There’s a new word floating around the web, humblebrag (humble • brag). It’s when one brags about oneself through a story of humility. This piece might come off as a bit of a humblebrag, but bear with me to the end.

When we started Speak Social, our team was one of the best (and worst) things you could be when starting a new business. We were idealists. I know most entrepreneurs are idealists initially. Idealism tends to live in our DNA somewhere. It’s what keeps us going on those 14-hour days when everything seems to be falling apart. I’ve come to believe that most successful entrepreneurs are able to shed that idealism for practicality, like a snake shedding its skin. We never could.

There is a company, whose name I won’t mention, but it rhymes with Peach Focal. This company (and others like it) is incredibly successful for questionable reasons, and have taught me some important rules for achieving success.

Rule #1:  It’s not about service, it’s about scalability.

Creating a perfect solution for one client means creating a solution that you can sell easily (with little customization) to a mass market.

Rule #2:  It’s not about client satisfaction, it’s about client retention.

Creating satisfied clients is hard, especially on a consistent basis. It is easier to retain clients through well-written contracts, and proprietary processes, leaving clients with something they don’t own, and can’t get out of, without damaging their business reputation.

Rule #3:  Don’t over deliver; just make it over the Low Bar.

Most clients are clueless to online marketing. To them, this all seems like a bunch of hoo-doo-voo-doo that makes good search results magically appear on their screen. When you over deliver, you set expectations too high. It’s better to feed them dog food and convince them it’s steak … it’s also much easier to deliver dog food.

Rule #4:  Be a sales engine first and focus minimally on fulfillment.

The companies that focus on improving sales first, and not their products / services will always win the big money game.

Rule #5:  When in doubt, dazzle the client with data.

Reports without context are not meaningless; they are proof of activity, even if that activity is useless.

See how this works?

Now, lest you think this is just an attack piece, let me put this into perspective. Companies that follow these rules do well.  Not just financially, but they employ lots of people, have no trouble getting funding, and have a base of clients that think they are being adequately serviced. Based on the face-value, the idiot doesn’t seem to be them at all.

We choose to break every one of these rules, and we struggle mightily for it. It’s important to ask oneself, is this a pride issue? Our company is a habitual over-achiever. We go to great lengths to manipulate, explain and track client results. We focus on sales second and quality of work first. Our growth has been steady, our client success rate is often off the charts, but we’re killing ourselves in a model of actual “Client Satisfaction,” which might be about the most impractical thing one could do.

So here’s a question for you, and don’t just answer from the gut. Remember you are responsible for payroll, the growth of your company, and your overall dreams of financial success. What are we sacrificing in order to do the work we want to do? Are we trading even bigger success?

We are not perfect, we lose clients too. Ironically, we often lose them after exposing core foundational problems that companies like Peach Focal caused … I should have added “not telling the buyers how the sausage is made” to the rules above. I think our primary problem is we are just incapable of doing bad work … ahhhemmemm … #humblebrag.

What’s funny is that we do ridiculous amounts of hard work that is not scalable, or replicable. We approach each client’s campaign differently from the last, and choose to explore the world for possibilities. It makes us an investment nightmare on paper. If we weren’t self-funded it would be very difficult to get funding. Investors want to make investments in formulas, not experiments.

When you spend 40+ hours in a big room with these guys, the hijinx tend to level-up each day. Here’ s our Head of Development Scott’s response to some particularly tough Andy pranks that he received last week  …

In the end, this prank did get Andy thinking about advertising for our clients in the Yellow Pages again … 

SPACE

NOT!

This is a long story. This is a story that will take two parts to tell in full, and in order to understand my anger toward Google, you must read every word of this. The casual, headline-and-first-paragraph-reading audience need not apply.

My Dad owns a business in San Antonio. It’s an upstanding and honest business, and that’s all you need to know for the purpose of this article. I won’t give any names, business or otherwise, in order to avoid spoiling anyone’s good name or contributing to anyone’s bad … that is except for Google. The purpose of this article is to criticize, lambaste, and (insert expletive of your choice) berate Google for a terrible, terrible mistake they made that could damage my Dad’s upstanding and honest business.

You see, the almighty, all-knowing Google said that my Dad’s business was actually another business, one that is dishonest, shady and even unlawful. When I say that “Google said” my Dad’s business was a different business, I literally mean they confused my Dad’s business with a completely different business, one that happens to reside next door to my Dad’s.

How Google could make such an erroneous mistake is perplexing to begin with, but what motivated me to write the blog is what happened after I requested that Google change the misleading, false information.

Here’s my story:

Over six months ago while I was spending a Saturday working at my Dad’s business, I received a telephone call from a lady asking to speak to a man named Mike. My name is not Mike, my Dad’s name is not Mike, my Dad’s business does not employ a man named Mike, and of the Mike’s I’ve met I couldn’t imagine her wanting to speak to any of them. Turns out she had the wrong number and was actually trying to call the business next door. I asked her how she got our number and she said she Google’d the name of the business next door, which shall remain unnamed, and our number showed up. Perplexed and stressed, I did a little research and found out she was right. Our telephone number was showing up on Google under a different business name. This is a big mistake to begin with, but what compounds this error is the fact that the business next door is not what I would call an “upstanding” business; thus the phone number is accompanied with terrible reviews on Google. Amazingly, this is not my source of frustration with Google.

The way Google works is simple, which is why we love them. Businesses have a page on Google+, which links to Google Maps giving all the information about a business: location, phone number, website, etc., and people are allowed to leave reviews as well. These reviews culminate in a Google score, which essentially determines the fate of a business in Google search results. In other words, businesses with high Google scores, those receiving good reviews, appear first on Google search results. Naturally, this means that if a business receives poor reviews they are relegated to the bowels of the Google world.

Businesses can create these Google pages to appear on Google maps, so long as they can confirm they are the owner of the business. This is normally proven through a postcard sent to the business owner. Such a system should prevent, or certainly limit any falsities that exist on Google. However, mistakes do happen and my Dad’s business happened to be on the wrong end of one of these mistakes. No big deal, so long as it’s fixed. Right?

Well, I suppose requesting Google to mend incorrect information might have been a little too much to ask.

In case you haven’t heard of it, Google is an information site. It gathers all the information available on the web (which at the time of this article is nearly everything) into one place where anybody from anywhere can access it with ease. It’s the Library of Congress for the internet. It’s the Library of Congress for the Library of Congress. Google receives 2 billion hits worldwide per day, this puts a lot of pressure on this quirky company that hires people who wear red pants. But it’s not as if they shy away from pressure, I’m sure they revel in this control of information granted to people via the most common tool used today, the internet.

Information for the masses is Google’s calling card and “Don’t be evil” is its slogan, but if Google gives false information, I don’t think this quirky company is living up to its slogan.

Can this Google Conundrum get any worse? Find out in Part II of this epic tale. 

So where did we leave off? Oh, yes …

It’s not like you can call Google and tell them what’s what. A common thread amongst websites these days is the inability to talk to customer support via the telephone. Sure, they have a phone number, but unless you’re interested in filling their pockets with advertising coin the phone number is irrelevant. And this makes sense … for a couple of reasons. First, for companies in the internet business, what better way to promote the efficiency of internet communication than to communicate exclusively through it? Secondly, and most importantly, it keeps people from annoying them.

The only way to correct an error on Google Places is to either report the problem, or edit the information directly on the page. In an attempt to cover all of our bases, I did both. I explained in my edits and my report that the phone number in the listing was not the correct phone number for the company it’s listed under, and I requested they change the telephone number to reflect the correct information. These edits then have to be scanned, reviewed and approved by the Google office.

Now, I know Google is a busy place. They have Chinese censorship issues, and the release of the Samsung Galaxy IV (and IV S), and I doubt correcting misleading information about a small business in San Antonio falls anywhere in between. So, I wasn’t expecting an immediate response. Despite this realistic approach, I continued to check Google places incessantly for any changes. I checked Google so much that I began wondering if I was single-handedly responsible for all of its traffic.

Weeks went by, and Google had yet to change the information. Fall turned to winter, and winter turned to spring, yet still no change. I envisioned my report and edits being lost in the infinite digital scrapheap that plagues large businesses. Just as I was losing all hope in Google (and the human condition) I received an email from Google saying they fixed the problem. Hope after all!

Excited and relieved that Google had finally corrected this mistake, six months after I initially reported the problem, I Googled the neighboring business to my father’s and found their information was corrected. However, the onslaught of negative reviews that adorned the page before had suddenly disappeared. How could this be? Why would Google take away the reviews simply because of a change in telephone number? People have a right to know what a shady, unfriendly business they are, don’t they? Well, those reviews didn’t disappear.

Upon further inspection, I realized that Google created an entirely new page for the business next door and changed the name of the current page to my Dad’s business, which had previously not been on Google. In other words, the unrelentingly severe, berating reviews that were directed at the business next door were instead applied to my Dad’s upstanding business. That’s right, my Dad’s business was now on Google, and within its first second of internet existence it had horrendous remarks all over its review page for the whole world to see. To throw gasoline on the fire, the address and website information were still incorrect! My simple request to correct the phone number of the business next door led to unimaginable consequences.

I thought my report and edits were fairly straightforward: please correct the phone number on this page. Somehow, someway, someone working late on a Friday in the un-air-conditioned basement of Google’s glass tower, running on the final fumes of his raspberry mocha, decided to compile these reviews that were left for another business and apply them to my Dad’s business.

Irresponsible, unacceptable, libelous, and law-suit worthy are just a few of the words I’ve heard from people whom have listened to this story. Regardless, I have no choice but to get back to the end of the line and try again. I have since requested the reviews be removed via “report a problem,” and wrote Google a letter. Yet, at press time, the terrible reviews remain.

What compounds my anger and fear is how much Google is trusted. Google has become the median by which people make important decisions. People decide where to eat, buy a car, shop, bank, what books to read, what music to listen to, etc. based on what Google tells them.  Google has a monopoly on information cloaked in a quirky, cheery exterior that makes you want to trust it as if it were that Uncle who gave you a sip of his beer when you were eight and never told your Mom and Dad about it. Suddenly, I’m remembering that beer was an O’Doul’s.

It’s not that I had some personal vendetta against Google. I love Google. I’m an avid user of their search engine and have been using Chrome as my default browser (poor Internet Explorer just can’t hang with the comp these days). I also love their “internet for the masses” attitude, their quirky sense of humor (the fact that a company can have a distinct personality or sense of humor at all is a breath of fresh air), Gmail, and Google Plus … well, maybe not. But if they want to be as great a company as they advertise while maintaining control of all these facets of the internet, they have zero room for error. Such a mistake as this should be a warning to businesses, don’t blindly trust Google with your information.

In summation, brands must guard their reputation online as fiercely as they do in real life. Never turn your back on information about your business simply because you “trust” that Google’s got it.

Well … not really. But one of our favorite clients, Mike McKim of Cuvee Coffee dropped by to give us a sample of the new taps for their Cold Brew Coffee! He said he wants us to stare at it for inspiration, but now we can’t get our developer to put it down!

We’re recording our next podcast session this afternoon, but we had a special guest in the office that got us thinking … what Jedi Mind Tricks (of the Social Media world of course) would you like to hear about from us in future podcasts?

Online reviews … what a tangled web of opinions, truths and lies our world has weaved. Businesses have built entire operations around monitoring this monster. At Speak Social, Review Monitoring is one of the many important online services that we offer to brands. On a daily basis, we comb through review after review, thanking people for the good ones, and being the first line of damage control when a bad review comes through.

Call me a little late to the party, but last night, something clicked. I realized that you are all a bunch of crybabies. If even the smallest thing goes wrong with your customer experience, you complain on Yelp, sob on Facebook, and rattle off tweets like there will be no tomorrow.

Perhaps this is the product of a bunch of nobodies, who quickly became somebodies (I use that term very loosely), simply because they have thousands of Twitter fans. However, this celebrity-level entitlement thing is a bit over the top … wouldn’t you agree? After all, you may have thousands of followers, and you may run a fantastic blog, but your micro-celebrity status does not mean that you deserve some kind of special experience from a business … and it certainly does not make you immune to cordially and appropriately dealing with situations that the rest of us are able to handle on a daily basis.

My customer experiences are no different than yours. Most of them are good, some of them are not so good, and some are completely horrible. Am I saying that I have never taken to Yelp and bashed a restaurant? No. In fact, I can bash with the best of them, but there are levels of etiquette that I follow before I take my beef online. I can almost hear my mother’s voice as I write this, but she was right when she said that no one likes a crybaby. You have a mouth. You have a real voice. Use them.

If something goes wrong during your experience, talk to a manager.

Did the cashier give you the wrong change? Talk to a manger.

Did your server drop soup on your wife’s new blah, blah, blah … say it with me now:  TALK TO A MANAGER. At least give them one opportunity to fix it for you in person before you call out anyone and everyone online.

If the employee is unable to fix the problem, and the manger is unwilling to help, and the owner is nowhere to be found, THEN take your opinions to the interwebs. Before that point, you’re just a passive-aggressive whiner, which is the worst kind.

No business is perfect. When servicing the public on a daily basis, things will go wrong. This is how human-to-human interactions work, simply do the math. You are a human, and you are not perfect; and you are dealing with other humans who (just like you) are not perfect, so …

In my line of work, if it looks like a hipster and Instagrams like a hipster … it’s probably a hipster.

Try treating the situation like a human first … preferably a grown-up human, because nobody likes a crybaby.

Just like a relationship that can start and end with the click of a Facebook button, Wikipedia is the Holy Grail for building credibility online for brands. It takes more know-how than a Fort Knox engineer to set yourself up correctly for an article to be written about you, but oh boy does it feel good to see your name on the big screen when it finally happens!

Take a look at our article on Wikipedia, but remember it only covers our beginnings to this point … we’re still living our whole story!

TWITTER | FACEBOOK | PINTEREST

As it always does, the month of March flew in and out of our lives faster than a new iPhone App. With all of the hustle and bustle of SXSW, we wanted to take this Podcasting opportunity to reflect on who we met and what we learned at this year’s conference festivities!

In this episode of the Socially Speaking Podcast, Brad, Andy & I review what happened at SXSW 2013, and the key takeaway points that we plan to build on here at Speak Social … including some great tips on building a blog presented by Jonah Peretti of BuzzFeed.

Click the button to go to our feed on iTunes, and don’t forget to subscribe for updates on future podcasts.

Have an idea for a future discussion topic? Leave your comments below!

It always amuses me to see people emphatically write the statement, “Blogs Are Dead;” not only because this battle cry is usually posted on (you guessed it!) a BLOG, but also because it is a blanket statement that is neither tested nor really understood. I question whether these media mavens really know what a blog is; if they did, one might not be so quick to speak. Calling blogging dead is no more accurate than calling the power of placing cute animals into videos, overrated.

This is simply a stab in the dark from opportunists looking to uncover the next big thing online; it is certainly not a revelation from content marketers who actually do the dirty blogging work.

So usher in the time of blogs – a bright and bouncy place displaying team photos and expert advice. It was a heyday of hilarity in the beginning. Now, those brands that don’t leave content generation to experts and attempt to “Intern Out” the work, are killing blogs in one of two ways:  by either over-stuffing their blog with irrelevant BS and keywords, or under-serving their strategy with infrequent and sporadic posting that doesn’t leave enough of an impression to pull viewers in regularly.

Blogs should be built to stimulate. Stimulate the mind. Stimulate the heart. Stimulate laughter, or stimulate action (the holy grail of blogging). In a constant effort to hold attention – a larger topic that we’ll save for later – content strategists needed to play with the presentation of information if to have any hope of audience retention (let alone action). It was in this transformation from “ranty novels” to imagery worth a thousand words, and inspirational Calls-to-Action, that everyone threw up their hands and declared the blogging game over. “How could good content possibly include pictures of cats?!?” the experts cried.

Of course I can see how Ninja-Media-Expert-Social-Sherpas (is that what they call themselves these days?) could easily mistake the birth of personal content for the death of blogging. I was sad to see your cousin Nick’s 1,500 word diatribes on D&D fade into oblivion as much as the next guy, but is that really the standard by which we’re measuring the loss of blogging? Just because some bloggers don’t make it, does that really mean there is no need for blogging at all?

Our A.D.D. sufferers are online right now demanding a constant rotation of new videos and pictures, our scholars still search for thick text-based articles, and our fussy viewers demand video & imagery embedded within longer text. It sure would be great if we could somehow categorize all of this content by what it has to do with … so, unless you have a better idea, I think we will just keep calling these content treasure troves, BLOGS. You may not like that this power to educate and inspire is now available to brands as easily as it is to scrapbooking moms and gamer geeks, but that doesn’t mean we pack up all our blogging tools and go home.

Whether it be a site to aggregate the content written by many (ie. Mashable, FastCo) – or a home for brands to present their story – blogs are alive and well. In lieu of flowers, just stop spreading rumors. My general rule is trust the guy doing the work, not the one talking about it.