Wait a minute. How can it be? Shouldn’t every business have a Web Presence to survive against the competition?
Well, it should, but sometimes is better not to have a web presence at all.
Confused?

A Story About Mr Johnson

And who’s Mr Johnson? He’s quite a character indeed. Mr Johnson is the owner of a small insurance representative agency in a little town in Europe. He’s quite known in this territory and the go-to man when they need… well, insurance. So far, so good, right?

The problem is that until recently, Mr Johnson didn’t have a web presence. He created an email, of course… ending in hotmail.com. But that’s the most he had gone in digital. And he was doing well. Nothing fancy or earning chests of gold, but it was a good business since he had a reputation on that small population and it wasn’t needed anything more than keeping the good reference.

But then, the radio was always talking about the internet; the newspapers were full of news about dot com companies. Even specialized magazines had special editorials about how some companies were gaining customers worldwide, having a base in a town very near his own. That was upsetting Mr Johnson, because he felt a little outpaced, like lying behind his time. So, one morning, he started to make a little research on these new methods.

For a while, he was overwhelmed by the amount of information. It was so confusing how to do this and that, but eventually, he was nailing some concepts. Especially, reading the newspapers always mentioning how much people were on social networks, he started to use several of them to learn how to communicate and use it to benefit his business.

But the learning curve was way too hard, and in the middle of the way, he started to get lost. First, Mr Johnson started pitching his business every time to people, becoming very annoying indeed. Then, understanding that he was repelling people instead of attracting them, he started to SPAM. Through spam comments on forums, blogs, and so on, email spam passes through content spam. Spam, spam, spam… Have enough already! Good.

Bad Web Presence is Worse Than No Presence Whatsoever

Since all he was doing was revolting people, this has started to deteriorate his relationship with the community, since they assumed that his behaviour reflected himself as a person or a professional. They were wrong; it was only ignorance and inexperience. He was still learning.

Then, he thought that he needed a site since his social network experience wasn’t excellent. So, he searched and found out a bunch of automated site creation. Wonderful! It was so easy to make a site.

Hmmm…. maybe that isn’t that simple. You see, making a website, it’s not just dumping a few words on a webpage on a standard template. It needs to have some strategy, values, and a powerful brand based on great conceptions. When this is not comprehended as such, it can end transmitting something else to potential customers. Unprofessionalism, amateur, lack of trust, to name a few. They will compare you to the competition.

And that was what happen to Mr Johnson. All over a sudden, quicker than expected, his clients passed to the competition, and he was losing more clients than acquiring. It was a reck.

Moral of This Story?

It’s fine to educate ourselves and try to improve continuously. But testing with our most valuable possession (our brand or business), can be dreadful. Please, search for experts in their fields and try counselling with them. People with experience will help you win all the way. Choose wisely!

Oh, by the way, Mr Johnson learned his lesson, and now he’s working with a small agency specialized in local businesses going digital. No, it’s not Zopply, unfortunately! 😉