In part one of this series we discussed a post made by Matt Cutts on corporate blogging. We went over the first point he made in his post, regarding leaving yourself wiggle room on deadlines. Now, let’s go over the second point, about how to handle yourself when dealing with or talking about a competitor. As Matt put it, never trash talk a competitor – but what does that really mean?

Most corporate bloggers are savvy enough to understand that trash talk has no place in a blog. Even if you are riding high on success and you have the world at your feet, there is no need to even mention your competitors. Trash talking them will actually end up hurting you more than them and once you leave a bad taste in your audience’s mouth, getting rid of it is nearly impossible. Let’s illustrate this point with a scenario.

Let’s say that Business Owner A has a corporate blog that gets a good deal of traffic and covers company news, as well as a few other topics. On Monday, Business Owner B decides to start an ad campaign that will directly effect the revenue of Business Owner A. The first reaction for many is to lash out and belittle the efforts of Business Owner B.

So, that’s exactly what Business Owner A does. They devote several posts of their blog to trashing B, and their product or service. Instead of getting the attention away from B’s ad campaign, all that A has managed to accomplish is giving them more traffic from readers that want to see what all of the fuss is about.

The second effect is that Business Owner A now seems a bit whiny and definitely unprofessional. Competing ad campaigns are common and their readers are savvy enough to figure out that the posts are being fueled largely by sour grapes. The overall image of Business Owner A has now been tarnished, and readers leave the blog as a result.

Now, instead of circumventing the ad campaign launched by Business Owner B, all that A has managed to do was to hand them new visitors on a platter. They managed to hurt their own business and will forever be remembered as poor sports. All of this could have been avoided by simply never mentioning Business Owner B in the first place.

No matter if a competitor is trashing you, dragging your company through the mud, or competing aggressively against you – never trash them in the public eye. The only one that will end up wearing egg on their faces is you. Remember to take the High Road, no matter what – and you’ll end up reaping the benefits. Readers are not stupid, and they do understand more about your business than you think they do.

Don’t give your readers the chance to see you in a bad light. Remember that professionalism is key if you want to establish yourself as an authority. Whining, complaining and trash talk have no place on your corporate blog.

Photo Credits: 1

Originally posted 2008-11-17 05:24:55. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

• Blog Shmog By Robert W. Bly If you are on the fence about starting your own corporate blog, this is a great book to read to help you make your decision. The subtitle is “The Truth About Business Blogs” and that pretty much says it all. For those that don’t have time to go through stories......
• How to Avoid Corporate Blogging Disasters For those thinking about starting a corporate blog, there are a few caveats that should be considered before you ever throw your hat in the arena. The blogosphere can be a scary place if you are not prepared and it is easy to have a disaster of epic proportions on......
• Why Corporate Blogs Are So Important When it comes to reaching out to your customers or building up your customer base, a blog is a very powerful tool. Unfortunately, many companies do not take advantage of these benefits and they are missing out on some very powerful marketing techniques that are not only cost effective but......
• 3 Common Mistakes Made By Corporate Blog Owners While there are plenty of resources available that tell you what to do when it comes to corporate blogging, there are very few that will let you what not to do. Mistakes are rampant in corporate blogging, especially when you first get started. Not all are dire, but some may......
• How Valuable Are Your Readers? Many list owners have a formula that helps them figure out how valuable their subscribers are. This is usually done so that you figure out how much money each subscriber means to you. For example, this may be $1 a month, $5 or even more. To come to this figure,......

• Call Tracking For Home Based Businesses Call Tracking For Home Based Businesses By Daniel Bernal Even though your home based business is not run out of an office or may have little to no employees, it's still your business. Sometime small business owners won't invest in the tools that propel them to great success, because they......
• Reasons to Start Blogging In the 1990's people started to set up websites know as web logs, a term which has been colloquially evolved into the term blog. A blog is a internet website where users post regular article, providing commentary, information, news, and various other forms of posts. Why do individuals start blogging?......
• Business Blogging Tips For Small Business Owners If you own a small business, chances are that you are already too familiar with the "feast or famine" cycle that most small business owners go through, where there's either too much work going on for you to manage it all, or not enough business coming in through the door.If......
• Put Your Marketing Efforts on Steriods "Read All About It", is what the newspaper boy yelled when handing out newspaper in the old days. Well, if you are looking for the same undivided attention to your headlines, business news, business, books, etc. then Today.com has the advertisement diversity that you have been waiting for. Today.com announced......
• Go Go Google Gadgets If you use Blogger in order to manage your blog then you have available to you hundreds of gadgets that Google has released; all of which can add features to your blog. A gadget is a widget that adds small programs to a blog, adding features that show off lists......

bloggers, content, news, public relations, reputation, web traffic

ad campaign, ad campaigns, audience, bad taste, blog, bloggers, blogging, bu, business owner, company news, competitor, fuss, matt cutts, sour grapes, traffic, whiney, world at your feet