If your marketing on the internet then you already know that no matter how good your product is someone will dislike it. This is just how it goes. I was on Twitter the other day and ran across a tweet about a consumer disliking a brand. The product had a hash tag about how bad their service was. It was on my mind for a while until the idea that perhaps the people that made that hash tag were the same people that the message was for. It would be genius if “Brand A” created a public, one-stop-spot space for negative feedback about their company.

     Why would you want to create negative attention to your own brand? Negative feedback will always come, at many different times, and in many different places, it’s inevitable. The answer is to get all of that negative commentary in one central local. Keeping track of negative feedback in one local is far easier and more efficient; many different places would require a lot more resources businesses don’t have. You will have a better opportunity to deliver a to consumers if you know exactly where to find them.

     Create an easy space for your consumers to go and voice their opinion; a social media space, comment box on your site, or get creative and start an entirely new website for the sole purpose of getting consumers to express their feeling towards your brand. This way, your PR team can focus less on searching and more on solving the problems more efficiently and accurately. What should not happen is editing comments. All content posted by your visitors should not be touched by you or anyone else involved in your brand. You want to develop a location consumers can be free to express everything without repercussions. Complete honesty from your consumer will always help better develop and deliver a product. By establishing this safe space, your consumer will be shown a layer of personality that most other businesses don't have.

     Another benefit from having a central local is that you will gain many other forms of information from your consumer base. Having this controlled, free, and safe place will lead to more specific topics. For example, a trade show is coming and you’re not sure if your PR/Marketing strategy is strong enough, consumers whom visit that space will leave clues as to what they are expecting. This doesn't only apply to trade events; this could be applied to other aspects of your business as well.    

    Negative feedback will happen no matter how hard you try. Once you accept that and begin working on a way to centralize that feedback is when you will begin delivering the right solution to your customers.

   It's late on a frday night, a few beers and I'm surfing the web, checking every blog site on my hip web browser that takes up only 5% market share, yea I'm underground. I'm zipping through all these sites when I realize that I'm going in a circle of the 5 same websites. I look at the media company and all the 5 websites have the same media company they are owned by.

This is where I get to my point. Every start up blog wants to be recognized, alone. That makes your chances of being seen about 5000 to 1. But, if a few websites come together and work as a unit, then your chances are 50 to 1. Join up with other blog sites from different mediums, try lookiing for fashion, consumer tech, something that offers different content that will in turn link you back, heightining the chances your website will be seen. Don't hook up with other gaming sites unless they offer content specific enough to were it doesnt relate to yours in any way. You want to offer other interest/hobby topics the the average person may have, making your group their primary soure, nailing a constant viewer. They tell their friends and a chain reaction of all your sites being seen. A more general description? Wolves hunt in packs, and so do we.

This also including back end work. Getting in touch with Social Media specific companies allows more reliability towards that area thus allowing you to turn your attention to other things. PR/Marketing firms could help find potential areas of the internet that hold readers. Attempt to advertise on the net or target highschool areas and get readers that way? Attempt to land advertising on small, independent, magazines. Form all those abilities under one roof and the entire group will benefit due to their different areas being that much better equiped.

The worst that could happen is...well, nothing?

Hello,

My name is Bryan Silva and I am the founder and CEO of Bubbles & Flowers. It has been an exciting few weeks for myself as my staff and myself are hard at work making B&F as perfect as we can. Some of you may have noted that the launch of B&F was a little iffy with word of the site being launched two weeks ago. Let me clarify a little deeper on what actually happened. My intentions were to have launched my service roughly two weeks ago, however, I teamed up with Patrick of Geekgamington around the same time as the launch. I quickly realized that B&F and it’s current and potential clients would benefit more from the features Patrick and Geekgamington could offer.

This is where we stand now; B&F promises to deliver the most professional and highest quality PR and Marketing services to the indie community as it possibly can, in order to ensure this a little more time is needed for preparations. A mistake made by myself and one that shouldn’t have happened. On the other hand, had I not delayed the official launch then the quality of B&F would have been sub par to it’s potential. A hard yet required decision had to be made and guaranteeing the best out weighed the rushed launch.

In order to prevent more confusion, I have decided to start this blog with the sole purpose of letting whom ever decides to read, wither your a potential client or interested individual, a look at the backstage of B&F. Here you will be able to follow the hard work being done by the B&F staff as well as get to know myself a little better.

Once again I thank you and appreciate the patience shown by all.

Bryan Silva-CEO/Founder

      There seem to be a lot of blogging sites springing up everywhere, some good and some not so good. Truth be told that only the ones who really go above and beyond will make it. It's sad because the majority of the content is excellent. I surf the web daily checking for news or anything related to the gaming industry and find myself reading some really great material, some better than those found on the big boys of games journalism. Then I look at the comments, zero. Insane! How can such good, quality content be unseen!? It's not like comment on something is very difficult, once an article is viewed the reader has already committed and typing in their thoughts only helps them feel better about taking the time to read the article. So, why no comments? I strongly believe its derived from lack of exposure. Sure, not everyone will comment. If a post is viewed 3 times then the chances are low, but if it's viewed 5 or 10 then the chances rise. One legitimite comment from a reader (not a staff member, which just seems like you are being desperate) could spark another reader to comment and pretty soon your site is a frequesnt visitor, it's a snow ball effect.

     If you read the paragraph above then you might be asking, what's this guy doing? We know! So here is where I believe the next step in establishing yourself as a note worthy outlet for video game information, Public Relations and Marketing. Just as future journalists and bloggers write for indie sites, there are a substantial amount of PR/Marketing majors looking to apply their skills. Regardless of level of degree they have, if you can find them then you know they are dedicated. None of us just one day woke up, typed this site, and started writing about games. The majority of us are independent but have a strong grasp on what we want to contribute. Independent PR/Marketers are the next step.

    Like Editors who focus on providing the content, having dedicated personnel to the PR/Marketing aspects of a publication is essential. We all want to live in the fairy tale world of "my content is so good that I'll be sought out." Unfortunately there are too many variables working against you to make that plausible, if you want to be heard you have to be one step ahead of the competition. There is a reason why the major outlets get the hits they do, it aint luck fellas. It also can't hurt having one or two staff members' focusing on establishing relationships with other aspects of this side of the industry. Micromanaging will make your site that much more powerful, Editors focus on content, PR/Marketing on exposure, Web designers on the look of your site, Video/Audio Producers on quality of web 2.0 content, and so forth. There are extremely talented, independent, dedicated individuals out there, and on this very site, wanting to get out there and do what they feel they do best. 

    I am one, a dedicated individual looking to do some PR/Marketing, the other qualities I'll leave up to you to decide. Being a PR major I am willing to offer the skills I am currently learning, it benefits both parties and it baffles me to see a lack of interest or attention to this side of running a publication. Perhaps I'm not seeing something or am I looking in the wrong spot? I would really like to get some input from you fellow bloggers on this topic.

Thanks for reading,

Bryan

PS. This entry is in no way related or directed towards any specific individual. This post is all due to my desire to see skilled people to get the recognition they deserve.