Today however, for me at least, a new day dawned. Today was the day that I was relentlessly spammed by a company purporting to be a Chinese importer of white goods trying to drum up business.

Here’s the thing – no matter what – I could not turn it off. I could not block the communications or stop the intrusion. Nor could I stop them by going invisible or turning on ‘do not disturb’.

So effectively – the only thing I could do was kill my Skype. So there goes my primary IM channel until this is resolved.

Some lessons here for companies with blogs. If you’re inviting comment, then you need to be prepared to accept the comment and deal with it – or you could find yourself digging yourself a shallow grave too

Jon

Kelvin, Mauritz, Martin and Andre will be on hand to educate and inform visitors about ForgeBusiness Affiliate Marketing Consulting and Outsourced Management services and the BlogKits and US and South African OfferForge Advertising Networks which offer unique value to advertisers wishing to reach bloggers, log tail opinion sites and the US & South African markets.

If you’re attending please don’t forget to stop by our booth #5278, opposite the networking area!

For more on the exhibition and our products featured read here

The truth is that while all these measures are important to the success of your online business, the fact is that if consumers are not IN LOVE WITH YOUR BRAND none of them will matter.

Whether you run an online shopping cart or a professional services firm like us, you have about 4 SECONDS to introduce your consumer to your site, show her who you are and make her fall in love with you, decide to contact you, engage with you and conclude a transaction or request more information from you.

Knowing how to make them fall in love with your brand is perhaps the hardest part.
Each industry is different and the best way to start is by ensuring you’re responding to your customers reason for visiting you in the first place.

Here’s the difficult part – you may not know why your consumer is actually visiting you. You may think you know but let me ask you this: When last have you asked your customers what they want?

So, today implement this ‘Brand Love’ builder action plan:

Ask your best / most recent / highest value / most difficult / random customers…. what they love about your brand.
Why they do business with you. What do you do for them that nobody else does for them.
What do you do differently from anybody else that keeps them happy and engaged with you.

If they answer this positively – write up their responses as landing pages on your site and test them out.
People respond to good copy and your conversions will improve and your affiliates will rejoice

If they answer negatively – you’ve just put your finger on the pulse of your business and you know what to do to fix your most pressing issues to turn around your business and avert a looming disaster.

Now, I’m off to act on my own advice

Jonathan

ForgeBusiness Affiliate Outsourced Management Blog » NB: Affiliates, beware the one-day cookie monster!

I think you’re all back by now eh?

So what happened in Vegas? A lot! Here’s a quick summary: (more…)

The office is running positively empty this week. Most of the team have hit the road to attend the Linkshare Summit in San Franscisco or are busy seeing clients so I’m left preparing the new *Brand Unveiling* (more…)

And what a promotional week it was! Here’s a few links to some of the coverage we received over the past seven days or so. One thing is for sure, and that’s that we’re right about a lot of regular people who blog out there wanting better ways to try and earn with their blogs. Now if we can just keep the promotion up and get all 50 million of them signed up we’ll do just fine.

Here are a few of the press/blog highlights. (more…)