Online social networking is a misnomer in today’s ever-changing and fast-paced world. It doesn’t matter if you socialize or network through the web – it matters that you also do it face-to-face. In the reality that you network with new business or social acquaintances across the miles, you replace the personal encounter with the second best means of communicating – the telephone. Therefore, if you really want to build a social or business relationship with a network of new (or old) acquaintances, you can only be successful when it’s done “personally.” Thus, online networking is the first step and not the only means to which you build the relationship.

I used BMW with many people I have met through the years and continued to network with them socially and professionally. In times of need, you are never a stranger to one that is a social or business acquaintance. Because of BMW, they always remember you. The easiest way to do so is to send a birthday greeting by e-mail or through the messaging facilities of various online social networking sites. However, to greet one by text-messaging becomes more intimate. A phone call is better. A face-to-face encounter is best. If you acknowledge them during their wedding anniversaries, this brings you up the intimacy scale, or during the wedding of their children. In times of sorrow over the death of a loved one, the sincere effort to offer your condolences overshadows birthdays and marriages – you start to become a true friend (for life) by being there in their most vulnerable times.

In all birthday and anniversary greetings I’ve sent, I always make sure to spend time in creating a personal message on top of the usual greeting. I try to fit the content of my message to the character or personality of the celebrant or recipient, up to my understanding of who the person really is. This can be a quotation that fits well, a joke or a more intimate greeting than the usual stuff. A huge percentage will respond back with sincere thanks and follow up with questions like “how is the family?” or “what type of work are you doing?” This intiates a slew of responses between you and your network and pauses once they are satisfied with your answer (always make it a point to be the last one to respond in this exchange of messages). If the person is within your locality, offer to meet up for coffee after the special day, even for just half-an-hour. Again, business and social networking becomes successful if it’s face-to-face or by voice.

There was a time I needed more projects from North America, I used my BMW roots to touch base with my network. I didn’t get blank responses from my social and business acquaintances because I kept appearing in their lives at least once a year. I reached out (but done cordially with a friendly smile) and many offered to refer me to people they knew who may have projects for me. In fact, one person I have never met face-to-face who used to live in Trinidad and Tobago was now (during that time) living in Toronto. This was James. I eventually called James after an exchange of e-mails and had a pleasant but short conversation where he offered to refer me to someone he knew may be able to help. Lo and behold that person (named Cathy) represented the largest trade publication company in the world – Reed. I did a conference call with Cathy’s team and my team, won their initial trust just based on how we presented ourselves during the call, and Cathy eventually flew to meet up with me, visit our business premises and signed the contract with me. Cathy’s left Reed but we remain good friends until now. She now lives in Arizona doing small projects.

I met James through an e-mail network I joined in 2002. I got the project from Reed in 2006. In those in-between years, I kept in touch with James by e-mail and occassional but rare moments of calling him up when he moved to Canada. With James and many others I networked with, I always made sure they knew more personal facts about me, usually offering information about my family, personal experiences and professional facts. I always believe that 80% of the people in the world a honest and so I make sure to fill in as much information on my profile in many of the online networks I belong to, and to allow a snippet or so of my profile accessible to the public. It took years for James and I to develop some semblace of trust and, when the time came to ask for a favor, he gladly gave it without any inkling to ask for a commission or to cash in on the favor. Today, I give the same BMW effort to Cathy as I did with James. Last year, Cathy referred me to her friend who needed to develop a marketing program which I also implemented.

BMW also worked during the time I was financially down. There was one person I kept communicating with over the years, since I met him in during a job interview a decade ago. He was and still is the President of a large call center. We didn’t see eye to eye on the job but bantered on ideas about business. I continued an e-mail-based relationship with Vic and, when I had something to offer him (like a call center project), I’d call and meet him at his office. The last I met up with him was two years previous and because I had continued to communicate with him, one short e-mail led to his response for a meeting two days later with his personal interest, together with his VP Roland, to help me. Wow! I mean they were never close friends but because of sincere effort to continue communicating with them using BMW, the “stranger” barrier was almost nonexistent and thus trust between each other began to grow.

You might ask, “What about the holiday greetings?” There’s no harm in adding that up to BMW but not everyone are Catholics or Christians who practice Christmas. Father’s or Mother’s Days may not be that important to others, lest those who you do not know if they are married. So, BMW still serves the base principle to network sincerely without appearing to push yourself to the person.

Remember, that’s why they call it “social networking” because that’s precisely why people join these online sites – so network socially. When you start pushing yourself to sell things to people in sites like Facebook or MySpace, you’ll end up alienating yourself from friends and acquaintances. They will stop communicating with you, never respond to your message and start to become a stranger again. This happened to me when I sent a message to a celebrity who I wanted to help me with a new project. No response. A few months later, I sent another message apologizing for the intrusion and of the message itself and the acquaintance relationship started to go back to where we were. Hard lesson to learn.

Of course, there will be others who you will never know the dates of their birthdays, wedding anniversaries and such. But when your conversation with them starts to become more personal, you also open the door to simply ask without being intrusive. “Hey, Mary. I hope you don’t mind if I ask you when your birthday is?” It may take a few weeks, months or even years, but it eventually pays off. Just make sure you have your own reminder system to alert you a day or so before the important date so you don’t miss off. Facebook offers this feature automatically, and so does other online social networking sites. I’ve been a Plaxo member since 2002 and long before Facebook and the rest, this was one of the best online systems that allowed me to get a network’s birth date, remind me a day before and provide me with free e-greeting cards to send. However, stick with something you’re comfortable with.

There are countless more great stories to tell on the results of employing BMW in my social and business networking endeavors. What’s important is that I continue to be a real, live person with a real profile in my web network sites and a barrage of wall posts, messages and e-mails that are consistent in style and content as how I want people to perceive me to be. Remembering BMW is a hassle-free yet very easy way to continue the social and business relationship with people and make yourself mean well above the normal set of online or onsite friends and acquaintances. In due time and time of need, I had no big challenge to ask for their help when I needed it, just as long as it will not inconvenient them in their time or the effort to help me (unless they’re blood relatives). BWM works great on the real world and BMW works the same way in the virtual world, too.

You are who you are, growing up during your 20-something years in an environment that honed those characteristics of who you are. When you embark in social networks outside your comfort zones, e.g. home, parents, siblings, you begin to realize that some of the things that make you “you” don’t mix well with the network; and so you adjust. Likewise, you do the same thing in the workplace. You also learn and add new characteristics to your self by observation and “trial and error.”

So, when someone tells you (sometimes forcibly) that “it’s nothing personal,” the truth is it’s always personal. It’s always your personal self mixed with some professional requirements or needs. If you fire someone, it’s not as if some robotic supercomputer has commanded you to inform “John” that the robot is firing him. You or someone else made the “conscious” decision to fire John, a decision made by a person’s mind using personal experiences in the workplace plus other networks and environments. Your persona is always involved even if it is in the workplace.

I always tell my personal stories to people that I work with not because they are wonderful stories to tell but for the reason that I need people to know who I am and why I behave the way I behave, think, decide and so on. Many of those I’ve worked with know I have a mother who lives far away from me and my father died two weeks after I got married. Some know where I spent my childhood days and what school I attended. But knowing all these does not mean “kissing up” to them or to me. Here’s another thing you need to consider — you’ve got be consistent all the time. If you’re the smiling person, always be the smiling person even when problems persist at home.

I’ve had the experience of firing people, and I don’t mean one or five in my lifetime. I’ve fired thousands at one point when I was called the “axe man” responsible for deciding which group or department in a failing company must be shutdown and who should be let go. I knew that the personal side of “me” was involved in the decision process. So, how did I become personal in a professional task like this? I helped in the person’s transition from having no job to creating job opportunities for him.

As an example, I’d like to share with you someone who used to work for me in a previous company. Jane is a sweet, friendly person who was hired by someone and placed in my group to work as one of the three assistants that I already had. The few days she started with me told me how industrious she was, always busy and always looking for work to do. However, in the coming weeks, her weaknesses began to appear. Jane did her work a lot slower than the rest of my assistants. No matter how we all pitched in to try to help, her mental capacity to absorb new information and finish work was just not at par to the requirements of the company we all worked for.  Everyone was starting to do Jane’s work because she was slowing us all down.

So, one night, I already decided that I had to fire her. I sat down at the dinner table one night when everyone in the house were already asleep, got some blank sheets of paper and started to analyze Jane — sort of like a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. Then, I listed down people who I knew that may benefit employing Jane, even fictional types of people like “an Uncle who owned a manpower agency.”

The following day, early in the morning, I called Jane and we went to an empty, private office. I could see from her eyes she was nervous. I used the “Kiss-Kick-Kiss” technique by opening up with her strengths, reading it from the pieces of paper I had scribbled the night before and letting Jane see those pieces of paper flat on the desk. I told her I have decided to ask her to resign. Then, I went to my list of prospective employers where her total characteristics will benefit those companies or places. I also asked her if she knew relatives or acquaintances that fitted the list of fictional types of people and companies I wrote down. We went through a lot of “what if” scenarios and our discussion lasted for two hours. At the end of our meeting, we quickly drew up talking points on what she can honestly answer people if asked why she was leaving, making sure she resigned than being terminated from work. I also told her to give me a call whenever she hits a wall on her job hunting or when she already has work.

I allowed Jane to stay the following day where our group gathered to bid her goodbye with potluck and delivered food and drinks. Like we expected, many asked the same question why she resigned and, at one query, she even winked at me before she answered back. A month later, Jane visited us in the office and told me and everyone else where she currently works and how she enjoys the job. Privately, she thanked me for giving her a sense of her strengths and where she could put that to use.

When I mentioned firing thousands of people, the initial task was an exercise of my brain and my analytical experiences brought into a single spreadsheet. However, in the action of terminating the groups and departments, I ventured into the fire: I personally went to the location of the group and told them that we were shutting them down. Of course, doing so meant a thousand-and-one questions and I was ready to answer their questions. I was also ready to provide post-employment assistance — both monetary and functional — helping them transition to their next job. I prepared all these before I went around the scattered locations, having gotten budgets from my superiors to set up these different support groups. I didn’t get “death threats” but did somehow get course or painful remarks during my face-to-face encounters. But I didn’t chide these remarks; rather, I faced them with truthful answers. If I didn’t know the answer then, I promised to get back to them personally and I did. The moment you become personal with people — letting them know who you really are and seeing how honest you are to them — their anger or frustration dies down and become more open to solutions or next steps.

Whoever your boss is, they should also know the real you. It’s not “ass kissing” as most employees label such action. In my experience, letting my boss know who I am has always worked to my advantage without going against any company policy or unlawful act. Let’s say you’re late because you had a spat with your spouse. If your boss never really knew anything about your wife — who she really is — chances are your tardiness is grounds for some negative action coming from your boss. However, I’ve always made sure my superiors have always known my wife and kids even if they never met them. If there’s a chance to let my family meet my boss, I always strike upon the opportunity because a face is always a stronger recall than just a name or a description. One time in my career when trouble struck in the family, my boss becomes more understanding of the situation. I explained that my work schedule had been clashing with my family’s need for my time and it was already becoming worse with arguments. What did my boss do? She went out of her way to find me an alternative position in the company, which actually became better for my career.

Spouses (or in my case my wife) have always complained about husbands bringing work to the home where, as most of them would say, doesn’t belong there. “Work is work and the family at home doesn’t need to hear about work.” However, I totally disagree — to a certain extent. In a marital relationship, you spouse has got to be your greatest, best friend or BFF! If he or she isn’t, there’s something wrong. Therefore, in times of stress or distress, there’s one person you can rely on for counsel, inner guidance and down-to-earth advise — and that’s your spouse. However, you can’t just jump into a conversation about the office every now and then. In a personal relationship, there is consistency and routine that human nature expects or looks for. So, sharing your office woes only isn’t the way to go; there’s also got to be good times and positive events or activities that has to be told as well. Making it a daily routine, say 10 minutes about the office, is the best foot forward that allows your spouse to share the good, the bad and the ugly. And when the downtimes hit you, it isn’t hard to explain it to your spouse because he or she already knows most of the things you do and that happens in your office.

Also consider your kids. Who do you think are their heroes or role models? I’m sure there’s a time when your child would bug you to bring him or her to your office — and you do (if you haven’t, you’re depriving you child of knowing more about you). Chances are he or she will tell their friends of their trip to dad’s (or mom’s) office, the experiences they encountered, the people they met, the things they say — I mean, you know children and their animated way of story-telling an experience. After that first visit, your children will continue to ask questions about your work and the office, and knowing you strike a conversation on the dinner table about the office every so often relieves your children that all is well with you — their hero or idol (for now).

When I attend a meeting where I get to meet a new person, I always make sure to bring something personal on the table. I can talk about my family and our travels, my peers in high school, my personal achievements and so on. For women, showing your family picture to them grabs the whole “personal and professional” mix up one level in the “trust” spectrum. Why? Business transactions are still made and dealt with by people. People always use their hindsight, gut-feel or intuition to decide the better course for their business or work. Telling someone who you really are provides more positive inputs to their decision making. But don’t lie — there are those who are experienced and learned enough to know if you’re lying. Telling a fib can ricochet badly if it’s later known to be a lie — be careful! The internet has flattened our world and news and stories now travel faster than you can spell “Mississippi.” So, honesty and trust adds value to the decision making process of a person, no matter what you are selling, marketing or presenting; and providing more personal truths about yourself brings more credibility to your professional expertise.

The person in you has to mix with your professional persona. That’s the only way everyone wins. Hiding the truth about yourself isn’t a protectionism action against unwanted thwarts, not unless you yourself are doing something bad, illegal or very negative that you fear the repercussion of similar actions. Your peers in the workplace has to better understand you and the way you do things. Your spouse and children have to know what’s going on with you in the workplace so they can also adjust in your personal abode. Your network of new and old business associates need to know more about you and what makes you or the organization you represent the best candidate for their needs. Everything you do at work is the effect of who you were and who you are today. Letting people around you understand your “human nature” allows them to adjust or to counsel you when the need arises.

In the end, it’s a “Win-Win” scenario. Now, who wouldn’t want a win-win result?

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.