Blog Relations

I’ve noticed that that those companies who are giving away a core product, often provide the friendliest service.

One example is Writely. They provide an excellent online word-processor. I increasingly use it instead of Microsoft Word. It’s brilliant for collaborative projects. You can even publish directly to your blog from it. But being nit-picky I don’t like they way they code the HTML (they use line breaks instead of paragraphs). I write them an email, and instead of giving me short shrift (or ignoring my email), they write back promptly. They tell me that they are working to reconcile both camps, the supporters of paragraphs as well as the line-breakers, and we exchange ideas for providing the choice.

Feedburner is also very friendly. Its core service is free, and for a podcaster it’s almost essential as it prepares your feed for iTunes, as well as giving good stats on subscription numbers. They’ve always been happy to help me when I’ve got in touch via email.

The business model of our own venture, Storynory, also depends on building up good will. We want the best possible relationship with the consumers of our core product – free audio. It’s partly altruism, but it’s also a calculation that it will build our brand – and with a brand you can make money in all sorts of ways.

So it pays to be nice…. Well, at any rate, it’s cheaper than advertising, and probably more effective. Word of mouth – multiplied by a factor of ? due to the internet – is the most powerful marketing tool. So make sure people are saying nice things about you.