Feedback Fun and an SEOMGLOL Moment

Have you ever sat there on election night watching the results come in, and shook your head disapprovingly as they announce the percentages of people that showed up to vote?  I know I have.  Sitting there hearing that only 20% of registered voters showed up and let their voice be heard…it’s extremely frustrating.  There really are only two “civic duties” that people are called upon to fulfill in order to keep our country’s system flowing – show up to vote, and every once in a great while sit on a jury.

Both of those basically boil down to something that as a society we’ve pretty much perfected as an art form – passing judgment on people – and so the low numbers at the polls and hearing someone try and invent an excuse to get out of jury duty always amazes me.

Which brings me to our request for feedbackThe dozens of you (we’re sitting under 100 at the moment) that have chimed in already can tune out for a moment.  Thank you for touching base and letting us know what you think.  We seriously appreciate that you took a moment to help us steer the group in the right direction.

But you…the rest of those 2,396 members sitting in our LinkedIn group, and who knows how many more anonymous folks that only cruise the website by the hundreds day to day…we’re candidly asking for your feedback to help guide the future direction of the group and our events, and so please, take a moment to give it.

Because…honestly…sometimes we’re just not that smart.  However, we are smart enough to listen.  So chime in.

From the “just not that smart” department, I’m probably about to shoot myself in the foot and remove some of the incentive to give us feedback, but I’d like to share some of the results and notes that have come in so far.  But just like the “early returns” shouldn’t discourage you from getting to the polls, this shouldn’t stop you from being heard on this either.

Overwhelmingly, results have been “yes, do it” thus far.  However, the really great part of it all is reading some of the comments that have come in:

“You guys have great instincts – Keep up the good work!”

“I trust you guys to hold to your standards.”

“I know you’ll watch our collective backs.”

Stuff like that is really, really nice to read/hear.

Not everyone trusts us that much though…and since all of the negatives that we got came in anonymously, I’ll take a moment to address them here in the hopes that they’ll read.  What was…interesting…to me was that of the negative responses we received, all but two basically talked themselves out of it being a negative with their comments.  But for the two that remain, let’s dive in:

“Bad idea because there will be a few vocal people who will view it and spread it as favoritism, kickback, etc.”

Well, to those few people…come, and be vocal, because I haven’t really heard from you yet.  And, honestly, this one kind of misses the basic point – which is that talking to the people that we are talking to means that we’re not talking about the recruiters that come to our events or the locations where we have events being involved here – we’re talking about completely outside third-parties.

So how can it involve favoritism or kickbacks if there’s no direct involvement with our group?  Kind of wish this one in particular hadn’t been anonymous…would’ve have loved to get some clarification.

“I don’t attend a lot of events and I do like complimentary items. BUT, this is one event where I know everyone has an equal opportunity and chance to meet and great.

It may not happen but it could come to one or two companies driving off the smaller or independent people we are looking to meet.  You have done a wonderful job with this event. Keep it up.

See what I mean about “compliments even when it’s negative”?

Anyway…again, to be clear here: we’re not talking about the recruiters or companies that are regular participants in our events.  We’re not looking to let GE setup a 40×40 booth in the back corner of the Post Bar in Novi for a Pink Slip Party.  We’re not talking about running ads for Jawood and Compuware all over the website.

We have been…and will continue to be…very, very careful about maintaining the mix and flow of our events.

…and really, that’s been about it.  Not too bad, and, again, take a moment to get heard if you haven’t yet.

Now…I have to share “a funny” with you.  I pay attention to our log reports and metrics on a pretty regular basis.  It helps us know what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, what people are reading, where they’re sharing it, what other sites like us, etc.  Many of you are familiar with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which involves the various practices to help your site get better results in the major search engines.  Sometimes funny things happen as a result, things that might make you say “OMG”…which, thanks to the dumbing down of the world, is now a “real” word…but I won’t get started on that just now…

See, our log reports also show what people were searching on before they came to our site through a link that was returned by that search engine’s index.

So…to you folks out there (whoever you are…we know that you were here, how you got here, and that’s about it) that have wound up coming to our site for the first time because you were looking for a detroit escort (35 so far), an escort in detroit (29 so far), a detroit call girl (20 so far), or even just a regular old detroit prostitute (4 so far)…we apologize for the let-down.  We’re sorry that our Don’t Be That Guy: The LinkedIn Prostitution Ring blog entry has blindly led you astray via Google.  I can only imagine the disappointment you must’ve felt…because, well, let’s be honest…odds are good that we’re not what you were hoping to find.

But…as always, we’re not here to judge.  Good luck with that.

And thank you for the laugh.  I know some people use LOL when they’re not really Laughing Out Loud…but I really do.  Every time I see it happen.  So thank you.