Don’t Be Over-Critical
For those that have been with me from the beginning, I said early on that while I will be doing research to help you all, we would still be learning together. In most of my reading which I do on other blogs…one piece of advice that seems to be prevalent is that you should always be positive. Another is to write posts in advance. Writing in advance helps you in two ways. For one, it helps you to create a flow and ensure that you have new content for your readers each day. For another, it gives you time to look over your posts and change anything that you think would make it better. It is amazing what time will do for your perspective on what you have written.
If I had followed the latter advice, I wouldn’t have disregarded the former. After talking to Mr. Pratt and Anca, I realized how negative I was yesterday. There was no reason to be so critical of entrecard. While I was annoyed by the card droppers who spent 0 time on my blog, it was not a reason to lash out at entrecard. Like I said in yesterday’s post, they have a brilliant idea, and they are people like you and I….trying to provide something useful for as many bloggers as possible. I won’t discourage anyone from using their service….it is free after-all, and like several readers mentioned to me yesterday, you get out what you put into it. So what if some people drop cards without reading your blog…..ignore them and build on the contacts you have made otherwise.
Although it definitely generated a good amount of discussion, in the future I would like to generate discussion by being positive. I will also strive to remember that there are people behind blogs, not just ones and zeros. If I offended anyone with my negativity, including the people behind entrecard, please accept my most sincere apologies.
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March 20th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Heck, I thought it was a great article myself! But so is this one….so anyway!
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March 20th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Good point. I need to quit complaining that I don’t have time to write ahead and JUST DO IT.
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March 20th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Did they write you a nasty letter or something?
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March 20th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Ha…no, I was just reading over the post last night and it really struck me that “Damn…I was pretty harsh there” and I’m really not a mean person.
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Anca reply on March 20, 2008:
Nope, you’re a very nice person. I knew that ever since the deer accident
And you weren’t too harsh, we all did agree Ecard has it’s flaws but also some advantages, let’s just leave it at that. I still think it’s not the best way to build traffic. But will remain positive.
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March 20th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Thank you, Anca. And it’s funny, pigskin, right after I replied to your comment, I got one on the http://natespost.com/index.php/entrecard-scam-mongo-credits/ thread from one of the entrecard guys. Wasn’t mean at all. I had a question for him…hopefully he will respond so you guys can discuss with him.
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March 21st, 2008 at 11:29 am
Great post, Nate. Avoiding negativity is a huge part of my strategy in blogging and in life. Blogging is hard work, and the more positive I feel about it the more likely I am to do what it takes to see this through.
I do feel that sometimes criticism can be used — but use it with surgical precision, not machine gun style. Make sure any criticism is well-earned, and your opinion will be all the more valued for it.
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Nate reply on March 21, 2008:
Well thought out comment, Luke. I can rationally explain why I won’t use a service without completely blistering someone.
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Luke reply on March 21, 2008:
Sure thing. After reading your latest post, I kind of think they deserve whatever they get. It’s not good customer service to treat people like dirt when they are simply testing the system you’ve set up for them. That’s not saying they’re a scam per se, just that they are not behaving in a professional manner.
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March 21st, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I too thought it was great. You can’t always be positive.
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March 21st, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Thank you, Rose!
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March 21st, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Thanks for the mention nate. I don’t know how old you are - but I’m 39. When I was 19 years old I used to be brutally honest. I would blurt out whatever came to mind without any thought at all. It took me years and years to figure out that it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. I would offend a lot of people and not even mean to. I think it took until I started dealing with people in sales that I realized you just couldn’t be like that without people painting me as negative. And - blogging is ‘dealing with people’…..so I’m careful how I write things online to this day…. =)
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March 21st, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Actually, I’m having much less remorse now.
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June 15th, 2008 at 12:51 am
All they would need to do would be throttle drops to no more than 1 every 5 min. I suggested that and of course all the power droppers were like oh no you disruptive piece of crap you should thank us that your worthless blog gets any traffic at all. I’ve actually made some contacts via entrycard so it’s not a total negative. but “powerdropping” reminds me of those pigeons endlessly pecking at a button for sometimes a pellet.
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