Good for you, Payless!

Last week I attended a conference and one of the break-out sessions was on using social media to promote your business. The presenter talked about the importance of monitoring Internet chatter so that you know what people are saying about you, and then responding in the same forum. She gave an example of a Motrin ad campaign that went way wrong when blogger moms started complaining about it in the blogosphere, leading Motrin to pull the ad within days--but not before hundreds had voiced their discontent via twitter and blog posts.

So yesterday when I checked my stats and saw that someone from Payless HQ had been checking me out, I knew exactly what was going on. A couple of days ago I made an off-handed comment about Payless, and they somehow picked up on the needle that dropped in my tiny little corner of the Internet.

From a business perspective, it is very savvy that Payless is so proactive in protecting its brand. From a consumer perspective, it is a little scary to know that every word you say on the Internet is being monitored by someone. And let me tell you, after attending last week's conference, I visited several Internet monitoring sites to see just where my name is popping up.

Now, before Payless comes after me for mentioning them once again, I will say this: On two separate occasions I have commented on another professional woman's fabulous shoes (one of whom had her Louboutin's tinted red in her black and white wedding pics, so definitely some shoe snobbery there), to have them confess that the fabulous shoes were from Payless.