Listen to your users and start dancing

A couple of days ago when I talked about ugly design getting too much credit one of the reasons given for MySpace’s success is that they simply give their users what they want. It’s such a simple concept that too many of us seem to overlook and when you run your own company it can become even harder to follow because you like to keep control in your hands.

Now depending on what your company does I don’t think you should apply every user request into your product, but for something like MySpace which is more of a fun site than anything it works very well. In contrast, if Basecamp started piling on the features due to what some users want you would simply end up with another bloated project management app.

What about the requests though that don’t really have to do with your product? What about people just wanting to have better interaction with your company? What about the people who simply wish to hear a voice every once in a while? I know of people who complain about these things all the time, but what are companies doing about it? The simple question is, are you really listening to your users?

Wednesday, Mike and I issued a blog network dance challenge and the response was extremely positive. However, when Tyme wrote about it, her readers were complaining because I was in the small window and it was a bit hard to see me. Since I was on a roll anyways I figured I would help them out and the dancing CEO was born.

Nothing difficult and just doing a small thing that people weren’t expecting. The results? Well here are some comments from another thread at Not Too Geeky.

This right here is why I read your site and recommend 9rules to anyone that will listen. You know how to interact with your readers and have fun with us.

Love the video! Thank you Scrivs/Tyme. It’s good to see bloggers and blog networks thinking about readers and what we want instead of feeding us what they think we want. I honestly had not heard of 9rules before Tyme started talking about them but I love 9rules now.

Anita, dead on. The bar has been officially raised. First with the FUN podcasts. Now the FUN videos.

Want our pageviews? Give us something WE want.

And all I did was act like a fool in my bedroom. Even in this day and age it’s amazing to see how poorly many companies interact with their customers. You figured lessons would have been learned from mistakes in the past, but then again, history has a nasty way of repeating itself. Creating passionate users for an entire blog network is not an easy thing to do, but it seems we are least moving in that direction.

Note: Not to be left out on the dance fun, Colin shows off his skills. There is no money in blogging, only money in dancing.

And because I really have no shame here is the YouTube link to embed it on your own site if you wish. Also, the 9rules YouTube video.

Published by Scrivs on March 31, 2006 in Business • Did you like it? Subscribe! Or Submit it to Blogosphere News!