Why Businesses Get Taken Advantage Of By Online ‘Professionals’
Jim Connolly of Jim’s Marketing Blog and I had a great conversation a short time ago about the vulnerability of businesses and people in general. We’d both agreed that, while many of these people are great at protecting themselves in the real world, they seem to forget about protecting themselves online.
I have a theory about why this happens…
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Think Of Web Professionals Like Babysitters…Sorta
You see, I look at the online world and the real one as being the same. The only difference is that the Internet has put real life on demand and under a magnifying glass. Mistakes and the true characteristics of human nature are far more noticeable, but when it gets down to it, you’re dealing with the same types of people, who have the same goals and methods as those we pass on the street every day.
Think of the Internet like hiring a babysitter. Even if you hardly know this person, you leave her in charge while you’re gone because you feel she’s trustworthy and will keep your kids safe. I mean, if you didn’t, you’d never leave her there by herself, and certainly not with the children!
Plumbers and electricians are similar. They could be one of the gangbangers on the corner at night, but once they don their ‘day clothes’, you let them into your home without a single thought about your safety. You have some level of trust in them.
The Internet is similar, in my opinion. Once we allow it into our home, we still feel secure and trust it as we would a good friend. We get so caught up in all the benefits and how much *better* it makes our lives, we often forget about the bad. We simply don’t give the dangers the same weight in the virtual world that we do in real life. Why? It doesn’t look dangerous.
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We Lack the Visual Incentives That Trigger Self-Preservation
When walking down the street, it’s not unusual for people to clutch their purses and bring their kids closer as they pass a gang of kids in a parking lot. It’s not odd for some to cross the street when passing a homeless person. They look undesirable, and maybe even frightening.
Getting back to the babysitter thing, most parents would never consider hiring a homeless person and putting them in charge of the kids. That’d just be dangerous! At least they look trustworthy enough to make us feel safe, right? Well, in some instances, the homeless person might be the better choice.
On the Internet, we can’t differentiate between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people just by looking at them. Almost everyone ‘seems’ nice. Well…what I mean is the creepy ones are kind of obvious, but it’s the dangerous ones who appear ‘nice’ that people need to be most wary of.
Things Sound Different In Text
The other issue professionals and businesses have is that even the most innocent of things can sound terrible when they’re typed and out of context (i.e. in a tweet or email). Sometimes, even the simplest of sentences can seem snarky, angry, or perverse. The same goes for someone who ‘sounds’ trustworthy. Since we can’t read a person’s body language or hear their tone when they speak, a lot of our perception is based on previous interactions with that person and pure assumptions.
So where am I going with all this? Simple.
Don’t just hand money over to someone you’ve never met without checking things out first. If you don’t feel confident with a particular company or provider, or if there are any serious doubts about their reliability, move on.
Be diligent, for Google’s sake! If you don’t know enough about the process to be able to identify the scammers, get recommendations from someone you trust or speak with someone who does know about the process. Both the provider and the client can tell when the other doesn’t know as much about a particular subject as they should. Trust me!
The other point I’m making with this whole thing is that both online professionals and clients need to protect themselves. While things like deposits might be annoying and make both sides uncomfortable, they’re there to protect everyone involved. There are times when a full upfront payment is necessary, and times when it’s simply not needed.
Don’t believe everything you hear, either. This world is full of miscommunications and complications that might seem one way at the start, but is actually something completely different when you get down to it. I’m not saying you should disregard good and bad reviews, for example, but use each of the puzzle pieces you find while doing research to determine what the entire picture will look like.
In short, use your street sense!
May 4, 2010 at 1:45 pm | Business | 2 comments
Hi Angie, I was drawn here by the tweets between you and Jim Connolly, a friend and mentor, but reading this, it is so pertinent to a problem that a client has right now. I am starting to work with the husband of one of my clients who had chosen another career professional before his wife chose me. He paid $500 out of $1000 proposal to someone who has not delivered and was using a cut and paste of the client’s words to “write” the resume. In the career field there are credentials that should be checked as you suggest in your post. Career organization membership and certification is key to finding a good writer and then samples that show you what you are getting and / or publication in career industry books.
Blog posts can be a way to know a writer better except in this case, the individual’s blog was filled with posts from another well-known career author whose work was being published with links but no attribution.
It makes it so much harder for the true professional to build business when others are out there who are collecting money and not delivering on their promises. Thank you for writing your post!
Hi Julie,
I couldn’t agree more. It’s simply not fair and it upsets me to no end when I hear stories like that. On the bright side, that’s what makes people like us float to the top through word of mouth advertising. I really wish people would see their copy (or web design, PR, or whatever) as an investment just like a house or car. You wouldn’t spend five cents without seeing it first!
Thanks
Angie