Online surveys are all the rage these days. You are “polled” on many sites as you enter or leave them. You get emails asking you to give your opinions on various topics. And you can see the results of surveys in all sorts of blogs and online news sites. We are being surveyed more than ever before. But can we trust the results of those surveys? Do they tell you anything which can help your online business? Are the results biased in any way?

Social scientists know that in order for a survey to provide relevant and useful information the research has to be conducted carefully, the questionnaire has to be professionally structured and – crucially – you have to get the right participants. If you run an online business selling lawnmowers for instance, your survey on the best one to buy should really only involve people who have bought lawnmowers and who probably have experience of using several different ones. Otherwise your results could be nonsense if the data includes the opinion of people who have never bought a lawnmower. In surveys, participation from the right people is crucial.

New research has looked at this issue and discovered that the key to participation in online surveys is the reputation of the sponsoring company – not the kind of survey tool that is used. It seems that you can use any survey tool, as long as the reputation of the company asking the questions is high. In other words, if you want to get meaningful results from any online polling your company does you need to establish your reputation BEFORE you do your survey. Concentrate on branding, get people on social networks saying you are brilliant and then you will get effective participation in your surveys.

However, many companies appear to try looking for the best online survey tool first. They worry about whether one kind of software will produce better results than another. Indeed, many companies even go to the lengths of having survey tools produced specifically for them using bespoke programming. But it doesn’t matter; what matters first is the reputation of the company doing the survey.

The only time the survey tool matters is when the sponsoring company is not known. If no-one knows your business then the potential participants want to know ho reliable and trustworthy the survey software is. In other words, the reputation of the online survey tool only matters when your business is unknown.

If people already know about your business the only way you are going to get meaningful participation in your online surveys is to improve your reputation. It is yet more evidence that you should always concentrate on building your business reputation.

Here’s a simple question for you. Imagine you have someone in front of you who is desperate to buy your product; would you do everything in your power to help them make that purchase? If you answered “yes” then get a gold star and go to the top of the class. But if you answered “no” then you must be a retailer. That’s because a recent study showed that is precisely what retailers are doing. They have people in their shops who want to buy something and yet the shop is going out of their way to hinder the purchase. Dumb or what?

It seems that eight out of every ten mobile phone users who go shopping in traditional bricks and mortar stores want to connect to Wi-Fi whilst inside the shop. But only 38% of shops offer such facilities. But the question is why do so many people want to connect to Wi-Fi whilst out shopping? The answer is they want to research the products they see in front of them. The shoppers want to go online to find out more about the items they are interested in buying. Yet, by failing to offer free Wi-Fi the shops are preventing their potential customers from finding our more about the items on sale.

So, what do the shoppers do? Well, they go home, find out about the item online and then buy from an online retailer which could well be in direct competition with the bricks and mortar store where the shopper saw the item for the first time. In other words, by not having Wi-Fi in the store the retailers are actually directing a sizeable proportion of their shoppers out of the front doors and into the welcoming arms of the online competition.

And how do we know that? Because the research also shows that if people can access in-store Wi-Fi they mostly buy from the store they are in, having researched the product online using their smartphones. In other words, having free in-store Wi-Fi significantly increases the chances that the shopper will buy from your shop, even if they research the item online and find it on sale elsewhere. Retailers need to realise that the convenience of having something now, rather than cheaper, later, is a psychological trump card. People prefer convenience to lower price.

The lack of in-store, free Wi-Fi in the majority of real world, bricks and mortar stores is an indication of how little those shops understand about consumer behaviour. In these tough economic times retailers are finding it hard to get the sales they need, yet a simple step of offering free Wi-Fi will increase their sales. Perhaps the store owners appear to be more concerned about the chances that people will research online and buy elsewhere. But that is exactly what is happening because people cannot get to the online information they want whilst in the shop.

Even if you run an exclusively online business, this research on traditional retail has an implication for you. The study demonstrates that the retailers do not know enough about their customers and the way they are behaving. So how much do you truly know about the behaviour of your customers?

Related articles

• 52% of Holiday Shoppers Used Cellphones in Stores [STUDY] (mashable.com)
• Amazon to Open Retail Store [RUMOR] (mashable.com)
• New Technology Luring Shoppers Away From Computers, Back To Stores (boston.cbslocal.com)

Charles Dickens was born 200 years ahead of his time. Today the world celebrates his birth back in 1812 when the notion of the World Wide Web would have been science fiction. But had Dickens been around today there is little doubt he would have loved the Internet, would have been a prolific blogger and a vocal supporter of Safer Internet Day, which is also celebrated today.

Dickens was a social reformer and someone who used his books and articles to campaign for a better deal for the poor and specifically for children. He wanted them to live in safety and prosperity. So, Safer Internet Day would have given him a great focus for his blogging and his books, had he been alive today.

Indeed, Charles Dickens would no doubt have been horrified by the stories of children being preyed upon by adult sexual predators. And he would also have taken to task companies that allow their products and services to put children at risk. You can imagine a Dickens novel with a 12-year-old girl as a central character and some seedy, drooling 50-year-old chatting to her on Facebook, while her parents were down the pub getting drunk every night. Or Dickens may well have written about some powerful business owner, living in the lap of luxury, unconcerned that his products were not fully tested, only really salivating at the thought of more sales and more money.

Nothing much has changed in human behaviour in the past 200 years. People still exploit children. Businesses still only concern themselves with money, paying only lip-service to social responsibility.

But with someone with the literary skill and the passion for change as Charles Dickens alive today, we may well have seen more change. Just one of his books, Oliver Twist, led to significant change in the clearing of the slum area on which the book was based, as well as change in the treatment of women because of his portrayal of the character Nancy. Indeed, Karl Marx commented that Dickens had used his books to greater effect than all the words ever spoken by politicians. With the Internet at his fingertips there is little doubt that Dickens would have had an even greater impact had he been around today.

Which rather begs the question – who is using the Internet to lead social change these days? Which individual or group of people is having real impact? The folks at Safer Internet Day are doing their best of course, but do they have the impact of Dickens? The fact that there are cuts taking place in the policing of the Internet suggest otherwise.

Today, of all days then, perhaps we should learn a lesson from Charles Dickens. We should use the power we have with the Internet at our fingertips to make it a better place for our children and for future generations. There is too much good about the Internet to allow it to fall into the hands of those who are less caring than us. What are you going to do today as part of Safer Internet Day to make the web a safer place for your family and friends?

Related articles

• Charles Dickens’ 200th Birthday Marks First Google Doodle as Promotional Vehicle (searchenginewatch.com)
• Charles Dickens stamps for 2012 – Telegraph.co.uk (telegraph.co.uk)
• Claire Tomalin: Charles Dickens novels ‘too long for today’s young’ says writer’s biographer (dailymail.co.uk)

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Can you resist the urge to check your emails, to look at your Facebook Wall or to have a peek at Twitter? It’s tough isn’t it? Once you start using such online media it seems the urge to resist it is difficult. There has been plenty written about the addiction to social media, but little has been said about the simple desires to keep in touch with friends, or to check the latest news online, for instance. A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago shows that the urge to engage with media of all kinds is more significant than the desire created by cigarettes or alcohol.

The study used Blackberry mobile phones which were only capable of receiving “Blackberry Messages” (BBM) – importantly the devices were stripped of any other functionality. Then, every couple of hours the participants in the research received a BBM message asking them about their current desires. Interestingly, the study was conducted across a wide age range – 18 to 85 – and it involved a large number of people – 200. So the results make fascinating reading.

What the researchers found was a consistent “giving in” to the desire to Tweet or to post on Facebook, but that the desire to smoke or drink was resisted more easily. In other words, we find we are much more tempted to use social media than other potentially addictive behaviours such as using cigarettes or drinking alcohol. With much research now suggesting that social media addiction is a real threat, why is it we are so easily taken in by it?

The researchers from Chicago suggest that it is the apparent “low cost” element of social media. Cigarettes and alcohol cost us real money, whereas social media does not. Similarly, smoking and drinking has a health cost, which social media does not appear to have. In addition there is the widespread availability of social media. If you want to use Twitter or Facebook you can pretty much do it anywhere, any time. But if you have a desire for a drink or a cigarette it might not be so easy; you may not have those items to hand when the desire strikes, so you put the urge to the back of your mind. Because Facebook and Twitter are largely omnipresent we do not reject the desires it seems, but give in to them quickly.

For employers this is a real issue that needs grappling with. Companies go to great efforts to restrict the availability of alcohol and cigarettes in the workplace, thereby helping to reduce temptation. But the widespread availability of social media in the office means employees can easily be distracted by the temptation. The problem is that for most businesses those distractions have a real benefit in terms of promoting the company, enabling greater customer service and so on. Getting the balance right is going to be the real challenge for companies in the coming year or two.

Related articles

• Social media harder to resist than cigarettes, according to study (theverge.com)
• Social Media and Email are More Addictive Than Alcohol and Cigarettes (gizmodo.com)
• Study: Is Facebook more addictive than alcohol or cigarettes? (digitaltrends.com)

Twitter is a great social network – after all, you can have quick conversations with people, sharing your thoughts about a TV programme “live”, or commenting on a soccer player’s mishaps on the field with other Tweeters in the stadium. You can even tell people you are eating a cheese sandwich, if you wish. However, when you look at a stream of Tweets you will notice it is full of links – these take you to blog posts, to pictures, to videos, essentially to other sources of information.

Over at Facebook, the density of links is lower. People hold conversations and share pictures, or their play games with groups of like-minded friends. But the sharing of information and leading people towards other sites appears to be lower.

Could it be that Facebook is “more social” than Twitter? Do we use these different social networks for alternative purposes?

These are the kind of questions which are partially answered by a new research study from the University of Manchester. The research looked at 300 social networking users and was trying to find out if there was any connection between personality type and which social network people used. The study did not really find any strong connection between measures of personality and either Twitter or Facebook. There were some minor variations, but nothing significant.

However, the study revealed a difference in the way people tended to use these social networks. It transpires that Twitter users seek more fulfilment of the “need for cognition” – the psychological term for the desire to be mentally stimulated. This suggests that what we want when using Twitter are those links to more useful information, whereas we don’t look for this when we are on Facebook.

It means that if you wish to make the most of Twitter you need to be sure you add links to useful information – not just fun stuff, but material which people will find interesting and valuable. But if you do this on Facebook, the research implies that you will get lower engagement because that’s not the kind of thing we want to find on that social network.

The research is not really conclusive, but it does demonstrate that we do appear to use different social networks for alternative purposes. That means if you are using social media as a means of promoting your business or connecting with your customers, you should provide slightly different kinds of content on each network you engage with. On Twitter, provide links to thought-provoking material – on Facebook, just chat about that material.

Related articles

• Are Twitter users smarter than Facebook users? (adigaskell.org)
• What does your choice of social networking site say about you? (gabrielcatalano.com)

Facebook users are nothing if not honest. Several studies have shown that we are frequently more truthful online than we are in the flesh. Want to know the “real person” you meet? Take a look at what they say on Facebook and other social networks and you’ll glimpse parts of their personality they keep hidden from view in the “real world”. This is such a well-known feature of social networking that no self-respecting recruitment consultant would dare to employ anyone without first checking out an applicant’s activity on Facebook or LinkedIn, for instance.

But there is a reason why we are “economical with the truth” in the real world; it enables cooperation. The human species depends upon collaborative behaviour – it is how we succeed. After all, no matter how much the movie “The Social Network” might want us to think that Facebook was the pioneering invention of one man, Mark Zuckerberg, in reality it was and still is a massive team effort. Similarly, try getting oil out of the ground without collaboration, or indeed running any business without the support of others. It is cooperation which makes us succeed.

However, we don’t always get collaboration if the people around us do not like us. So our behaviours are geared to getting other people to think positively about us. But what if there is an aspect of our personality they might not like? Well, we don’t show it to them. And how do we know not to show them aspects of our thinking and behaviour which they might not like? We use feedback mechanisms to determine what to display about ourselves. These include verbal communication, tone of voice, body language and a host of other features which enable us to assess – often instantly – whether or not we should say something to another person. If we reveal part of  our personality which their prior communication suggests they may not like, then we hold back. We are economical with the truth and the result is we gain cooperation – the big behaviour prize.

Online, however, we do not have such efficient and complex methods of feedback. Tone of voice is missing, as are those micro-muscular changes in facial muscles which help us determine what another person might be thinking. On the Internet, we are working very much in the dark as far as communication is concerned.

So, over on Facebook what do we do? Well because we don’t have those effective feedback systems available to us, we just resort to being honest. It’s all we have. But that loses friends, not gains them. This is shown in research on people with low self-esteem. The study found that when people have negative self-feelings they say so on Facebook. But this makes them less appealing to their friends and it loses them the connections they so desperately need in order to boost their self-esteem. In other words, Facebook works against them, not for them.

This makes sense, of course. When someone is merely typing negative stuff, it is not the kind of material we want to read if we are in a cooperative mood. In the “real world” such negative thinking tends to be addressed straight away by a group of friends, who rally round and encourage the person with low self-esteem. It stems the negativity at the source. But on Facebook the negative diatribe simply puts people off connecting. In other words, the honest feelings of the person with low self-esteem makes them less appealing to other people – the complete reverse of what the individual is trying to achieve.

Now, you may not have poor self-esteem, but this study should be a warning to you. It suggests that before posting anything on a social network like Facebook you need to think: how will what I say come across without tone of voice, without body language, without those facial expressions? If there is any room for doubt, maybe you should select another communications method.

Related articles

• Facebook is not such a good thing for those with low self-esteem (medicalxpress.com)
• The 9 Worst Ways to Use Facebook for Business (hubspot.com)
• LinkedIn 277% More Effective for Lead Generation Than Facebook & Twitter [New Data] (hubspot.com)

What is the first thing you look at when you land on someone’s social network profile page? When you look at an “About Us” web page, where do your eyes go? If you are like the bulk of Internet users you will focus your attention on the eyes of the person pictured. And, according to research you will make a decision whether or not you like that person within 100ms. In one-tenth of a second, a mere blink, you will have assessed the profile pictures of the people you are looking at and decided whether to trust them. Either we are pretty shallow, or we have highly sophisticated mechanisms within our brains to help us make such judgements.

So, the kind of image you have on your website or on your social networking profiles will influence whether people wish to connect with you. Have the right profile pictures on Facebook or Twitter, for instance, and you’ll get more friends and followers. Similarly, if your company’s “About Us” page has an appropriate image of you, the business could well do better. But what is the right kind of picture? There is much debate online as to whether your profile picture should be head-and-shoulders, or a full body shot of you in some setting you enjoy, such as that picture of you beside your Ferrari, or windsurfing in the Mediterranean. Such images give a glimpse of your personality, true, but they don’t allow your website visitors to see what they really want. They want to look into your eyes.

Hence a close-up, head-and-shoulders, shot does allow your profile visitors to start making those judgements about you. But what if they don’t like what they see in your eyes? They can see what they want to make that snap judgement, but if they assess your character to be less than trustworthy within just 100ms, you could have lost them for ever.

Thankfully, new research from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows us what we need to choose as our profile pictures. You need the most baby-faced picture you can get of yourself. The study used photo-editing software to manipulate the images of politicians so that the area around the eyes was softened. Then, the before and after shots were tested to see how far these politicians were trusted. And, you guessed it, the baby-faced pictures with the wrinkles ironed-out were the ones which got the positive votes. Even the political enemies of these people trusted them more when they were baby-faced than when they were natural.

Now, this does not mean you should rush out and start airbrushing all your profile pictures. But it does imply that if you choose a picture which enhances your youthful looks you will do better online. And how do you get such profile pictures without faking them? Simple. You need to get your profile pictures shot professionally by a photographer. Simple snaps done by your mate or your children will not be lit properly to make you look your best. But if you ask a professional photographer to help hide your wrinkles, they’ll know exactly what to do so that you get a truthful image which shows your baby-face.

Related articles

• Twitter Accounts with a Profile Picture Have 10 Times More Followers Than Those Without (hubspot.com)
• Here’s How People Look at Your Facebook Profile – Literally (mashable.com)
• Heatmaps Reveal Where People Look on Social Media Sites [Research] (hubspot.com)

Princess Diana shares something with Osama Bin Laden apparently – like him, she is alive…! Trust me, it must be true because several people believe it and say so online. Yes, they are conspiracy theorists, admittedly. But there are plenty of people chatting away on the Internet who suggest, for instance, that Princess Diana faked her own death or that Bin Laden was already dead when the special forces stormed the building where he had been living. The problem with these people is that their beliefs are contradictory. Did you notice that the people who believe that Bin Laden is alive also claim he was dead at the time of the raid…? Er…how is that possible? And the people who believe that Princess Diana faked her own death also appear to think that she was assassinated by the authorities. Again, she cannot be both dead and alive at the same time.

Conspiracy theories are rife on the Internet. Only recently there was a theory circulating on the web that the Italian cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, had been torpedoed by the Iranians. When it was pointed out that there was no explosion, but a gaping hole with a rock embedded in the side of the hull, the conspiracy theorists explained it away by the “fact” that the Iranians had perfected the technique of disguising torpedoes as rocks. The contradiction in the physics of not being able to behave in a torpedo-like way if you were shaped as a rock, somehow did not seem to matter.

And how many times have you heard that Neil Armstrong never walked on the moon because the whole Apollo programme was made-up by the US Government in league with Hollywood…?  The fact that this hoax needs the 50-year-long co-operation of hundreds of thousands of scientists and film crew members seems to escape the conspiracy theorists because it can be “explained away” by the notion that “hardly anyone knew”, not even the astronauts themselves apparently…! So, the theory is you don’t send them to the moon but make them and everyone else think they have been, thanks to the support of a handful of exceptional experts who have all stayed silent since. Once again, the contradictory nature of the moon landing conspiracy escapes the consciousness of the people who support such theories.

New research from the University of Kent, UK, shows that if someone believes an “official story” is untrue, then they become willing to accept contradictory notions – such as Princess Diana faking her own death and also being killed by MI5 or MI6. The contradictory nature of the various theories is seemingly invisible to people because of their fundamental desire to accept that the official story is untrue. That belief seems to “trump” the contradictions.

In the online world – where such contradictory theories can circulate rapidly and easily – it means that we need to be particularly wary. If someone is unwilling to accept any official story for whatever reason, then it appears changing their mind with logical argument is unlikely as they will counter such debate with illogical and contradictory claims, without seeing the nonsense of their viewpoint.

For online businesses this can be a problem too. The people who believe that a company is simply out to profiteer, to fleece the individual, are willing to accept that whilst also believing that the firm is deliberately making losses. A company cannot make a profit and a loss at the same time, but the conspiracy theorists would think that possible.

It all rather suggests that if you suffer from conspiracy theorists attacking your views or your company’s position if you are in business, then the best thing you can do is completely ignore them. If you enter the debate you will just fuel the fire of illogicality and contradiction.

Related articles

• Contradictions Don’t Deter Conspiracy Theorists (livescience.com)
• Believing the impossible and conspiracy theories (eurekalert.org)
• Ghost of Princess Diana in Scottish Church (weeklyworldnews.com)

Stephen Hester, the embattled boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland, cannot help being the current most-disliked man in Britain. It is not his fault that his employers decided to pay him £1.2m a year. Neither is he to blame that they decided to give him a bonus worth almost as much. But would he be as disliked as he is today if he had a different name? What if he were Tarquin Hester or Dave Hester or Jonathan Hester? The fact of the matter is, his name affects what we think of him.

So, if he is somewhat reviled today you can blame his Mum and Dad for choosing “Stephen” instead of a name that the rest of us might prefer – sorry if your name is Stephen…!

Your name has a significant impact upon what other people think about you. For example, it has been shown to have an effect on your academic performance because your teachers, presumably subconsciously, react better to some names than others. People with certain names do better at school than others. Choosing your child’s name can have a major effect on their life.

New research confirms the “name effect”. The study, conducted in Germany and the USA, found that the names of individuals affected, for instance, the extent of interest in them in online dating sites. The names of individuals were also related to measurements of self-esteem and smoking – people with negative names smoked more and also had lower levels of self-esteem. That’s probably linked to perceived lack of like-ability; because of their name some people get fewer social connections and feel less popular, which makes them think negatively about themselves.

So, if you lack followers on Twitter, or friends on Facebook it might be simply that your name is “wrong”. Human beings might like to profess we are not prejudiced against particular names, but this study – and others before it – show that we are biased against certain names and that we favour others. You might do better online if you use your nick-name, or your middle name.

Alternatively we could all call ourselves the most popular and most highly rate name found in this new research – Alexander. If we were talking about Alexander Hester today, the coverage would be a lot less negative. Still, at least his parents didn’t call him Kevin.  The research shows that is the most disliked name of all. Apologies to Kevins reading this…!

Related articles

• Outrage as Royal Bank of Scotland chief Stephen Hester gets £963,000 bonus (thesun.co.uk)
• National News: Miliband accuses PM over RBS bonus (coventrytelegraph.net)

Internet marketers are nothing if not creative. There hardly seems to be a day that goes by without some new idea from an Internet Marketing brainbox. And each time you think there can’t be any new ideas to market your business online, along comes another creative thinker who has developed an amazing way to promote your products and services.

In business meetings you will often hear people say “we need to think outside the box on this one”. It is a shorthand way of suggesting that the people in the meeting need to be more creative and come up with new and seemingly whacky ideas. And you can bet that many traditionally-based marketing departments are amazed at how much “outside the box” thinking there is in the young upstarts of the Internet Marketing world.

Recently, however, psychologists were interested to find out if by actually being “outside a box” made people think more creatively. The researchers conducted a study which was purportedly looking at different working environments. Some people were sat in a large cardboard box, whereas others were “outside the box”…! The researchers were not actually looking at work productivity or the way people responded to different environments. Instead the psychologists wanted to find out if being in a box hampered creative thinking and if being outside the box actually helped. And amazingly it did…!

When people were inside the box, they were much less creative than when they were, literally, “outside the box”.

So, in order to boost your creative thinking for your internet marketing you could always buy yourself a big cardboard box, do your work in that for a while and then physically step “outside the box” to improve your creativity.

On the other hand, you might want to take a different path to success…! What the research really shows is that a change in environment boosts your creative thinking. So, if  you are struggling with coming up with new ideas for your website, or how to market your online products, you need to get away from your desk. Take a walk, go for a coffee, simply walk to someone else’s office for a chat – all of these are tactics which help improve creative thinking.

In essence, when you are in your office you are in your own little “box” environment – step outside of that box and your creative juices will start to flow again. It all goes to show that there is often some truth in the jargon-laden sayings we hear in the workplace..! Get out of your office for a while and your Internet Marketing will be improved because you will literally be thinking outside of your box.

Related articles

• Thinking outside the box DOES boost creativity: Cramped work spaces produce few ‘lightbulb moments’ for employees (dailymail.co.uk)
• Leave the Room to Boost Creativity [Brain Hack] (lifehacker.com)
• To ‘think outside the box,’ think outside the box (eurekalert.org)

Twitter is not necessarily doing what you think it does. Rather than being the place where you send out short messages to your friends and colleagues it may be the place where your behaviour is manipulated by software. Researchers in Boston, USA, have discovered that “Twitter bots” can change our behaviour. The “bots” are automated pieces of software that trawl through the Twittersphere, find some target Tweets and then automatically Retweet them. To the original Tweeter it looks like a human being has found what they said interesting. Far from it; the Tweet may never have been actually read by a real person.

The Twitter bots also sometimes include a “mention” in the Retweet. That means, for instance, if I were to Retweet something you said on Twitter, but also included my son’s Twitter name in the Retweet I would have given him a “Twitter mention”; inserting anyone’s Twitter name or handle into a Tweet is a “mention”. The automated bots will do this at random, adding people who have used similar words to your original Tweet. The implication is that one of your “followers” knows that someone else would also be interested in what you have to say and so is effecting an introduction. Indeed, this is what happens all the time with real people but automated software can do it too.

The problem for Twitter users is this. Unless you know the person who is Re-Tweeting you, the Retweet could come from automated software – not a real individual. But the inclusion of “mentions” merely adds to the illusion that someone else thinks your content is worth spreading and sharing to other like minded people.

The result is that these automated Twitter bots can fool us. They can make us think people value our material, when in actual fact no-one has engaged with our Tweets at all. However, what the researchers found next is fascinating. It seems that the automated bots are so good at giving an impression of human behaviour we behave as we would do in the real world. The bots appear to be helping create new followers and connections between the various people mentioned in the automated Retweets. In essence, the bots are creating introductions, helping us network.

But the problem is – in the real world we only introduce people to each other who we think will get on, who will share common interests or who we think can help each other. Twitter bots cannot make such value judgements and are therefore inferior to natural human behaviour. Even so, we appear to be take in by them. Perhaps it is time to review your Twitter Followers and to make sure you are only being followed by real people. That way you will minimise your chances of being manipulated by software into following other people who you have little real connection with.

Related articles

• Should You Add “Please Retweet” to Your Twitter Updates? [Debate] (hubspot.com)
• Obama’s State of the Union Address Sees 760,000 Tweets [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)
• FAQs about using Twitter for business (marketing.yell.com)
• Can Twitter Bots Encourage Human Communication? (blogs.wsj.com)

Hello, how are you? Hope you are well and that you have had a good day so far. Now, tell me, isn’t it nice to be asked, to be recognised, to be noticed? I am writing this from the Rudding Park Hotel, near Harrogate, where I am speaking tomorrow morning. I arrived to be met by a cheery smile, to be asked “how has your day been today Mr Jones?” and to be escorted to my room with a bright conversation about the area. Once in my room I rang room service: “Good evening Mr Jones, how are you this evening?” was EXACTLY how the phone was answered..! Wow, what a hotel…! I was so impressed, the FIRST THING I did was to open up my laptop and write a FIVE STAR REVIEW on Trip Advisor. The hotel had made me feel welcome, as though they were running the hotel just for me. So many hotels simply seem to ignore their visitors.

And, sadly, so do many online businesses. The chances are you have emailed some website or other, never to get a reply. Or you have asked a question in a company’s support forum or ticket system, only to have to wait weeks to get an answer, if at all. Many companies simply build a website and leave it there; it’s rather like building a retail store, dressing the windows so people can see what you have to offer and then letting people in the doors only for them to find there are no staff.

Human beings do not like being ignored. And this is confirmed by a new piece of research from psychologists at Purdue University, Indiana, USA. They found that people feel good even if they get a sense that strangers warm to them. Being ignored by people walking past meant that the participants in the study felt negative. It shows that simple connections are all you need to make people feel more connected with you.

Online that means the language you use – hopefully you feel I am writing this directly to you, you can almost hear me speak it to you. Also, it means answering comments as quickly as possible, dealing with emails immediately and doing everything you can to make people feel you are not ignoring them. Much business online is missed because websites simply ignore their visitors.

If you want to discover how it feels to NOT be ignored, to be welcomed and treated as a friend, check yourself in to Rudding Park…!

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Business owners tend to fall into one of two camps – those who are willing to have a go at anything and try new services and ideas, or those who want to maintain the status quo and who are very conservative in their approach to life. Indeed, the notion that people are either open to change, or they are not is a central characteristic of personality psychology. In personality tests your degree of “openness” is assessed and forms part of your personality profile. The degree to which each of us is “open” is, according to personality theory, a rather fixed part of our very being – we are either open, or not.

However, recent research suggests that our degree of openness can indeed be altered. It is not a firmly established personality trait after all, but something which can fluctuate. And that is good news for the online success of anyone running an Internet business. The online world is changing at such a rapid pace that you need to be able to adapt and move quickly in order to succeed. However, business owners who are rather conservative, who preserve the status quo and who do not want to try the “new fangled” ideas until they become established could be doing themselves a disservice. In the past it was indeed wise for business leaders to wait, to let other test the waters and find the problems, before then taking on any new ideas. But nowadays, the new ideas are old ideas within months – if an online business does not take up such new things quickly, they easily miss out. The old, slower, way of doing business is no longer an option online – which means that those business owners not open to change could find life tough on the Internet.

But the research shows that all is not lost. Rather than thinking that this fast-moving online world is “not for me”, the business owner who is traditionally not open can alter that aspect of their personality quite easily. The psychological studies show that crossword puzzles and Sudoku tests can increase the level of openness in an individual. This means that if you want to increase your online success all you need to do is take up crossword puzzles. You’ll become more open to new ideas and information and as a result you will be more willing to try out new elements which could improve your web business, for instance.

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How many times have you searched for something, only to find that you are presented with results that don’t quite match what you wanted? It is a daily occurrence for many people. Search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing do a fantastic job, but ultimately they are only as good as the words typed in by their users. Type in something that is somewhat ambiguous and you can be presented with all sorts of sites you didn’t want…!

The problem is that many words have multiple meaning. Search engines have to try to work out the exact meaning of what users type in. But unlike human conversation, typing frequently does not present any real context. For example, when you use a word that has several different meanings someone listening to you instantly knows which meaning you are inferring because of the tone of your voice, your body language and the overall context of the conversation. Search engines don’t have those benefits to rely on. All they have is typing.

The mathematical algorithms which search engines use do have some ability to work out roughly what people are searching for, depending on the other words that are also typed in. This is an attempt to establish the context of the word. As an example, consider the word “script”. It has several possible meanings – a drama script, a computer programmers script, an academic examination paper, and a medical script or prescription. If you are two doctors chatting away about a script you know what you mean is a prescription, not the text of the latest movie. Equally, if you are in a meeting about computers, you infer that anyone talking about a script is focusing on programming, not discussing academic exams.

However, if you are a search engine and someone types in “script” what do you present as the result…? This is a problem which all the search engines have to tackle and they are not helped by their users – us…!

Ambiguous words help people not search engines

Linguists have discovered that ambiguous words with multiple meanings actually increase the accuracy of our communication. Past theories have suggested that linguistic ambiguities have arisen because language was never supposed to be something we used to communicate with each other, but as an internal thinking system. We would know what we meant; it never mattered that no-one else would…! However, the new findings from linguists show that ambiguous words help us communicate better. It turns out that it is more efficient to use a short word with several meanings and let the listener work out the meaning as a result of context, body language and vocal tone, for instance. Otherwise we would have to use very long words, conversations would take longer as would thinking, making the production of speech a cumbersome and slow process. Ambiguity actually speeds up communication.

Unless you are a search engine….!

So, how can you help yourself – and your website visitors – to get the results wanted in a search engine? The answer is to focus on long words, which the linguists demonstrate are much less ambiguous. So, if you are a medic, don’t go for your first instinct of searching for information on a “script”, write the word you almost never use “prescription”. If you are a computer programmer use the old-fashioned  “batch language file” instead of “script”, for instance. In other words, go for complex when searching, rather than simple; go against your normal communication instincts.

For website owners it means you are more likely to get that coveted “number one” position on a search engine if you focus on the less popular, longer and less ambiguous words.

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During economically troubled times you cannot miss the vast amount of price discounting and “special offers” which retailers and online stores use in a bid to tempt people to buy. With businesses themselves facing difficulties, they do almost anything to get more customers and people buying more. But sometimes the sales promotions do not live up to the desires of the company; often consumers just walk on by, ignoring the “deal”. Part of the reason for that appears to be in the way the offers are made.

Consider cans of beans where you are offered “two for one” or “buy one get one free”. You can quickly and easily divide the price in two and work out the cost of each individual can. But if the deal is “three for two”, the mathematical calculation is now more difficult. However, it seems that makes many people give up on the potential purchase because they feel the retailer is trying to hoodwink them, making the price calculation deliberately tough.

Psychological research on consumers shows there is another way to increase sales. What you do is give the quantity first and then the actual price amount afterwards. So instead of saying “three for two” your sales display says “three for £10″. The math is a little difficult as it is not a round number, but people realize that each item us roughly £3 each. However, if you were to say “£10 for three”, research shows that people are less likely to buy – putting the price first is off-putting, even though the deal is the same.

Online you can use this technique in a variety of ways. Imagine, for instance, you sell e-books and you have a “package deal” for 10 books in a collection. If you say “£47 for 10 books” you will get fewer sales than if you were to say “10 books for £47″.

Similarly, if your shopping cart allows people to select multiple copies of something – such as products you might deliver to them – do not allow your shopping cart to put the price first; it should display the quantity first, then the price. That way you’ll reduce the likelihood of shopping cart abandonment – which happens in almost 50% of all online carts. Half of online shoppers decide they want to buy something and then, at the last moment, change their mind. You can help reduce that reversal of your fortunes by presenting the price information in the right way.

What the research shows is that people focus on the first number they see. If that is a high price figure, such as £27 for three items, they perceive it as expensive, even though the items are only £9 each. If they see the “3″ first, the package deal is perceived as valuable because of the low number.

If you want more sales, or if you are in economically troubled times, the way in which you display your pricing information could have an impact.

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