When I worked for the man one of the things I learned was that everyone had a preferred method of communication. It could have been email, phone, fax, or even face to face. If you wanted to make the sale, close the deal, or solve the problem you not only had to figure out what that method was, but overcome your own bias and be willing to work in the medium your customer preferred.
I’ll admit my personal preference for getting information is RSS, I love being able to get info when I want it and when I’m ready to see it . My next preference is email, despite it being interpretive medium and often filled with spam, again I can deal with it when I want. I don’t really have a preference between phone and in person it’s more a time, logistics, situational kind of thing (if you can call me up on the phone and say “hey it’s me” and I know who you are these rules don’t apply, and you can use any method you like).
A few weeks ago I started making some changes on this blog to make it more spider/search engine friendly. Ignoring search engines is bad thing, but ignoring your regular readers is more dangerous. When you ignore your readers you’ve started down the path to the dark side, expressing a clear preference for drive-by traffic as opposed to regular readers and community building. I was drinking a little too much of SEOlebrity Kool Aid and started believing all the cool stuff people were saying about me.
Despite my protesting and Paris Hilton like temper tantrums about not wanting to install email comment subscriptions , it’s actually worked out really well and I’m getting more comments on a regular basis. Also I’ve added the comment count back to the homepage. Even though I didn’t like them there, some more experienced people who’s opinions I value and respect, let me know I was making my site less accessible to users with that decision.
Change is hard and people will always complain when it happens, but sometimes you have to realize you made a mistake and be humble enough to accept some criticism.
