But some still hold steadfast. So in this article I'm going to give you yet another reason for blogging. It includes an element of reputation management but also shows the reach of blogs outside of regular organic search engines.

I decided to write this article because of an individual story that I came across. It's a story about a customer trying to purchase a camera online. The online store said there was stock in their warehouse, so he purchased the camera.

When it wasn't shipped, however, he contacted the businesses customer service line. It was here that things took a turn for the worst.

Without going into details this story tells a lot about how NOT to deal with customers. From pushy salesmen to threats and intimidation made by the company and even it's president.

But what struck me wasn't the story so much as where I've seen it since I first read it this morning. And that is the reason for this article.

Since seeing the story first in a marketing blog - on how not to deal with customers, I've also seen it on an e-commerce site explaining why proper inventory management is critical, as well as more popular blogs that show how poorly the company handled this customer.

So I thought I'd do an experiment. I did a search for the company in question on Google and found what you'd expect - the storefront and a bunch of other 'typical' organic results, but no mentions of this customer's bad experience.

So I then went to Feedster, a popular blog search engine (and one of many) and performed the exact same search on the company name.

This time I was presented with over 1,500 links to various takes on this one instance of bad customer service.

Before you go thinking 'yeah but bloggers represent a small portion of the online community' consider that this is an electronic item - a digital camera - and as such many 'techie' types will likely turn to blogs as one of their primary sources of research.

Also consider that hot topics usually start on blogs but will move into other sources like news sites in a few days then regular organic results a few days after that. So in about a week, if I were to search for this company's name again I might find some of those negative blogs.

It is this type of negative publicity that can severely hurt an online business, especially at this time of year so close to Christmas. I'd like to know how much the stores sales suffer because of one disgruntled customer who blogged about his experience?

I can guarantee you that there are at least 1,500 people out there that won't buy from this one store if they are looking for a digital camera. Plus who knows how many who read the various blogs. And then even more who hear about it from their friends who read it and then told them.

There could potentially be tens of thousands of potential lost customers from this one case of poor customer service and a corresponding blog entry.

So, if you ever need to determine how a blog can affect your search engine marketing, consider the numbers I mentioned above.


Rob Sullivan
Head Organic Search Strategist
Enquiro Full Service Search Engine Marketing

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