A Positive Online, Social Experience

We frequently hear the nightmare stories about someone’s online social tragedy. It is enough to make you nervous about even registering for a Facebook account with all of these stories.

So I wanted to balance the scales out a bit and tell you about a very positive Social experience that I had just about a week ago.

Perhaps some of you are repeating the word “boring” at this particular moment after having read the first couple of sentences. But, I wanted to tell this story because it happens so infrequently. So here it goes …

I often subscribe to mailing lists for people that claim to be SEO/Web/Internet experts, or that can “Increase my web site visitors by x%”. However, I have learned my lesson about spam and I use an email address where I don’t mind getting spam.

I have subscribed to some very useless web sites. But there are a very small handful I find to be very valuable websites:

CopyBlogger – http://www.copyblogger.com
Chris Brogan – http://www.chrisbrogan.com

Notice, Seth Godin’s website is NOT listed above … sorry Seth.

Anyway, I subscribe to these blogs, with the expectation of receiving some useful, and thought provoking articles from time to time … but not every day. The two sites listed above seem to provide a good, useful stream of information at a rate “higher than average” than most of the other sites out there … including my own.

And thanks to being a member of Chris Brogan’s site, I received an invitation to join Social Triggers.

After reading the invite, I was expecting a mediocre, or average quality of information to begin filling my inbox from this website in a few days after I subscribed. But, much to my surprise, I was greeted with a welcome message that suggested I send the web site owner a personal email, stating what I wanted my website to do that it wasn’t doing already.

No catch. No cost. Just a simple request and NOT a requirement.

So I did. I sent an email and stated exactly what I wanted thinking, “What have I got to loose”. After all, I’m not saying anything that isn’t obvious anyway.

Surprise! I received a personal email back from the web site owner Derek Halpern.

And the exchange didn’t stop there. We had an lengthy exchange of emails that lasted a few hours. At the end of it all I came away with some very pointed, and simple advice from Derek that has caused me to re-evaluate my web site as well as my approach to marketing it online. It was USEFUL feedback!

I was … and still am … amazed and very pleased with my new found contact.

When you visit Derek’s website you will find the same simple, straight to the point advice that I got on a variety of topics. He doesn’t accept a lot of subscribers and he doesn’t fill up your inbox with emails on a daily basis.

The experience has made me feel like this whole Internet experience doesn’t have to be so over whelming and fast paced. I can provide value at my pace and with my limited knowledge and still grow my business online.

I encourage you to have a look at Derek’s web site, Social Triggers.

I really hope that we see more of this kind of personal interaction by people to helps others learn how to use the Internet to their advantage, without detriment to others. I also hope I can add value to Derek’s online efforts in some way.