Screw Up? Don’t Try to Hide

If you’re active on the web for very long, you will screw up. It’s inevitable. How you handle it can make you or break you, though.

To show you what I mean, let’s look at three different examples: one from last year in which a company dealt swiftly and expertly with a problem of their own making and two from this year where just the opposite was the case. I think the end results will be more than enough to convince you to be very proactive the next time you screw up.

The Right Way

Last year, LowerMyBills had not one but two major reporting errors in their affiliate program within a week’s time. This was huge because not only was LMB running one of the largest affiliate programs around, but the errors actually prevented affiliates from getting their full commissions. That’s one of the best ways I know to get people mad at you as quickly as possible.

As soon as they discovered the first error, though, they took immediate action — sending an email to every one of their affiliates clearly outlining what the problem was and how they planned to solve it. Nowhere did they try to duck blame for it or try to make it sound like less than it was. Then, after discovering the second error, not only did they take the same approach, they also included a 20% bonus to make up for everything.

So here’s the LMB plan:

1. Admit you screwed up.
2. Say what you’re doing to fix it.
3. Offer some kind of appropriate compensation.

Whatever you do, don’t try to cover it up. Your readers aren’t idiots, and especially with the coming of the Internet age, they talk to each other. If they find out that you knew something that you weren’t telling them, or if they feel like you didn’t take ownership of a problem, they will turn on you in a heartbeat.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look at a couple of recent examples of the wrong way to screw up.

The Wrong Way

SiteMeter/Specific Media

By now, most of are familiar with SiteMeter’s Specific Media issue. Here’s a quick recap, along with the latest developments:

• March 25: StatCounter lets their users know that another unnamed stats provider had agreed to take an unspecified amount of money to start including a “spyware cookie” in their stat tracker.
• March 26: It quickly comes to light that the unnamed provider is SiteMeter, and Eric Odem expands on the relationship on his blog.
• April 2: Within a week, the story has spread across the blogosphere, including here, and bloggers everywhere are leaving SiteMeter for competitors. Still nothing posted at SiteMeter or Specific Media to address the allegations.
• April 10: Two and a half weeks after the story broke, “The SiteMeter Team” begins to respond to the issue in the comments of blog posts (including here and on Eric’s), but not on their own blog — despite the fact that they claim in Eric’s comments that “we have made an official post on our own blog regarding this matter.”
• April 16: After not receiving a response to my follow-up questions in either Eric’s comments or my own, I email SiteMeter directly for a response.
• April 17: SiteMeter responds via email, but says that the post they referred to on their blog was about “new features and services we’ve been developing and testing,” not the Specific Media issue. I respond and recommend strongly that they post an official response to their blog. That email goes unanswered.

As of today, almost four and a half weeks after StatCounter first broke the story, there still has been no official response from SiteMeter. As I told them in my last email, that makes it appear as if the allegations are true and that they are indeed trying to hide something. If they weren’t concerned that people know what was really going on, they’d post it clearly on their blog for all to see. By answering only on someone else’s blog, though, and in the comments at that, they give fuel to all those who believe they’re doing something underhanded and trying to get away with it. And I lean more that way myself now, simply because they have been so evasive about the whole thing.

Charles Kirkendall

On April 6, Sadish posted about Charles Kirkendall taking one of Sadish’s most popular WordPress themes (MistyLook), making a few changes, and trying to pass it off as his own. Now MistyLook is one of the most common themes around, so it was a terrible choice to plagiarize, and Charles didn’t get away with it for long. Within just a day or two, the pirated theme was gone off his site with no evidence that it had ever been there — no apology from Charles, though. Nothing at all. Remove the evidence, hope it goes away.

So What?

Alright, so what? This time next year will anyone remember any of these cases — good or bad?

I guarantee you LMB’s affiliates will. In a hypercompetitive market like most of us will never know, they turned two major screw-ups into an opportunity to build raving fans. That’s a very impressive turnaround, and we have the exact same opportunity every time we mess up.

But Charles and SiteMeter can just hold their breath and let the problem go away, though, right? They may not win any fans, but the problem will blow over eventually, right?

Well not if Google has anything to say about it:

• SiteMeter: 3.5 negative results in the top 10 (one of the pages isn’t actually negative, but links to negative info.
• Specific Media: 1 negative page in the top 10
• Charles Kirkendall: 1 negative page in the top 3

You don’t want to be Charles in a job interview if the interviewer decides to Google him beforehand. And SiteMeter hasn’t done anything at all to bring back all the customers it has lost. Of course, it’s quite possible — even probable — that they’re making enough with the Specific Media deal that they couldn’t care less. Still, I’ll always believe that a good reputation is worth more than great riches.

So how about you? Do you need to clear the air on anything? I do, and I’ll let you know how it goes in just a few days. Stay tuned!