I have been thinking about the issue of trust. Needless to say, when performing services for people it's crucial that they have confidence that you are actually doing what you say you're doing! Obviously this is not a problem if you're teaching a lesson, or writing content that you e-mail to them. But it can be a problem when offering a service like flyer distribution.
Unless the client actually goes out and walks behind the distributor, they have no way of knowing for sure that all of them have been placed in letterboxes as agreed. After all, it's very easy to take someone's hard earned money, then just dump most or all of them somewhere. Unfortunately, this happens all too often. Understandably, business owners are wary of this.
This issue has worried me from time to time. I'm pretty sure that no one has ever thought that I was ripping them off -- at least they never said so. But since I can't actually guarantee a response to the flyers -- particularly if it's a small run -- I sometimes fret that if they get no calls, or less than they hoped, they might think I'm not doing a thorough job.
And I'm doing this on a very small scale. So it must be a huge issue for big companies that specialize in this. To address this problem, many of the bigger companies now use GPS tracking on mobile phones to give evidence that they are actually doing the runs as agreed.
I've thought of doing this myself. But while I'm heavily into social media, I've come very late to the smart phone revolution. Actually, I only just bought a little basic Nokia smart phone about a week and a half ago. The model I have doesn't seem to have this GPS ability.
However, I've just worked out a way of using my phone in a different way to achieve a similar result. Lately, I've been tweeting photos on a couple of my non-business related Twitter accounts. So I've decided to use this for the flyer distribution.
From now on, when I go out on a flyer run, I'll take a daily photo of some local landmark, or street intersection that proves I am doing the areas I say I'm doing.
From my experience of the last week or so, I've learned that the photos go straight through via TwitPic. But some days they don't appear on Twitter, even after several consecutive attempts. They get lost, presumably because the network is overloaded. So, if that happens I'll just tweet them later on when I get home.
It's not as comprehensive as GPS tracking, of course. But by scrolling through my Twitter feed anyone I do drops for will be able to see where I've been. And if they wish, I can supply maps with the areas covered highlighted as well.
Unless the client actually goes out and walks behind the distributor, they have no way of knowing for sure that all of them have been placed in letterboxes as agreed. After all, it's very easy to take someone's hard earned money, then just dump most or all of them somewhere. Unfortunately, this happens all too often. Understandably, business owners are wary of this.
This issue has worried me from time to time. I'm pretty sure that no one has ever thought that I was ripping them off -- at least they never said so. But since I can't actually guarantee a response to the flyers -- particularly if it's a small run -- I sometimes fret that if they get no calls, or less than they hoped, they might think I'm not doing a thorough job.
And I'm doing this on a very small scale. So it must be a huge issue for big companies that specialize in this. To address this problem, many of the bigger companies now use GPS tracking on mobile phones to give evidence that they are actually doing the runs as agreed.
I've thought of doing this myself. But while I'm heavily into social media, I've come very late to the smart phone revolution. Actually, I only just bought a little basic Nokia smart phone about a week and a half ago. The model I have doesn't seem to have this GPS ability.
However, I've just worked out a way of using my phone in a different way to achieve a similar result. Lately, I've been tweeting photos on a couple of my non-business related Twitter accounts. So I've decided to use this for the flyer distribution.
From now on, when I go out on a flyer run, I'll take a daily photo of some local landmark, or street intersection that proves I am doing the areas I say I'm doing.
From my experience of the last week or so, I've learned that the photos go straight through via TwitPic. But some days they don't appear on Twitter, even after several consecutive attempts. They get lost, presumably because the network is overloaded. So, if that happens I'll just tweet them later on when I get home.
It's not as comprehensive as GPS tracking, of course. But by scrolling through my Twitter feed anyone I do drops for will be able to see where I've been. And if they wish, I can supply maps with the areas covered highlighted as well.
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