A few days ago, a co-worker asked me what my strategy was in handling the really disgruntled customers. You know the type, the players that, at times, submit some really angry, downright nasty support tickets and emails. I feel that one thing that helps me manage, is recognizing that the majority of the time our medium for communication with our players and customers is the internet. It is difficult to convey one's tone in text over the web, and couple that with the fact that dealings are not face-to-face, and it's a little easier to understand how a disgruntled customer can easily come off as aggressive. Also, many complaints revolve around money and poker. As someone who has logged over 2M hands of online poker, I understand how emotional someone can become when the cards don't fall their way. And when money is involved, emotions often become amplified. Being able to recognize this allows me to let the more personal criticisms roll off my back. If a player is especially angry, heated, or nasty, I typically go over other support requests and come back to the “angry” guy. Things never seem as angry or personal when reading them over the second time around. Another method I use to appease a disgruntled customer is something I learned a few summers ago when working in the dining room of a high end spa and resort. Often time’s customers simply wanted to be treated with respect, and recognized with a little personal attention. After all, they are the ones that make a business run, and sometimes customers just want some recognition that the company needs them. Something else I learned at that old summer job was if someone is especially offensive, I try to be overly polite, and explain the entire situation. Giving out minor details in regards to how a process is run, instead of a just a blanket response of “we are working on it” or “it will be done soon”, helps to foster understanding between the customers and the company. Often times in the course of text correspondence, things are overlooked or forgotten. At times I'll receive complaints that a player only received a Freeroll invitation 3-4 days before the tournament. They didn't check their email until now, and forgot about and/or missed out on the Freeroll tournament. Now they are livid that we did not provide them with adequate notice. When this happens, I very politely let them know that the email is just a friendly extra reminder, and provide them a link to the rakeback page where all Freerolls and events are typically posted 3-4 weeks in advance. Back when I was more involved in playing online tournaments, I would often have Post-its stuck to the four corners of my monitor, scribbled notes, and multiple cell phone alarms set for different times of the day when various tournaments and freerolls were going off. All-in-all, dealing well with a disgruntled customer comes down to patience, politeness, and understanding. You need to put yourself in the players' shoes, and try to imagine where they were, and in what state of mind they would have been when they fired off that angry email. Understanding the customers' predicament, while responding politely and informing them of the current situation has helped me to disarm many tense situations and foster a better relationship with our players and customers.
Too much? Not enough? Somewhere in the middle? These are questions that Web Designers / Developers ask themselves, or at least should! Several years ago during the Internet boom, everything was cool. Especially anything that moved. In steps the Animated Gif ! Some people used to over load their site with these little buggers. They figured “Hey it’s cool! Everybody else will think so too!” Even if there was 100 animated gifs dancing around the screen! Well, that soon wore off after they saw traffic to their site dwindle dramatically. This was so common back in the day that it almost became a bad thing to use them at all! It slowed down the load time of the site so much that people simply got tired of waiting. Remember, back then there was no Broadband or DSL. If you were really cruising then you probably had a 56K dial up modem. The standard that most people had was a 28.8k dial up modem. Where Technology doesn’t meet the demand Computers, software, internet speeds simply couldn’t keep up with ideas. People wanted more and more movement and inter-activity. In walks Flash! Flash offered much better animation and quality of graphics. But, most people could not see them because their browser didn’t support it. If you did want to watch whatever the Flash movie was, you had to upgrade your browser, download the appropriate player, and reboot your computer. An hour later, you might be able to see it, after it downloaded through your whopping 28.8k connection! The web takes off and leaves designers scrambling to keep up! It didn’t take long…. Soon the internet was offered at blazing speeds! And as movie/flash players became more standardized and built into browsers, people were finally getting the right idea. LESS IS MORE! Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Well, most people got this…. Not everyone! I personally have had clients over the years that wanted their entire site built in Flash. This is fine if you are using ActionScript, etc. Nope, they wanted 1 big flash file that WAS their site. Huge file size as far as web pages go. Can you imagine waiting for a website to load 1.8mb before you get to see anything? Even with today’s speeds? The choice is now yours… Now that speed is not an issue, you can make the decision for yourself of how far to go with a website. Balance is a very important piece of good web design. In fact, IMHO it is the most important piece. If a site looks too empty or too busy, it can drive people away. Use impactful and dynamic pieces if it makes sense. Don’t do something just because you saw it on someone else’s site. After all, we should use our website as a tool to attract and hold a potential customers’ attention. Make it intriguing, not obtrusive! Make it useful, not useless! Deliver what your visitor expects! Following the K.I.S.S. principle will make your life easier and more profitable. I hope this little reminder will help guide you away from overkill, and make your job a little easier!
In my last blog post I discussed what I believe is the disparity between standard web marketing and social media marketing: user engagement. My previous post focused on Facebook, but my advice is applicable anywhere in the social space. Two Way Communication is Important A big mistake that many social media marketers make is by using tools like Twitter and Facebook strictly for one way communication: using social media as a tool to send information out but never as an outlet to absorb information. As a Twitter or Facebook marketer, you can expect that your users will be posting on your fan page wall and using the hashtag and mention functions of Twitter. It’s important that your users see this public engagement. Now bear in mind that not all of your interactions will be positive. Unhappy customers will often take to the airwaves with their issues. Your first instinct may be to delete these users' posts from your Facebook wall (as many large companies do), but that’s generally seen by your followers and fans as poor customer service and may further damage your brand. Some marketers turn this into an opportunity by using social media as another tool to provide customer service for their users. If the situations are being handled professionally and adequately, this will reflect very positively on your organization. The United States Air Force has a methodology of dealing with social media commenters both positive and negative. Take a moment to review their policies and think about how you could integrate their strategies into your own campaigns. A Case Study of Social Media Marketing Written by Jonathon of Your Poker Cash Our Early Experiences with Social Marketing In 2010, the YPC fan page on Facebook had a lot of ups and downs. Thankfully, it’s been mostly positive, as we went from 27 fans on Jan 1, 2010 to 3963+ fans by the end of December 31st 2010! That is a staggering 14677% increase in our fan base in 12 months. Along the way we had lots of people unlike our page, but the vast majority stuck with us, despite several public PR nightmares that have tested our brand and have given me more than a few gray hairs. Early on we had little to no interaction with our fans. Our communication consisted of one or two generic posts each month, and in our limited efforts we gained one or two fans a day. Things didn’t get interesting until we launched a new bankroll offer via our Facebook Fan page. All players that clicked on our mystery bankroll offer -- highlighted by a big question mark on the homepage of YPC -- were taken to our Facebook page where they could see and request the offer. In less than a week we saw a 3 fold increase in fans. Creative Solutions Bring Success and Drawbacks As we sought to further increase our fan base we decided to offer an exclusive freeroll for Facebook fans. We even let players vote on where the tournament would be held. This was the start of real interaction with our fans. When the day of the freeroll arrived we posted a password on a page that only fans could access. Due to the tournament being held on a Saturday, I was three or four minutes late posting the password; more than a few fans were there to let me know that I was not as prompt as they would have liked. However, we more than doubled our fan base with this event. Things were still easy sailing until we crossed the 1000-fans barrier. By then, fans were starting to post on our page with CS questions which we were unable to answer on FB because of our privacy policy. We were continually directing fans to log into their accounts for personal questions which just adds another step to the CS process. It is these minor annoyances that can make or break your page. It is a huge boost to your credibility if you can answer these questions in a timely fashion as there is a public record of your actions. However, if you ignore your page and these minor questions, it will be a disaster. Even if you stay on top of your page you can experience some serious outrage from your fan base. They will be there to call you out on the slightest mistake, they will be very vocal, and they will post when you are least likely to be able to respond. Do not ban these people! As easy as it is to ban them and not deal with them going forward, that sends the wrong message. If you don’t know what your shortcomings are, how will you be able to fix them? It is the latter of these two things that will serve you best in the long run. An Example On September 1st we changed some promotions on YPC which did not go over well with a small fraction of our Fans. Even though we were increasing total prize pools from a few thousand dollars to over $100k each month, people were furious that we were sharing the prize pool with PAS. Fans were coming out of the woodwork to say bad things and swear off using YPC forever. Without the Facebook page, this outrage would have been contained to email and PMs on our site. However, we took these lemons and made lemonade. We reverted back to some of our older promos that were cheaper, widely pleasing our fans. Even our most vocal critic acknowledged this and thanked us. I know going forward that one small misstep will bring out our critics, but this keeps me on my toes and forces me to do my best each day. The Future For 2011, I would love to see our Fan page grow to over 10,000 fans, even though that will mean more hypercritical eyes on us, so when things are not 100% perfect there will be more fingers on keyboards ready to swiftly and emphatically tell us how horrible we are. It also means more people to click the “Likes This” button, which is more than enough reason to check the Fan page 15 times a day. Thanks for reading, JonathonYPC Some Final Thoughts As Jonathan has eloquently illustrated, there can be positives and negatives to a social marketing campaign, if done right. Yes, the experience can leave one going grey or pulling out the hairs that remain. Nevertheless, YourPokerCash is a great case study in how social marketing can work, demonstrating how to overcome the drawbacks of a marketing scheme into an overwhelming positive. Of course, with anything on the internet these days, there are tools/freeware and add-ons available to make our marketing lives easier: Social Media Tools Are you managing multiple websites? If so, it can be a hassle to manage multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts for each of your web properties. Thankfully, there are some great tools at your disposal which we highly recommend: Hoot Suite Tweet Deck Ping.FM
There are many apps that allow you to play poker for play money currently available. Although it’s been awhile coming, the ability to play your favorite real money poker games is finally finding its way to mobile phones and tablets, slowly. If you need a quick fix, try some of the following products that allow you to get your game on anywhere. Full Tilt Rush Poker Mobile: This is a free app available from Online Poker at Full Tilt Poker - How to Play: Rush Poker Mobile that allows you to play just as you would on a desktop system. The primary differences are that you cannot deposit from the mobile app, nor can you access your hand history. Any settings in your desktop client will be replicated in the mobile app. Available on: Android 2.2 devices Switch Poker: Is another free app available from http://switchpoker.com. This is a relatively new poker site that offers real money no-limit hold’em 6-max games, with full ring, tournaments, and pot limit Omaha due to be added in the future. This is currently the only way to play poker on your Iphone without a hack. Switch does not accept U.S. players. Available on: Iphone, Ipad, web browsers. The primary reason a poker app isn’t available for Iphone/Ipad is the lack of Flash support. The Full Tilt Rush app uses Flash for its interface, which is why it is not compatible with the Iphone. Although Absolute Poker has a Java app, the lack of a complete Java implementation in Safari for Iphone makes it a non-starter. One solution for those of you wanting to play poker on your Apple mobile device is LogMeIn (http://www.logmein.com), which allows you to remotely control your desktop computer from your Iphone or Ipad. You’ll need to download both a desktop client and the Iphone/Ipad app, which is currently $29.99 in the App Store. This app will allow you to log in to your home computer through your mobile device, and control all files, browsers, and applications as if you were sitting in front of it. Many poker players have reported successfully using this to access their favorite poker room, particularly on the Ipad. None of these products are promoted or supported by Poker Affiliate Solutions.
I attended a talk last week and two of the speakers were SEO consultants from Distilled, a company with close ties to SEO Moz. The following are some of the ideas presented in that talk. It is by no means comprehensive, but contains some of the more relevant points. Page Title The page title appears in multiple places: browser bar (above URL), bookmark text, search engine results page and external sites (delicious, etc). There was a high level of importance placed on this, especially among ‘on page’ ranking factors. The tricky part about the page title is balancing the value of the brand with the value for a keyword. Consider the following: Example #1: Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name or Example #2: Brand Name | Primary Keyword and Secondary Keyword Basically it was said that in most cases, especially if the term is highly competitive, use Example #1. If the brand gives added value or is known as an authority, then use Example #2. URLs/Domains Page Names Use short, descriptive URLs with relevant keywords. Use dashes (-) instead of underscores (_). GOOD: www.mydomain.com/texas-holdem-tips.html BAD: http://www.mydomain.com/view_item.ph...77443&pic_id=2 Domains Same as above: use short, descriptive domains with relevant keywords. GOOD: http://www.poker-tips.com BAD: http://www.something-not-related-to-...y-too-long.com Canonical URLs Duplicate content comes with penalties, so be sure to use a consistent URL structure for all of your links to help your site get properly indexed. GOOD: www.example.com/index.htmlwww.example.com/poker-tips.htmlwww.example.com/about.htmlwww.example.com/contact.html BAD: www.example.comexample.com/http://www.example.com/index.htmlexample.com/home.asp For more info, see this Google Webmaster Blog post or this article by Matt Cutts. Page level content SEO Text There is a zen like balance between on page factors such as URL, page title, H1-H6, text and images/media. Basically the page title, H1, image ALT tags, should have keywords and variations thereof sprinkled throughout in Goldilocks/Three Bears like fashion. Images As far as images, use keywords in the following areas:ALT tags: use on all images (alt=”Good Texas Holdem Hand” )Filename: (good-texas-holdem-hand.jpg, NOT image12.jpg)Text that surrounds the image Meta Description Basically it does not affect SEO/ranking per se, but that it can help (along with page title) with click through rates. This is because it is what users see/read on the search engine results page so be sure to keep these more ‘human friendly’ than search engine friendly. Page speed Although not a huge ranking factor, it is being used by Google and will only improve your visitor’s experience. The question really is why NOT optimize?
Updated 01-18-2011 at 09:16 PM by TimPAS
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