Jason Calacanis on smart advice for bloggers

Jason Calacanis of Weblogsinc fame claims to have been channelling Seth Godin in his latest post, that may be more of a reflection of what he’s been eating during his visit to China (did the meal bark back??), but amongst the haze came some wonderful insight into marketing in terms of the Weblogsinc blogs, that can easily be applied to all blogs and bloggers; for clarity substitute readers for consumers and blog for brand.
“Do not, under any circumstances, deceive the public. The pubic is smart, and should be respected. If we deceive our consumers [readers] they will eventually find out, and when they do we will harm our brand [blog] much more then we would have helped it. Additionally, why are we wasting our time trying to create buzz? Why don’t we put our energy into making a better product? If we do the public will notice… they are not stupid, they recognize excellence. Let’s just be excellent!”
He continues,
Trying to force word of mouth is like trying to force someone into loving you… it doesn’t work. As much as I love to analyze business and marketing, I’m smart enough to know that buzz is the smoke from a burning hot product. Building a fire is hard work, no doubt, but it’s a lot better then blowing smoke.

If we were one of those bizarre “Rate this Site” type sites the post would be a clear 10/10.