Correcting my mistakes and others.
It’s spring, even if you’re still sloshing through snow where you live. Traditionally, this is a time for cleaning up the muck of winter, so let me address some messes I and others have made. I like to think I only make misstatements while others make mistakes, but you can judge.
In my recent story on Vertical Response, I talked about the leader in the space, Constant Contact, and its size and the size of its customers. I said the company tended to focus on large customers, because I see its name on big company mailings regularly. Constant Contact sent a note saying it focuses on small and midsized companies. To emphasize that point, all the customer samples on its Web site are smaller companies. I’m working on a time to speak with the CEO, and I’ll tell you Constant Contact’s vision of the e-mail marketing world soon.
I misquoted Ridgley Evers in my story on NetBooks about the profitability status of the company. Evers says the company is doing well and investors are pleased, but NetBooks is not yet profitable. That makes sense, because the costs of building a company, whether from bricks or software, are front-loaded and it takes time to amortize those costs. Evers is focused on growth, and works hard to make sure his customers are profitable. NetBooks will get there before too long, I’m sure, based on what I’ve seen and heard from its customers.
Now that every mistake I’ve made over the winter has been cleared up (personal life mistakes excluded, of course), let’s look at mistakes by companies with people employed to stop them from making mistakes. Yet the mistake train keeps chugging along.
On track one, here chugs Microsoft. What better summation of the travails of Vista than this headline: Vista SP1: Threat or Menace? So let me extend my cautions about refusing Vista until SP1 appeared to maybe resisting the inevitable until SP1a appears. Stories of drivers trashed and major applications disabled gives me pause. If you have a choice about when to hold your nose and move to Vista, keep holding both your nose and the hard line on upgrading to the mess that continues to surround Vista.
Track two brings us our old friends Sony, the executive team that infected a half million computer users playing legally purchased CDs from Sony with badly done “protection” software. Yes, rootkits for free with your music.
Since no Sony executives went to jail (that I remember), even though their “oopsie” fell squarely into a batch of computer abuse laws, they recently gave us more fun: charging us to not ship computers full of bloatware. How could we resist the offer of $50 to not install bloatware we don’t want in the first place? Quite well, evidently, and quite loudly. Sony caved and retracted the fee for not foisting crap we don’t want on two models of their laptop line. Is there a “three strikes and you’re out” rule for executive team incompetence? One can only wish.
Maybe not a mistake, but certainly mixed signals, came from Business Week’s online version this winter. First they run an article telling small businesses to avoid just about anything new, innovative, or secure like spam filters, antivirus software, blogs, and anything Web 2.0 (Tech ‘Solutions’ Your Small Biz Can’t Use). Then they update a popular story from three years ago because of constant reader interest. That story? Social Media Will Change Your Business.
Do whiny Millennial kids who never worked a real job give blogs a bad name? Yes. Can your business build customer loyalty and increase sales through a blog? Absolutely.
In the first story, the author made fun of blogs by trashing the idea of a hardware store owner writing a blog. Personally, I think that’s a great idea. I quickly checked the high-end hardware store in Dallas that just opened a new location in my suburb. I wanted to find a blog telling me how to fix the pieces of my house that degraded during the winter. It’s spring, right? I need help with the yard, maybe some paint, maybe some preventative termite granules or whatever. Since I’m not clear on what I need, I went to their Web site looking for help, but found nothing.
Surely I’m not the only person in the Dallas area looking for help becoming more of a handyman (or handy person, as I told my daughter when explaining that lawn mowers are not gender specific). Home Depot and Lowe’s give classes all the time, because they know teaching customers how to do things means more sales.
The closest hardware store to me is now the high-end store’s new location. If they’d list what I need to buy to keep the weeds in my yard under control for the summer, I’d be there this afternoon. If they showed me exactly what I need in order to scrape, clean, and repaint some sections of my house trim, and included a parts list, I’d be there Saturday morning.
If you have a hardware store, remember that few homeowners today have the traditional grandfather or uncle with all the tools and experience needed to maintain a house or apartment, yard or window box. Every hardware store employs people with the right experience. Why keep their knowledge inside your walls when you can share it across the Web?
As politicians say, mistakes were made. Unlike politicians, we can fix our mistakes quickly and simply. Then we can blog about our improvements so others can avoid the mistakes we made. Isn’t communication a great tool for small businesses? Business Week may not be sure if it believes that or not, but I say more communication, especially with customers, is always better.
