In her book “The Death of Distance” Frances Caircross writes about how technology by eliminating time and distance changes relationships forever. Daily I marvel how this idea has changed my life.
Today NewGator told me that I had gotten another chapter in Dan Gillmor’s to be published book. "Making the News.". Dan graciously cited me as a catalyst, but when he gets to the real meat of the books he talks about my pals Robert Scoble and Ernie Svenson.
He quotes Robert’s really excellent and brilliant post related to his thoughts on “ a manifesto for corporate bloggers”
When Robert wrote his ideas which I have intentionally copied and set forth below, I had this brain flash that said, “Man, Martha Stewart should have read Scoble’s blog! Thoughts from a master!
-- Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We'll find it anyway.
-- Post fast on good news or bad. Someone say something bad about your product? Link to it -- before the second or third site does -- and answer its claims as best you can. Same if something good comes out about you. It's all about building long-term trust. The trick to building trust is to show up! If people are saying things about your product and you don't answer them, that distrust builds. Plus, if people are saying good things about your product, why not help Google find those pages as well?
-- Have a thick skin. Even if you have Bill Gates' favorite product people will say bad things about it. That's part of the process. Don't try to write a corporate weblog unless you can answer all questions -- good and bad -- professionally, quickly, and nicely.
-- Talk to the grassroots first. Why? Because the main-stream press is cruising weblogs looking for stories and looking for people to use in quotes. If a mainstream reporter can't find anyone who knows anything about a story, he/she will write a story that looks like a press release instead of something trustworthy. People trust stories that have quotes from many sources. They don't trust press releases.
-- If you screw up, acknowledge it. Fast. And give us a plan for how you'll unscrew things. Then deliver on your promises.
Had Martha read Robert’s blog, she would be living large instead of thinking about doing time. I had a client that made the tour of the same chain of hotels that the Federal Government runs around the Southeast. People talk about Club Fed, that part is a myth.
Sometimes I look life through a prism that says, why do "smart" people have to keep learning the same lessons over and over?
Just think had Martha been a blogger with her aggregator pointing to Dan and Robert, she would have had about $500 million more in net worth, and looking forward to a lot more free time.
Amen Buzz. Martha represents the ultimate in control culture and her life has reaped a healthy serving of Karma as a result. The harder you try to control, the further away you get. Simple but beautiful.
Posted by: lenn pryor | March 15, 2004 at 09:08 PM
Great post Buzz! I'm printing this out and posting it on my office door (my hallway blog).
Posted by: Marc Orchant | March 16, 2004 at 05:58 PM