Don’t be like Rod Blagojevich.

You’re probably wondering why I am suggesting this, to not be like the impeached and shamed former governor of Illinois. But I am not talking about the corrupt way he ran the Land of Lincoln, rather I am warning about the missed opportunity when the domain name for his new Web site was registered.

It was announced over this past weekend that Blago had a new Web site at GovernorRod.com. Note I provide the link but I also advise caution in clicking over to it, especially for those whose morals are on the high end, but I digress. When I heard the Web site URL, the first thing that popped into my mind, as a domain name consultant and someone who thinks about domain names more than I should, is if he – or his PR people – bought the common misspelling of the domain name, governorod.com, which only has one “r” in it. As I am writing this, you can guess they did not.

Many domain names are the combination of words or names. When you have one of those words ending with the same letter as the next word begins with, it is common for someone manually typing the domain name to type that letter only once. For example, if the world’s largest software company got into the business of making salt-water candy, they may register the domain name microsofttaffy.com. It is recommended they also register microsoftaffy.com, and it can be also taken further to account for the double “f” in taffy as well.

What often happens is if you don’t register the domain name, someone else may. It is one thing if your name contains trademarked words or names, but if it contains generic names or words and is not trademarkable, a competitor may jump on it and potentially take some of your business. As I have said many times, in the grand scheme of things, domain names are cheap – register them all and monitor traffic to them.

In the case of the narcissistic former governor, I checked to see if governorod.com was registered the morning after the announcement, and it was not. This meant I had the opportunity to register it myself, but as I am glad he is out of office, I was not interested in going there! I was not alone in my thinking though, as several hours later someone else registered the domain name, and it is now pointing to a parked domain Web page. There may be a case here for the indicted former politician and his handlers to win this domain name in a UDRP filing, but that will surely cost a heck of a lot more than registering the domain name new. As Blago is rumored to already be in debt for his legal issues to date, he may not be afford to file for the domain name as well as maintain his hair-do.

Registering misspellings of domain names is almost as important as registering the actual domain name, especially if it is prone to errors. And in case it isn’t blatantly obvious to you, I am proud to say I never, ever thought for a moment of voting for this guy to lead the state where I live.

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Domain Names • Technology • (4) Comments • Permalink

Has this ever happened to you – you have a bad customer service experience and when you complain about it, the person you are dealing with doesn’t know how to respond to you, and finally asks, “so what do you want?” It has happened to me, and where it has worked to my advantage in the past, it is not something I want to happen to me.

When a company asks you what you want, they are in essence throwing their arms in the air and asking you for your mercy. I can only attribute this to one thing – employees are trained neither how to respond nor to sense when there is a customer service issue, and how to react to it. Throwing it back to you may seem like a natural reaction; you brought the issue to their attention, so you should have some resolution to it. Right? Well, not exactly, as you have been put on the spot and are probably in some disbelief at their query.

A Tale of 2 Sheratons

Two incidents of customer service issues come to mind, both involving Sheraton hotels. One was in Phoenix back in the early 1990’s when I was staying at the Sheraton Crescent for a month while on a consulting assignment. It was in December, and as this is a quiet time for the hotel, they were performing maintenance on the hotel. Though this was a while ago, I still recall plumbing issues, from water not being on for long periods of time to fire alarms going off as a result of the plumbing work. I liked the hotel, but these issues were a pain, so I called and spoke to a manager.

When I explained to him my issues and that I was basically on expense account, he offered me free meals and nights at the hotel. Um, didn’t I say I was there on business? When I repeated this, he proceeded to ask me what I wanted. As he said that, in the background the CFO of my client was handing out Phoenix Suns tickets to his staff. So I asked him how one could get Suns tickets. When I returned to the hotel that night, there were 2 front-row balcony tickets waiting for me, which was a treat for me and my manager.

Before moving to the Windy City my wife and I stayed at the Sheraton Chicago. As we were there for a few nights we had asked for housekeeping to empty the beverages from the refrigerator so we could use it, something they never did. The morning we checked out we heard a crash in the hallway and upon inspection there was a broken picture on the floor. Though housekeeping was in the halls, it was never picked up, even hours later when we checked out.

Upon checkout, the staff asked how our stay was, to which I apparently hesitated and said, “ok.” I say this as he right away asked if there was something wrong, and I told him about the above issues. He told me it was hotel policy not to empty out the fridge, but acknowledged we were probably not told that. He then proceeded to check us out, and when he handed us the bill, he noted he removed the charge for the movie and late-night snack in return for the issues we had. We never asked for anything, but he was proactive in addressing it.

What We Want Is Caring

I believe that people, upon raising an issue, want it to be acknowledged and some sign that they have a legitimate concern. Granted, there may be those trying to get something for nothing, but even in that case a sign of genuine caring should be offered as well. When it is not received, we are left with a bad feeling, and then fulfill the saying about telling 10 people we had bad service. Or today, we tweet about it or post it to Facebook.

Things happen. How we react to them hopefully will be the positive coming from the negative.

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Business • (1) Comments • Permalink

The next likemind will be Friday, August 21, 2009 in dozens of cities around the world.

In Chicago, it will be at Argo Tea, 140 S Dearborn St. at the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets in the Loop from 8:00 am to 10 am.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al. For more information on likemind, you can read this great article on likemind from the New York Times.

No RSVP is required. You are also welcome to join the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

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Announcements • Business • (0) Comments • Permalink

I am pleased to be included in the 2009 Good Brands Report published by trends research, innovation, and activation firm PSFK. The best description of the report comes from PSFK’s own description:

The Good Brands Report of 2009 is a celebration of leadership during this challenging year. Those who made it onto the list are businesses from which we should learn.

They are not just the well-known brands of the day, but also companies that lead by example in innovation, environmental consciousness, and social policy. We started our search for the Good Brands of 2009 by looking at the companies we were writing about on PSFK.com throughout this year. Then, we asked a panel of cross-industry global experts from the Purple List to tell us which of 40 common brands on PSFK were considered ‘Good’.

The report includes several global brands including Good Magazine, Amazon, Facebook and Virgin, the latter brand where my quote was used, as follows:

It reads, “When you see the Virgin name on something, you know it will be a pleasant experience.”

Though I have only been exposed to a small number of Virgin brands, namely its record label and music stores, my quote holds true when I think of it. The Virgin Music store in Paris is a must-see – it is huge and has every minutae of genre. Granted, that store will probably morph over time, but the 2 times I went were always a great shopping experience.

You can read the report below, as it is embedded as a Slideshare presentation, or click the link below to download it as a PDF.

Thanks to the folks at PSFK for not only creating the report, but for hosting the Purple List. Also of note, Piers Fawkes, one of the co-founders of PSFK, is also one of the co-founders of likemind!

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Announcements • Business • (1) Comments • Permalink

Welcome to the land of Misfit Profiles – a place where profiles for social media sites go to languish when somebody uses their work email as their only profile email address, and then leave that employer, never to regain that profile again!

The other day I was browsing my LinkedIn connections and found some odd profiles. There were some people who had 2 profiles – one only complete to a certain point, and another complete up to now. When I looked at one colleague’s incomplete profile, it had an email address on it from his previous employer. Where there is a way of combining 2 LinkedIn accounts my guess is for most people they just abandon the old account and start anew. When I looked at the more current profile for my colleague, it had the email address of his current employer.

Most social media sites use email addresses to authenticate a person. If you use a work address – or any email address that you give up at some point – you may lose access to your account. This is why I continue to advocate using your own domain name for your personal email. I take this a step forward by advocating using your own email address with your own domain name for social media sites. If you change jobs or Internet providers, you don’t have to go through hoops to regain your account. That is, if the social media site even has hoops for you to go through.

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Domain Names • Technology • (3) Comments • Permalink