In my personal blog, I often talk about best practices for small business owners and entrepreneurs. I typically keep my topics very general and don’t often (maybe have never) called out a company with specificity. Today, however, I’m writing this article about an actual experience — because I think it’s relevant and a great lesson for all of us.
Though an overused phrase, this is the digital age, and how you behave — whether it’s posting private pictures to social-media accounts or interacting with your customers — you create a footprint that is impossible to cover, no matter how many tides come in.
Remember to treat your customers and visitors with respect; to keep your emails professional and on topic; to say please and thank you; and most of all, be honest. It’s okay to fire a customer, sometimes that’s necessary, but when you do, keep in mind that as they share the story of how your relationship ended, the very best you can hope for is they speak of the separation without animosity and continue to respect you and your organization.
On to my story…
If you’re a follower of my writings, especially Spider Trainers’ inbound content, you know that I often promote ProjectEve as a great syndication source; but after recent events, I feel it necessary to not only withdraw my recommendations, but to tell you why.
Yesterday morning, I wrote a guest blog for one of our partners — a brief look at CRMs and how this software is important to both the sales and marketing teams. As I do with most of our inbound content, I shared the article on a number of syndication sites, including ProjectEve.
Within the article, I referenced an online company as a source for additional information, in case the reader would like to do some comparison shopping. The company I cited was kind enough to drop me a note thanking me for the reference, which meant that unless they were trolling ProjectEve at that very moment for any mention of their company, the article had been indexed by Google and alerts sent to anyone following keywords in the article. I chose to believe the latter as the more-likely scenario. Sure enough, a few minutes later I received this notice:
Cyndie Shaffstall,
Your post has been approved and published at http://www.projecteve.com/the-
crm-cycle/ .
Note: Guest contributions to ProjectEve are held for 24 to 48 hours for review and approval. Every article I have submitted has been individually reviewed, approved, and published to their site, including this CRM article.
The company that I had cited also requested a small change to the URL to link directly to the section of their site that compares CRMs. I found the request odd since I was pretty sure I had done just that. Nonetheless, I logged in to ProjectEve ready to make the change and hunted for the better part of an hour looking for the edit option.
Figuring the edit button would be found on my article page, I first went there. I discovered immediately the title of the article had been changed, there were two typos in the new title, and the new title was no longer an accurate lead for the article.
I found this alarming, first thinking the site had been hacked and then concluding that the site managers had made this change. I checked the guidelines and read that authors have full editorial control, but today, that paragraph seems to be missing and I’ve just found this text:
Because we are committed to delivering only the most interesting news to our community of professional and educated women, we do use editorial discretion when publish. Editorial discretion pertains to the decision to publish as well as layout, title, graphics, spelling and grammar. Before submitting your articles, please consider our guidelines below.
Back to my quest for help. When I couldn’t find the edit option, I completed the contact us form, typed the CAPTCHA, and clicked submit — only to then receive an error that the CAPTCHA was incorrect.
Not be deterred, I typed the code and submitted again… and again… and again. Each time I received the same error. Even more determined, I tried a new browser; ending with the same results.
Frustration ensued.
I retrieved the email with the notice of approval and replied with this message:
Hi Kim;
I submitted an article this morning with the title of The CRM Cycle, but it has been published with a different title and with a typo in the title. I’m completely at a loss as to how this has happened and I cannot figure out how to edit it.
Additionally, one of the links has been truncated from http://www.softwareadvice.com/crm/ to http://www.softwareadvice.com/
Can you please tell me how to edit my article to return it to its original state?
Of course, the email promptly bounced. Next up: a search of any type of help email address. I didn’t find one, but I did find an email address on the team page, that I used as a pattern for the two founders, Meridith Dennes, co-founder and CEO and Kim Oksenberg, co-founder & COO, and to whom I sent this message:
Hello,
I am writing to you out of sheer frustration and that your email address is the only one I could find on the ProjectEve site.
I submitted an article this morning with the title of The CRM Cycle, but it has been published with a different title and with two typos in the title. I’m completely at a loss as to how this has happened and I cannot figure out how to edit it.
Additionally, one of the links has been truncated from
http://www.softwareadvice.com/crm/ to http://www.softwareadvice.com/Can you please tell me how to edit my article to return it to its original state?
Further, your contact form is not working in Firefox or Safari. No matter how often the numerals/letters are typed, an error occurs that they are incorrect.
Your guidelines indicate that I have full editorial control over my submissions, and yet I cannot find that I am able to edit and it appears that someone else is able to edit and publish edits without my approval.
My biggest concern is the article is already being indexed by search spiders, with a title I did not choose and that has two spelling errors.
I would appreciate an immediate response so that this title can be fixed before more damage is done.
In the interim, I found that while I could not edit the article, I could delete, which I did. Moments later, I received a response from Kim:
Hi Cyndie-
I apologize for the difficulties you are having with the site. I’ll go ahead and take the blog down.Best,
Kim
Kimberly Oksenberg
Co-Founder
Project Eve LLC
To which I responded:
Hello, Kim;
Thank you for your response, I have already deleted and reposted the article. Unfortunately, that does not answer my questions, which are increasing:
- Why was my headline edited?
- By whom was my headline edited?
- Why is there no approval process for edits you feel need to be made?
- Where is the edit feature, so that I can update my own articles as needed?
- Why have images (I have not approved) been added to some earlier articles I posted?
- Why, when I delete the article, is it still available by clicking the thumbnail on the home page?
- Why does your CAPTCHA fail in Firefox and Safari?
Having my article published with two typos in the headline is a reflection on me. This article has been indexed by search spiders with these errors. I know it is extremely difficult to publish error-free articles, but I go the extra mile to type all articles in a word processor and have our internal editor check for errors as well.
Errors get by all of us, but these errors were injected by a third party, who made edits that I was not aware were being made, and who did not run the edits past me. I am very upset.
I would like to receive responses promptly to these questions. At the least they will help me to understand your platform, but at most are a reflection of your business practices and one that will enable me to decide if publishing to your platform is beneficial, since it seems there is not a formal editorial process.
I think your platform is a great idea and having you promote entrepreneurial women is a wonderful contribution. Having said that, it’s important to me to contribute to platforms that I feel respects me as a contributor in the same way I respect them as a service.
Just as I hit send, I received this from Meridith:
I agree. I just deleted the blog. After reviewing your issues Im not sure we are the best venue for you to be posting on. Sorry.
In case you missed that, the co-founder of ProjectEve feels that their venue is not the best for me because — I can only assume — I had the audacity to question edits that were made to my article along with the inclusion of two typos in the headline. My amazement was evidenced in my response:
That is the most appalling customer service I have ever received. I am shocked by your callous and uncaring response.
To which Meridith responded:
Hi Cyndie,
Upon review of your account we have found your content to contain SEO related linkbacks and other advertorial material. We do not believe this is the best site for you to continue posting your blogs. You have violated our blogger and member guidelines and at this point we have decided that we will need to remove all of your past content and delete your account. We are a small but growing organization. Kim and I make all editorial decisions. We are sorry that we did not meet your editorial standards. You were not submitted to any index. I have removed your URLs permanently.
Unfortunately given the growing numbers in our free community we try and do our best to minimize spelling errors but unfortunately we are still make mistakes.
Regards,
Meridith
Appalling. Completely and utterly appalling. This company, whose business it is to publish syndicated content, has just booted me from their site because I found objectionable their sloppy edits to my content — content that they reviewed, approved, and published. Further, they claim that they have removed my previously posted material because they found it to, “contain SEO related linkbacks and other advertorial material.” Though this was never found to be the case during their review process preceding each of my articles being approved and published.
I ended our email thread with:
A simple note to me would have been sufficient. I did not realize I was not following the rules.
I have no problem with you removing my account. I find your business practices appalling.
On one last note, if you believe the content has not yet been indexed, then you should probably read up on search-engine algorithms. It would be very helpful information to you in this endeavor.
Normally, I would not feel compelled to write an article such as this about an experience with a business, but this is a great example of mishandling customer service — a relevant topic to business owners who follow me socially and on this blog.
No company is ever exempt from being polite, forthright, and honest, and in this digital age, if you choose not to be, you run the very real risk of having the entire exchange posted to the web for all to see.
Shame on you ProjectEve.