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If You Have Nothing Nice to Say…

If You Have Nothing Nice to Say…

If you come across a product, service or establishment that pisses you off, and you’re a blogger, there’s a good chance that you’ll use your blog as a venue to share your feelings with the world. Before you refocus your anger to the keyboard, think twice before typing and posting.

There are two adages that come into play here:

“If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.”

“There’s no such thing as bad press.”

If you still can’t resist the urge, and have a compulsion to post (many bloggers are obsessive personality types), ask yourself the following:

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– Does the entry match my blog’s content?
– Will readers care
– Would I be satisfied if this blog post comes to represent my entire blog?

What do YOU think? Does this sound advice apply to the blogosphere?

View Comments (3)
  • Interesting springboard.

    I try to post positive articles and experiences as far as possible, but from time to time I do vent when I’ve received bad service, or I read of other people getting bad service.

    I have to say, though, that in at least two cases, my initial “rants” have turned into fairly popular places for others to find help and advice (and rant as well, of course) for the problem.

    For example, my rant about a local gym’s terrible termination policies and threats of debt collectors has become a place for others to see that they’re not alone, and to post advice.

    Similarly, my rant about a software company using potentially unethical billing methods became a hugely popular article, was picked up by a national newspaper, was the basis for a dedicated online forum, and offers hope and advice for a significant number of people.

    Had I not written these articles, none of this would have happened (at least, not via my web site)

    Then again, I’ve written some articles which have been purely for my own sense of relief, and it’s unlikely they’ve had much positive impact on anyone!

  • My blog is mostly about running. Coincidentally, I own a running watch, and had ordered a newer version of the one I owned.

    I kept getting the run-around as to when it would actually ship. I must’ve traded a dozen emails with the manufacturer’s customer service group and still no watch.

    So I mentioned in one of my final emails that I had a blog, and included the URL for it in my email to them, and the fact that I would be (negatively) blogging about the fact that my experience was less than satisfactory.

    I did exactly that the same day. Less than 48 hours later I couldn’t help but notice 2 things happened – I had a lot of searches on “[email protected]” (with their company name included), which told me the manufacturer was doing blog searches on their own company…and second, I had an email that my watch had miraculously shipped the same day when before that they couldn’t even give me an estimated date.

    Not the way I wanted to handle the situation, but in this instance it worked.

  • My blog has the word “worst” in it’s title so negativity is at it’s heart but I try to do it in a tongue-in-cheek way.

    Your point that “There’s no such thing as bad press” made me think of a company that I featured on my blog who actively encourage me to write about them for that very reason.

    They send me links to their latest adverts and give me the heads up when new campaigns are about to launch on TV.

    I suspect they’re either incredibly progressive in their attitude to online marketing or completely crazy…

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