All of us are just one person, yet we use many voices every day.

We have our normal voice that we use when we’re with friends and those we feel comfortable around. We’re not afraid to cuss if need be and we use crude humour and sarcasm at will. We know we can get away with it without misunderstood meanings.

We have our professional voice that we use at work. Whether it’s speaking with clients or bosses or employees, we have a different tone. We certainly don’t cuss and it’s only with the closest of business relationships that we feel comfortable injecting more of our own personality.

Our parents and grandparents make us talk differently still, even though we’re fully grown. We use respectful tones and I personally never swore in the company of my parents.

We use a different voice again in professional situations. In shops and stores or public transport, we adopt a courteous yet authoritative tone. We know what we want so we use a certain tone to achieve that.

Yet despite all these disparate voices, there’s one thing that holds them all together.

YOU.

You control these voices and how they’re used. You control whether they’re used positively or negatively. You control whether they garner fear or respect. You control whether you help change the world or accept the status quo. Your control defines the perception of you by others.

We may have numerous voices, but at the end of the day there’s only one that truly counts.

What’s your voice?

image: ALA – The American Library Association

The Only Voice That Matters originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.

It becomes  a benchmark. When someone mentions the service or platform your product is built for, it’s almost the de facto recommendation.

Truth: pretty much everyone in your niche loves your product.

Then a new player comes into town.

They’ve seen what your product can do. They know its strengths, yet they know it’s one key area where improvement could happen – user-friendliness. While your product is unquestionably solid and respected, it’s not the easiest to use for the everyday person on the street.

It needs extra work that not everyone can afford to put the time into. It needs skills that not everyone has, or can learn. That’s not a weakness; just reality. The new player has seen that, and has released a product that makes it just as easy for Joe Average to use as Joe Expert. Everybody’s happy. Experts can still use your product, while the average consumer can use your competitor’s – there’s room for everyone, after all.

Except there’s not, according to you. Instead of relishing the challenge, and letting your product speak for itself, you decide it’s more productive to put down your competitor instead. You talk about your competitor’s design knowledge and denounce it by saying, “Company X don’t know jack about it or care, either.” Despite the clear opposite.

You publicly call your competitor’s promotional plans “lame, uninspired and barnacle marketing”. Even though the competitor’s marketing has so far been purely from user recommendation – much like the users of your product recommend yours (and rightly so).

Is this the new form of product selling? Putting down the competitors in public? I was curious, so I asked the question whether you should put competitors down or let your product do the talking. The responses were pretty unilateral.

Kevin Richard says you should wow your customers and let them do the talking. Arik Hanson advises that disrespect can have a long-term impact on your reputation. Justin Levy thinks you should save time and effort by not dissing your competitors and use it instead to make your company and product better.

There are numerous  other examples from Rebecca Leaman, Peter Hodges, PRDude, Tina Marie Hilton, Mike Smith, Ari Herzog, John Haydon, Tim Jahn, David Holliday, Andi Narvaez, Leona Skene, Nan Palmero, Jenn Mattern, Al Tepper and Michael Pearson.

Seems pretty simple – your product is your response to competition. Anything else is just poor form.

Of course, you might not even care anyway. Your sales pitch points to the high profile users that your product resonates with. The popularity of these guys will continue to sell your product for you.

But will it? Reputations take a long time to build but they can fall in seconds. Will the high profile customers persuade the general public to buy your product when that same public starts to notice the conversations taking place about competitor respect? Will they want to risk their own brand by supporting yours?

Maybe. Maybe not. But is it a question you’re willing (or can afford) to find out the answer to?

photo credit: tochis

Surprise – Disrespecting Competitors Doesn’t Work! originally appeared on Danny Brown | Social Media Marketing Blog - The Human Side of Media and the Social Side of Marketing under a Creative Commons license.