Wil Reynolds Wil Reynolds

December 18, 2007

RANT! Twitter Etiquette…An addiction that can make people hate you!

First off let me say I hate referring people, I feel extremely personally responsible if things don’t work out, yet sometimes folks press me. I love referring the people who I know deliver, but that list gets harder and harder to add people to.

Anyway, I referred a company whom we couldn’t take on for SEO to someone I knew for a long time, and had consistently performed and I TRUSTED to take great care of someone we referred. This person impressed the company and the company paid a small deposit to get started.

The referral has disappeared, but luckily this “person” twitters all the time, so in theory he’s been ignoring the client for some time, and holding on to their $$ while they’ve been listening to some great songs, wishing happy birthday, working out, etc all within the last 2-3 days. This client has not been able to get in touch with this person for 2-3 weeks, and neither have I.

My sentiment went from “I hope you are OK”, to “Obviously you are OK, but you are too busy working with your interior designer to give a damn about me or someone I referred you to whom you have taken money from.”

Just one less person I can send potential prospects to!!
Lesson: If you are ignoring people via e-mail and phone (we all HAVE to do this for a few hours at times to focus on something) stop Twittering Dummy, it makes us feel pretty crummy knowing every little thing you are up to that matters more than getting back to us, I’m on 3 days and counting. Thanks!

4 COMMENTS

  • Ricardo Bueno says:
    December 18, 2007 @ 7:03 pm

    Wow!!!

    You’ll have to excuse me for being frank >> That sucks!

    I’m suddenly inspired to take a moment of reflection so that I can make sure that I’m not doing something similar to my clients and referral partners. It’s easy to take things for granted…but when we value all that we have and our supporters…well, life just gets that much easier!

  • Jennifer says:
    December 27, 2007 @ 11:23 pm

    So along these lines, this guy who had been giving me free advice and code for months was amazing. He is generous with many people like that and so helpful on e-mail lists we share.

    Finally I had a project where I could actually pay him to work with me to get the job done faster. He agreed, I gave him access to a staging area, we exchanged some e-mails with project details when things were underway and BANG.

    No more e-mails from him, no response, no return phone calls. Nothing.

    7 months later I get a “happy birthday” from him because we’re on plaxo. Turns out he got a new full time job, that he posted on plaxo.

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