RS071: Avoiding Shady Business Practices

Both Dave and I have few developments within our businesses this week.  With the end of the year coming Dave has seen a steadying of business over the last few months as opposed to the ups and downs that he saw previous years.  He attributes this to content marketing and steady advertising on several select websites.  He’s also taking to heart our Offline Businesses episode and looking for a few opportunities in slightly unconventional markets.  More on that to come shortly.

Craig has been thinking a lot about which markets he wants to serve now that PodcastMotor is pretty streamlined and running without a lot of direct input.  One market that he really likes is helping companies hire better employees, and remote employees specifically. The first product he’s releasing around that is a remote job board, over at WorkRemotely.io. The site has been around for about a year and he’s looking forward to making some enhancements in the site itself and really driving traffic to it so both employers and their potential team members will find it to be a really valuable resource in their hiring process.

In the aftermath of the last few weeks of political turmoil Dave and I have decided to keep the proverbial chili stirred with talking about a blog post that caught our eye recently.  In an piece by Ian Landsman, founder of HelpSpot, several very good points about potentially over aggressive marketing tactics amongst online business owners were outlined.

The main areas of concern here, which could undermine the overall validity and trust factor of online businesses include:

• Fake Deadlines
• Too Many ‘Follow Up’ emails
• Preselling an Item that Doesn’t Exist

By themselves none of these practices are wrong or misleading to your audience, but like many things there is a Right and a Wrong way to do these.  Just make sure that you’re running your business the way you’d want others to run a business you’re a customer of.  Treat your customers and audience with respect, and engage in a genuine discussion about how you can solve their problems.

Resources

WorkRemotely.io – Craig’s new job board for hiring remote team members

Ian Landsman Blog Post

LeadFuze

Audience Ops Calendar

Bluetick