Your reputation is online
I saw a tweet come through (the image in this post) a few minutes ago that alarmed me. Not because it was saying do or do not deal with someone, quite the contrary. It was the implications of the tweet that caught my attention. Mark Pesce speaks about this effect when he talks about twitter. This user has a relatively small reach. About a hundred followers. BUT…a lot of their followers are active in the same industry being referred to. A business deal seems to have not gone smoothly, and ended up requiring intervention to get payment. As someone who worked as a consultant previously, this would serve as a caution to me. More the person referred to than the poster (although it’s entirely possible that payment was withheld for a reason). Most consultants are more weary of clients who dispute and withhold payment than of anything else.
A post to the opposite effect – like “Just finished a project with XXX and we’ve already been paid – what a great client” would be worth more to a client than they realize. Couple this with Duncan Riley’s furious warnings earlier today to avoid an accounting firm he had bad experience with and there’s a playing out today of real trend. The power testimonials has gone exponential with the freeing of your customers’ voices. The unhappy ones will reach for that keyboard and cast your mistakes in stone. Look out for it and make them happy. Everyone makes mistakes – the point is you need to repair them before they get to this.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Hey that’s me! No need to hide my name – I run a small IT development company in Brisbane, Australia. Recently a big name consultant with a bigger ego tried to completely screw us over, thanks to many people in the community he didn’t get completly away with it.
Twitter gives an insight into the way we work and our lives. Just like contibuting to forums, blogging about technology and answering emails I see it as a way to connect with people by helping and sharing what i do. For me after the stress of not getting paid for months of work from before Christmas the relief made me thank those people publically, stop others from taking action now things are sorted and announce I will never work with him again and importantly that I’ve moved on. What a relief!
So what do others think about this? Should developers and small companies fear talking about bad experiences on Twitter? Should I have not mentioned his name?
June 27th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Hi John,
I hid the names because I didn’t want to get in the middle of anything, and because my point was about the conversations happening, not about who was being talked about. As for should you mention his name – that’s entirely up to you in my opinion. You never said anything right or wrong, you never mentioned what had happened. I’ve been on your side of the equation and reacted similarly to you.
Mark
June 27th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Mark,
I agree that it would be really good to see a bunch of “I’ve already been paid” comments floating around Twitter. I think Twitter is so much more able to affect reputations as people are much more likely to tweet something personal than blog it.
Rob