One of my goals as someone who works on, plays on and builds websites daily is to give honest feedback and suggestions to companies online. So what is the best way to give real feature suggestions to companies? I am not talking about giving complaints or harsh criticism, but real honest suggestions.

I am asking this because early this morning I ran into a issue where suggesting a feature may not be as simple or as straight forward as it should.

I suggested 3 new feature ideas to the Google Buzz Team. Not only did I reach out to them on Google Buzz (obvious choice right?) but I also added the suggestions to the Google Buzz moderator forum and I will be adding them to this blog later today. I was told that the Google Buzz Team shouldn’t be @ replied to by another user – see original Buzz post here.

I don’t know if this is 100% true or not, but this made me think, if I am not supposed to reach out to a company on a social media tool, especially their own, then how should I reach out to them? Do I post the suggestion in their forum? DONE. Do I reach out to them on social media? DONE. Do I write a blog post about it? coming later today.

This got me to thinking some more. How can companies tell a real supporter from the average Joe Schmoe? They Can’t. There is no easy way to tell people apart when it comes to suggestions, besides investing time reading into a persons online presence. So how can you or I make sure that our suggestions are noticed?

I guess you can try all of the suggestions in my article Find A Problem On The Web? or if companies have a Beta testing program you could try and become a part of it. This might make you a little more trusted when providing feedback, but this barely exists for most companies online and if it does, it is usually not easy to get into.

I love Google and the Google Buzz Team and I will continue to provide suggestions, feedback and support any way that I can. Let me know what you think is the best way to connect to companies and if you are a company and you love suggestions then please let me know how you prefer to get contacted regarding these suggestions. Maybe with a little help from others we can help make the internet a better place.