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I got to this topic after I read the blog of a former office colleague which I never knew he had one. I gave him some tips but noted that I could actually give him more based on my personal experience of experimenting and maintaining my blogs through the years. On a number of occasions, there have been surprising results and obvious mistakes I learned from.

I’m not a blogger who struck it rich by selling advertising space or being a luminary in the speaking circuit. In fact, I’ve turned down every “advertising for peanuts” request in the past all the advertisers had nothing to do with my blog’s theme, the topics I wrote about or even my intended market (of readers.) Those boxes to the right are all my personal ads or messages which relate to my blog categories. Maybe when the right one comes along, I’ll succumb to it. For now, I keep it to myself.

So, in the spirit of the “Hacker Ethic!” (read the Steven Levy book, “Hackers,” and you’ll know why I say it so), here are my top 10 suggestions to maintaining a good blog.

1. Focus and Stay with One Theme or Topic.

Our mind is a chaotic mix of thoughts, ideas, experiences, wants and needs. If you were to outline everything down, you’d probably need weeks or months to do so. Categorizing it is another task. There are just too many topics you’d like to express. That was my dilemma. I just loved expressing many things, not just one. I wanted people to know who I was through my writing.

The solution was to look for a blog theme that allowed me to display, in standard menu web site formatting, the few topics of interest I wanted to express and share. At the same time, I also wanted the normal menu options of “About” and “Contact Us” that you see in most web sites. This is because I always believe that habit is such a hard thing to change in people. The general public has been used to the standard look and feel of web sites, with their menu items at the top and summaries down below. Our eyes continue to use habitual methods of reading – start from the top-left and work your way down with a left-to-right scheme. Anyway, it took me a few days until I chose this blog theme which is something you can use only if you have your own web hosting package; this is not available in the free versions of blogging.

But before the “look and feel” issue was resolved, I already had general idea of why I was creating my blog: I wanted my clients to get to know more about me through my writing. For example, my business network in LinkedIn was able to read a few of my blog posts which enticed them to make the first move to inquire about my products or services. So, my blog is my marketing tool; at the same time, it also allows new acquaintances to get to know me and old friends to learn more about me. This is my main intention and the path to which my blog will continue to exist.

Workshop: Spend some time addressing this question: what do I intend to achieve through my blog? Once you’ve got the answer, start listing all the topics you’d like to express in writing with the answer in mind. Then, categorize these topics or, better yet, choose about two or three categories only excluding the usual “About Us/Me” and “Contact Us/Me.” The “look and feel” you choose will also speak out how you express yourself – choose what you like, not what others do. The rest follow – choosing a blog name, buying a domain name, deciding on free or not-free hosting, learning how to use your blog administrative functions and features, learning some basic HTML codes like centering and hyperlink-referencing. Practice makes perfect.

2. Allow Comments to Create a Conversation

When I started experimenting on blogging, I allowed anyone to write a comment without approval – it just got posted right away. Then, when my blog probably became more visible in search engines or people saw precisely which country was reading my blog the most, I suddenly started seeing comments that had nothing to do with the topic; in fact, most were just message-advertising their product, service, web site or worse, porn sites.

I quickly enabled moderation of comments on my blog and subjectively decided which to allow or trash and delete. For a few where the comments were good but included HTML snippets like “<a href”, I simply erased the code, retained the phrase beside it, and approved the comment. Because of this, I had to reserve at least fifteen minutes a day to manage the pending comments.

In addition, I also realized that there were probably “bots” (web-oriented programs acting like robots inserting predefined comments into blog sites) that were maliciously and automatically pasting comments on my blog posts without human intervention. So, I decided to add a Captcha plug-in, an HTML snippet you can plug into your blog setting or profile to make sure all the comments are being written by human beings, not a bots.

On the brighter side of comments and in the spirit of the slogan to which I named my blog, “The Internet is all about Conversations,” I managed to make a few new friends by way of a string of responses originating from the reader’s first comment, sharing and expressing one’s thoughts, ideas and even principles in life regardless if it were conflicting with me, and allowing other people to learn from the comments and responses the get to read at the bottom of the blog post. So, always respond back to the person who wrote a comment, regardless if it is a praise, complaint or criticism. “After the storm comes the rainbow” speaks well of cordial and respectful responses to even irate or critical comments; you’ll be amazed your once critical reader will suddenly become one of your most loyal subscribers.

This is the major reason why blogs became popular. There were many diary-formatted types of web-based user applications in the past but Blogspot (and its predecessor) forced the issue about comments, and that paved the way to a lively, very real interaction between the reader and the writer. Without forcing bloggers to allow comments, blogging wouldn’t have been that popular.

3. A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

Newspapers have been around since the early 17th century. In the 20th century, photographs have always played a key role in its popularity. After black and white editions came colored versions of the newspaper. In the advent of the Internet, web sites are often a replica of publications – words with pictures. Today, blogs also mimic the newspaper or magazines. Relevant ones, that is.

I also chose the blog theme to which I’ve been using since Day One because it forces me to place a photo or image at the start of my blog post, automatically resized if it doesn’t have the perfect dimensions. If I don’t have the right image, I usually edit one before I come up with the final version. In every photo or image I use, whether I need to or not, I always credit the owner by his, her or the entity’s name, and the reference web site address, i.e. Flickr.com, Facebook.com. Where do I get these photos and images, you ask?

• I source out publicly-available photographs in the internet that doesn’t need licensing;
• I use my personal photographs or images;
• I borrow someone else’s with their permission;
• I use the ones that come with programs and applications I buy and own, i.e. Microsoft Powerpoint comes loaded with photos and images;
• I buy one from the stock photo suppliers in the web if it’s affordable.

Pictures don’t just lure your blog visitor to read your posts; they are also important when you or your social media network share your blog post in social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and social news web sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, to name a few. When you or your readers share the link of your blog post, the photo or image inserted in your blog post forms part of the shared link. Hence, the same effect of “a picture paints a thousand words” lures the person to click on the link and read your blog post.

4. Tags are Important for Future References

Tags are index terms that search engines and social news web sites use to discover your blog. They index it (or tag it) so when that tag item is used for listing or searching the tag, your blog comes up in the list. The more hits your blog receives for particular search engines or social news web sites, besides tagging, the higher the ranking of your blog post in its list. So, tags are important. My rule of thumb for tags is that if the word of phrase doesn’t exist in my blog post, it doesn’t get tagged. This, however, is not a strict blogging rule.

Rather than explaining tags comprehensively, it’s best you read more about its intricacies. Try reading about tags in Wikipedia, especially section 4 entitled “Advantages and disadvantages.”

What tags have done for my blog is bring it up higher in the food chain of the search engines, so to speak. Today, my top three popular tags to this blog are “call center,” “Kunnect,” and “Pekson.” In my other blog, www.miniphilippines.com, 11 percent from the thousands of total hits this blog has encountered all originate from the search engine phrase “philippines typhoon.” This is because in 2009 I blogged so much about typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng that I ended up with thousands of hits per day during those separate yet unforgettable events. So today, every time someone searches that phrase, the blog post about either typhoons comes up on the list of top links. Not that it’s relevant today but it catches the attention of a first time visitor which may lead him or her to browse or surf my blog for any post of interest.

What you can do that I’ve never attempted (yet) is to approach companies or organizations and offer them line advertising, graphical box advertsing, or even a box advertorial inside your top blog posts. Again, it’s your call if you’d like to impede something outside the theme or topic of your blog posts.

5. Add a Social Media Plug-in

There’s a famous phrase about Facebook which I’ve used in my social media training poster. It reads, “If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan.” I wrote that last year and I don’t know if it’s overtaken a few more countries in the list; I’m guessing it has.

Adding a social media plug-in like AddToAny.com allows your reader to share your blog post across the dozens, if not hundreds of social media and social news web sites. Doing so also increases the popularity of your blog post, not to mention the number hits.

6. Add a Visitor Counter

On top of what your blogging application provides you regarding statistics, I also find it good to know where my readers are coming from. I got stuck using FlagCounter.com because I didn’t have time to go looking for something better; FlagCounter suited my needs. The only thing I did was reduce the size of the FlagCounter HTML snippet to 18×18 pixels, small enough not to be noticed but big enough for me to click into it when I need statistics by country.

Today, this blog gets read by 34 percent coming from the USA, 30 percent from the Philippines, 4.9 percent from Canada, and from 66 other countries. Though I sometimes pinpoint the Philippines as the place of my professional or personal experience in many of my blog posts, it is also my writing intent to try to be geographically unbiased so that people from other countries can relate to my words. Hence, more people outside the Philippines are actually visiting and reading my blog posts. That’s good because that is my intent and it is not a surprise to me. The same holds true for www.miniphilippines.com which gets 50.2 percent from Philippine-based visitors and 49.8 percent from 152 other countries (25.6 percent are coming from the USA and 6.8 percent from Canada, as the top two countries below the Philippines.)

7. Advertise Your Own

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, I’ve only placed personal ad lines and boxes in my blog because any of these always relates to the theme, categories and topics of my blog site. I have had little less than 10 percent of my visitors clicking on these ad boxes for which I have no idea why they do – I can only guess interest or appeal of graphics as two probabilities. Yet, ten percent of the thousands of hits reveal some hundreds of clicks – which is still a good thing!

So, if you do some type of business or work part-time or otherwise, you may want to advertise those on your blog. In the past, I’ve advertised my high school’s events, my friends’ blogs and events, even my ex-wife’s business, and maybe a funny quip or two to let my readers know, “Hey! I can also be funny!” Just make sure it relates to you as the owner of the blog, or the blog’s theme, category or topic. Anything out of context can confuse your reader or worse, alienate people not to go back to your blog anymore.

8. Create a Facebook Page or Group

What’s the difference between a Facebook Page and a Facebook Group? Read my previous post, “Facebook in the Middle.”

Whatever your decision is, the reality that more and more people are starting their day with Facebook is something to consider. This social media behemoth has now replaced many of the habitual news web sites we used to start our day with, like Yahoo.com or some specific news web site. The joke goes that, if before, when people wake up in the morning it’s the newspaper and a cup of coffee; nowadays, it’s Facebook and anything to drink. LOL!

Search popularity of being on the top list as a Facebook Page or Group still belongs to normal, everyday words used in the name or label of your Facebook Page or Group plus the number of fans or members. So, name it as how it relates to your blog. For example, one of my business web sites is www.kunnectph.com and this relates to a WordPress blog site. However, the battle-cry I’ve used for this freelance business has always been “Talk is Cheap!” So, I’ve aptly named or labeled the corresponding Facebook Page to “Talk is Cheap!” while retaining the Facebook Page’s username to simply “Kunnect”.

In the past, I thought of marketing myself by creating a Facebook Page which bears my name in both the label or title and the username. Guess what? I had about five fans over the course of a year. You think I’d be famous right away? The point is it was a wrong move. Last month, I deleted the Facebook Page that bore my name and created a new one using “The Internet is All About Conversations” as the label or title, and the username is shortened to “internetconversations.” Today, I have dozens of fans without any marketing; just the simple interest of people liking my Facebook Page. It’s a good start!

9. Create a Twitter Account

I have two Twitter accounts – one each for MiniPhilippines and Pekson.com. Anything that has to do with the Philippines or Filipinos anywhere in the world gets tweeted in the former. Anything else I would like to share to the world uses the latter account. Then, I add icons or buttons on my respective blogs to link either Twitter accounts – but not both! Again, don’t confuse your visitor or reader. If they land on your blog, show them the way to the right and appropriate social media site, like your Facebook Page or Group, or your Twitter account.

Why Twitter? Thousands, if not millions of people are actually using Twitter to search specific words in tweets (or those 140 character messages) and hashtags. If you happen to be one of them, there’s a good chance that a Twitter user will click on the shortened hyperlink found in your tweet and land on your blog. You can also install a plug-in (called a Widget) that lists the latest tweets you’ve sent on your blog page.

10. Adjust but Don’t Quit

Like any successful endeavor you or other people have done with their lives, both professionally and personally, intent, focus, desire and the will to succeed forces you to continue despite any setback. It’s same goes for blogging. Even if you shifted jobs and are now neck deep in work with your new employer, find the time to keep adjusting, enhancing and writing for your blog. The moment you stop, you will begin to lose your followers or readers.

I’ve had a few false starts with blogging. I think there were about two blogs I started with gusto but failed to motivate myself to continue and lost the interest. But here’s another surprising story – it is (again) about MiniPhilippines. There was a time not too long ago that precisely as I had described in the previous paragraph, I was neck deep with work that I didn’t post anything for three weeks. Yet, this blog site kept getting the number of hits I didn’t expect. Why? Because I’ve had the blog for a little less than two years and with so much content and tags filed and indexed in cyberspace, the number of daily hits didn’t drastically fall. It was still being visited especially by the new ones. After seeing this, I began cornering myself to start posting again.

In Summary

There are thousands of more tips and suggestions on the web on how best to maintain your blog and make it successful. Google it and you’ll be overwhelmed by it. My intent is to let you know it can be done even with as little as a few hours per week. Just don’t stop if it means well for you to start expressing yourself in writing; and blogging is the easiest way to publish yourself for free. What I wrote is based on my experience, not someone else’s. Others will have many more to add to my list.

In closing, my peers and I, young or old, would always tell each other in the past that once we retire, we will either teach or write a book or do both. Now that you have this online activity called blogging and the resources for blogging abound like fresh water in Canada, wouldn’t you think that everything you write today can actually be compiled to resemble a book in the future? All you need to do is to start writing it.

Ahh, blogging. There comes a time when “you can’t live without it.” So, have fun expressing yourself or your business!

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If you and your business or organization would like to learn how to engage using social media networking and marketing the right way, I conduct a four-hour crash course entitled (click) “Social Media for the Workplace.“

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Many people say that online social networking sites like Facebook are not for them. From the many similar remarks I’ve heard, either they’re happy with their current networking site or they think they’re too old or busy to enter social networks. On the latter response, I remember a TV episode of “NUMB3RS” where the dad of Charles Eppes asked his son for his help in creating a profile in Facebook. He realized some of his (old) friends were in Facebook and wanted to join in. The following day, he was having coffee with a long, lost buddy.

But long before I discovered online social networks, I started my web-based networking with a bunch of high school batchmates using e-Groups. In its heyday, Yahoo bought the company and incorporated it into the Yahoo portal as Yahoo Groups, which continues to exist until today. Since its inception, I’ve joined about 50 online groups and also created 8 groups with 5 still very active until now. Then and until now, this was one of the best online social networking using the web as the medium to create conversations (more about “conversations” below). In those days, every article I read said that about 90% of the people who go online use it for reading and writing e-mails (and 10% also surf the net.) Up to now, many have still maintained the group conversations in Yahoo Groups because some who use the internet in the workplace cannot access the popular online social networking sites. Many corporate servers block these sites.

I remember joining Ryze, one of the first online business networking sites before creating a Friendster account in 2002. By 2006, I joined Facebook at the behest of my daughter because I wouldn’t create an account in MySpace which was the first online social network site she joined at age 11. I was also a Plaxo member long before it reinvented itself to a social-cum-business networking site using the brand name “Pulse“. I loved Plaxo because it incorporated an e-Card system, allowing me to be reminded of birthdays and use Plaxo to send them online birthday cards. (Part of my personal motto was “B.M.W.” which means “Birthdays, Marriages and Wakes.” These are the three important dates in a person’s life. When you remember these or are even physically present, that person will usually make you a friend for life.) With much convenience, Plaxo also sent e-mail messages to people I added in my address book to confirm their contact information and which also invited everyone to join Plaxo, which many did. The last good thing about Plaxo was when my Microsoft Outlook crashed, wiping out all my contact data. Through Plaxo, I was able to recover all of them. Then, the last online networking site I registered with was Linked In. In all, I’ve been maintaining only three online social networks — Friendster, Facebook and Linked In. Let me tell you why…

Friendster – www.Friendster.com.

Friendster.com

From the many articles I’ve read about Friendster, they’ve become very popular in Asia, particularly the Philippines and Filipinos around the world. When I was working for a call center in South America, I created one under the name “Ralph Pearson” thinking that I would be using it to network with the U.S. (because it was created in Mountain View, CA and its inital market was North America). Eventually, I shifted to my own name and have been using it since.

I started using Friendster as a networking tool with many of my friends and acquaintances. However, if I were to use this for business networking, I needed to create a profile that depicted who I really was. I also made sure that pictures also depicted my family (to show a semblance of family and balance in life) and some corporate event (lunch meetings or so). My written profile also had to be complete. The important thing was adding stuff in the interests and hobbies portion — you’ve got to be consistent to what you write and who you really are when they do meet me. If you golf, make sure it’s true. If you love New Wave as a genre of music, you’ve got to be prepared to have a conversation solely on that topic. So, make sure your profile is as honest as possible, not just “make believe.”

Going to the Philippines (from Canada) to start my entrepreneurial stint in the call center industry, I was able to recruit hundreds of prospective call center representatives or agents using Friendster. I would search using company names I knew that employed the same profile of agents as I was seeking or using keywords associated to the industry or interests that was common to my search. Mind you, Friendster only allows 50 messages per 24-hour day. So, I would continue recruiting in Friendster everyday for about 3 to 4 weeks and get to hire 20 or so agents. One thing you should be careful is what you type in the text of your private message. Knowing that I was recruiting, I made sure I mentioned details of the compensation and benefits package, company name, location of the call center, if it was a start-up, a sentence about the vision-mission phrase (not statement) and a complete cadre of contact information that allows them to call or personally visit the center. The shorter but very detailed and straight to the point your message is, the better it is.

I would guess about 70% of those who I sent Friendster private messages replied back, even negatively but thanked me nonetheless for inviting them. Like I expected, many referred back to my profile page (which was not set in Private mode and thus allowed anybody to look at it and message me), checking out to see if I was legitimate and, most importantly, if I were the real thing. In the end, I also became online social friends with some people I messaged with.

I used to ask all the call center people I met or worked with if they had a Friendster account. 99% of them resoundingly affirmed my question. This only means Friendster is one of the best “free” medium to recruit people. The huge percentage of its global demographics belongs to the 18-35 yeras of age, the prime, young age of entering the corporate world and going up the business ladder. So, besides recruiting agents, I also invited supervisors and managers, too. This is where I invited, met, interviewed and eventually hired my Operations Manager, Clarice Estrella, for Workspresso Inc. in June of 2008. She still works with us up to now.

Linked In -www.linkedin.com.

Though I was with Ryze for some time, I moved to Linked In because it had better GUI (graphical user interface) and was far easier to use. Within my network, Linked In would allow me the basic activities (adding people in their networks) and that of the groups I belonged to. Like many, I started linking with friends and acquaintances before I trekked to new ones.

Linked In is not my free recruitment tool for entry level or supervisor-level professionals because many that I’ve networked with are managers, entrepreneurs and professionals. Statistically, Linked In’s demographic data rate 49% belonging to the 26-35 years old and 24% in the 36-45 years old range, as compared to the younger crowd in Friendster, with 39% in the 18-25 years old bracket and 36% among the 26-35 years of age.

Leaving a marketing phrase in your Linked In “Status” isn’t going to work. I’ve tried that. You’ve got to go out of your way and find those likely candidates one at a time. There are good search parameters in Linked In that you can use for free, more powerful than the social networking sites. You may leave marketing messages within the groups that you join but many of them do not accept such types of text. If ever they do, my thinking is it wouldn’t even make a dent in interest, readership or eyeballs.

I got many messages from people who were inviting me to resell or market their products or services. The norm was to disregard these messages but, being the networker that I am, I responded cordially even if I was turning them down, but opened the door to other products or services they would have in the future that will be a match to what I did and, of course, letting them also know what I do. There have been plenty near misses on the course of these interactions but a few networks are now on the drawing board pending contracts and agreements between us.

I was also surprised to get positive responses from people who worked with venture capital companies when I peddled the idea (yes, it was only an idea) of a business and I needed seed money to make it work. I probably sent around 30 private messages and got 10 positive responses and 5 asking for more detailed information. Wow! But mind you, it’s still about the good basics of positive correspondence. You’ve got to edit and re-edit your message to perfection.

I created my first group in Linked In called “Call Center Directory Philippines” which now has 164 members since August 10, 2008 — without marketing this group to anyone in my offline and online social or business networks, not a single e-mail to join the group. So, that’s about 18 people joining the group per month on their own accord. Good or bad? I really can’t answer you there. I haven’t done anything other than manually accept the registrations to the group, adding each one to my own Linked In network and welcoming them to the group. I know in time I will find the right idea to use this channel but for now, it remains an open group for anyone with common interests in the call center industry in the Philippines.

Facebook -www.facebook.com.

Statistically, Facebook boasts 185 million subscribers worldwide. The United States has 58 million, Canada has 11 million and the Philippines with 1.17 million. With the latter, 61.3% are female, 40.6% are 18-24 years old, 32.2% are 25-34 years old, 10.9% are 35-44 years old and (surprise) 10.5% are 14-17 years old.

My daughter was 11 years old when she told me to create a Facebook account. At her behest, I did and since I knew the general functions of an online social networking site, I created a profile using the settings and texts that came from my Friendster and Linked In accounts. At first, I was just socializing with many of the people I added to my network belonging to those I met every week or so. I probably logged into Facebook once a week as Frienster was still more popular with the people I worked with.

A few months after I started Workspresso Inc., I went back to Facebook and looked around, wondering how I could use the site as a way to market my company and the things we did. At first, I only sent private messages, much like what I did with Friendster and Linked In. Lo and behold — I usually got no reply. “Hmmm… what’s up with Facebook?” I wondered.

I looked at “Groups” and “Pages” and created my first groups, “JustGo Philippines” and “The Travel Outlet Philippines”, as I was part of both companies — the former as a Project Director and the latter as a Consultant. JustGo Philippines has 189 members and Travel Outlet Philippines with 274. It was probably easier for others to invite their friends to the Travel Outlet since it was also easy to understand that it was a travel agency company promoting itself in Facebook; while JustGo Philippines, a travel portal still in the works, was harder to understand.

However, this March or April, Facebook reengineered its Pages to look more like a wall of streaming messages from its members — or “Fans” as they called it — and I’ve seen many groups trying to switch its members to its page. Egad! Asking people to transfer or move is not going to be easy. I haven’t done so with the groups I created as I do not know how to ask the members and why should they move or transfer. Until I get a “blinding glimpse of the obvious” (famous line from the book “Barbarians at the Gates”) will I attempt to do so.

Which only means that if you intend to do marketing in Facebook by inviting people to be part of your group, “Pages” is a more productive way of doing so than “Groups.” I just hope Facebook has some undercover plan to reinvent “Groups” to something equal or better than “Pages.”

I experimented with “The Travel Outlet Philippines” and sent two global messages on travel packages. For one, I got about 20% inquiring more about it and 3% purchasing for the product. The other package wasn’t that all enticing and I didn’t get a single customer.

I’ve also joined (and unjoined) several groups and pages in Facebook that provide me with information of my interest (and disinterest). There are social groups like “Barangay Merville” which represents 440 people who used to or still live in the gated subdivision I grew up and are now scattered all over the globe. Target, the retail company, is another group and page I belong to and just read how Target hired an experienced Facebook marketer named “AKQA” to help them re-do the things they were doing (see Article).

I’ve created 4 “Pages” in Facebook but have not yet marketed these pages. I also linked my blog to one of the pages that allowed an automatic way of creating content (called “Notes”) in the page and informed the members of the page that a new “Update” was available for viewing at the page. So far, I’m not at the 100 mark of members for that page.

In Summary

So, besides your usual e-mail and existing website, the online social networking does work to a certain degree. Of course, overdoing things (messaging your members everyday) will likely be a downfall to you honest intent of good information and knowledge about you, your organization and the things you do (or sell). You’ve got to be careful in how you present and market yourself in online social networks.

It's all about "conversations."

I remember reading about the internet and know that the idea of the market in the olden times as the best description to how people and organizations should treat it. Historically, markets (as in wet markets or dry markets) were the center stage of a region where people come to buy and sell. However, the other thing about markets during those times were the travelers who would come by and visit the market to tell people of their stories from regions afar, besides selling or trading their wares. In that era and the concept of the internet today which no one in the world owns (just like a public market), what makes it exist and profit are the “conversations” and “interactions” of people among themselves. By definition, a conversation is an oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas between two or more people. The moment you kill the conversation, you lose the people who may one day buy or sell with you.

Most corporate websites desist from allowing visitors (and even members) to have a conversation with them like leaving a remark or comment on the web page, thinking that many would just curse, cuss or humiliate them. So, they create their websites looking exactly like a catalog. It’s like allowing your prospective market to come in to your store but putting packaging tape on their mouths before they enter. Some may actually buy or transact with you because they need you and your product or service and there’s no one around to provide them the same thing. However, a big percentage would simply move on.

Think about it! Do you think 80% of mankind are evil? Which means everything that you do is under that impression? Don’t penalize the many because of what a few will do. Allow people to have a selection of ways (not just a toll free number) to have a conversation with you through your online storefront. Respond and reply back all the time, even if they cuss. You can opt to remove the bad messages anytime. You can also screen remarks but make sure it’s posted on your site immediately, not days later.

Online social networks and websites are all about “conversations.” And the thing about it is they also must be “Free, Fast and Forever.” To remove one’s ability to start a conversation on the web means killing the only means your site will succeed. The market is “people” and people want to have a meaningful conversation.