can be re-examined in this bigger screen world is the size of display ads on web pages.  Surprisingly they are often 125 pixels by 125 pixels, which can even work well on that old 800 pixel width screen.  In the new StayGoLinks redesign we have gone with 160 pixels by 160 pixels as the normal minimum standard for a sidebar ad.  As time passes and people get more accustomed to designing for the bigger screens, then this may well become the trend.

Clearly the larger area (almost two thirds bigger) gives an advertiser much more space to develop an eye-catching ad.  It will be interesting to see how quickly such ads become the norm.

Post from: StayGoLinks

Bigger Ads For Bigger Screens

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When you call Customer Service and hear that ominous message, Your call is important to us, you must often hang on for an unknown period of time. When you are not in control, you can believe that someone is out to get you. According to research in a recent Newsweek article, that may cause you to think that the company is deliberately avoiding you. When you are not in control of something, you may begin to believe in conspiracy theories.

Research by Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas, Austin, and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University, suggest that pattern perception compensates for feeling out of control in a sea of forces you do not comprehend. When you can control, or even when you just believe (incorrectly) that you can control the duration of painful shocks, they don�t hurt as much.

That confirms the advice given in the first of the Marketing Right Now series. The title was MRN – Time is of the essence. What counts is time as perceived by your customer. Your whole team needs to be following the mantra, Time Is Job One (video). It is the most important factor in the quality package you serve your customer.

Related: Your Call Is Important To Us – Roberto Rocha

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Your Call Is Important To Us – Really?

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