Every industry has them. Controversial advice, tools that don’t work properly, people selling education who don’t have businesses to back them up. They create occasional uproars – Twitter wars, Facebook threads that turn to namecalling and personal attacks, and they often spur another thing: blog posts.
This always makes me cringe, to see a blog post about industry specific drama on a client facing blog. Can you imagine walking into your favourite store and being greeted by a loud, insistent sermon on the evils of a specific person or product that is used in running the store? Would it make you want to shop there?
So I’m going to say it: Don’t DO this.
If your blog exists for clients who are not a part of your industry (ie. you’re a yoga instructor writing blogs for yoga students, not for other yoga instructors), resist the urge to use it as your soapbox for things that, quite frankly, your clients don’t care about. Especially if your complaint lies in something you tried that didn’t work the way you wanted it to. And double especially if your complaint is a personal attack on one person.
If you tried a business practice and it didn’t work – don’t tell your clients that. They are looking to you to be the professional, running a professional business. They want to know that you are making the right choices so that you’ll stay in business. They probably won’t feel nearly as confident in it if you start to tell them that the pricing structure that Mr. Great Business Advice gave you was flawed and you lost a bunch of money. Or that -other- people did using the same system. They want to be able to trust you to be there in the long term.
And if you’re going to attack Mr. Great Business Advice directly? Your clients are unlikely to even know who he is, so at best they lose interest and click away, and at worst they decide you aren’t the sort of person they want to work with.
Your blog is your storefront. It is the place your clients come to get to know you, your product, your work. Your industry and its associated drama belongs in the backroom. In private groups, or in industry related discussions. Everything you post on your blog should be considered – will this help my potential clients get to know me and what I want them to buy from me? Will they be interested to read this? You have very little time to grab someone’s attention. If they came for wedding flower ideas and are greeted with the latest scam from Vase Maker Company, will they want to stay? Or will they go find someone who’s talking about what they want to read about?
Photo by Scooter Lowrimore via Creative Commons
Stephanie Ostermann
I’m a communicator. That’s a PC way of saying I like to talk, but I also spend a lot of my time listening, and over the years, I’ve developed a sense for subtext – how one or two words can change your entire message, what people are really trying to say and how to weave the varied layers of your story into one cohesive brand message that your clients fall in love with.
When I'm not acting as editor in chief for Vivid & Brave, you can find me geeking out over words here.
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WORD. I agree 100%.
Love this post! Would love to send it to a few friends who make this mistake all the time! I try to live by Thumper’s Daddy’s Golden Rule, “if you can’t say something nice. Don’t say nothin’ at all”. Great advice!
Absolutely agree!
If you write for photographers you can explore the scandals, but after awhile it’s like beating a dead horse…. Unless you’re photostealers, but that’s not her business blog.
Exactly! Writing a blog for others in the industry? Write about it all you want. I can’t tell you over this past week how many people I’ve seen post industry related stuff on their blog that their non-industry clients read that simply make no sense. It just leaves such a bad impression on them!
I mean, if it’s written in the right way you could do it maybe once a year (I’m sure there will be scandals a year from now) to warn them about charlatains, but they won’t care about the kind of stuff the J*’s and Dougie’s do as long as their photography doesn’t suck. That should never go in your blog. That’s like printing it up in your marketing materials.
(I want to jump in a mud puddle… Just not a figurative one…)
It just rained here….. Come on over!
It’s been raining here about 75% of the summer… So many puddles.
Well, go jump in one. You’re a big girl now and can make your own decisions…..
I’m waiting for the sun to come up, first. 😉
Sissy…..
Take a flashlight!
I refuse to invite the drama in anymore… I just keep scrolling, and then eventually weed out the constant “drama llamas”, as we call them in our house.
Thank you for this. I 100% agree. Clients won’t have a clue what you’re talking about and if it’s an inflammatory post, they might have second thoughts. Can’t wait for this current wave of drama to subside. At least for now!
Loving the image this morning of Rebecca Pettigrew jumping in mud puddles…
Erika, what is fascinating is we see this so often in the photo industry — blogs normally geared for their clients, full of session work … And then a random post out of nowhere about an industry scandal! Their clients, the ideal reader of the blog? They don’t care! If anything it causes confusion and breaks down trust.
Rebecca’s not responding. I’m guessing the sun is up in her neck-o-the-woods…..
It is… So instead, I am going jump into a swimming pool. 😉
Alllllll hands in on this one. It is my biggest pet peeve with photo bloggers. Fantastic article Steph!
When I used to manage a jewelry store my district manager told us that when his boss came to town, our stores should look like Disney World. No trash in site, everything spotless and perfectly displayed. No soda cups, nothing. He said there was never anything sad or messy in Disney. Nothing to detract from the fun of the place.
I had another boss who said we should be like ducks in the pond. On the surface it’s all calm and pretty. Underneath they may be paddling like crazy, but you can never tell.
I think those are great lesson for any business.