Guy Kawasaki as tips on how to suck upto bloggers. I read it, and wondered if he really gets this whole blogging thing. I am with Mike on this one. Why not just stick to the basics and say – I got this story/idea I am pitching. Any interest? Two lines – and absolutely no need to suck-up. Here is one rule you might actually pay attention: if you do any thing Guy suggests, then you be dead to me. Update: Okay Guy does have a point about #1 rule, so lets leave that out. The marketing by sucking up to a blogger, I got problems with all those rules he suggests.
8 thoughts on “How (Not) To Suck Upto Bloggers”
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Om,
My first rule is this:
So people should not create great products? 🙂
Guy
Right on Om!
Right on Guy. 80% of a great marketing campaign is a great product.
But… I certainly disagree with a lot of the other stuff.
The part about creating the right compliments (#3:”stroke them”) actually sounds superficial. I don’t doubt it may work with some (maybe more with certain very extrovert people) but I am not sure it’s a good advice.
I perceive fakeness extremely easily and I have a bad impression about that person, maybe it’s that.
I like your 2-lines way. In blogging as in anything else.
I gotta say, I’m not really sure how I got onto the PR/Marketter/Desperate Entrepeneur mailing list, but it’s really starting to bug me. I could really do without Guy’s advice on this subject since his advice is conspiring against me for once. I don’t get these emails all that often, but every time I get them they end up taking a lot of my time. Partly because they’re always longer than the usual stuff I get, partly because they require more of your attention (did they just send you something really interesting and important or are they wasting your time?), and partly because the annoyance lasts a while and introduces an additional distraction, and partly because I always feel compelled to rant about it every time it happens (for example… like right now).
Just yesterday I was emailed by some random guy wondering if I want to be a cofounder with his startup. He sent me a link on ta-da list of 40 different ideas (apparently with 40 NDAs to go along with them — wonderful) and a note asking for an introductory call to “see if our personalities match.” I don’t need to call to know that they don’t.
I think the worst bit, though, is that I recognize a tiny piece of myself in emails like these. (Of course, I’d like to think my thoughts are actually worth someone’s time. But still…) I’ve had to learn to be (mostly) content with writing pretty good software and making it available for others to use. And it helps a lot every time I get a thank you letter. (I know of something like maybe 10 “web 2.0” companies running on my code now, many of which you’d all recognize. And that’s only the one’s I know of.) My code’s available for free as open source, but of course that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to get ahead somehow. We’re all painfully aware that the whole “web 2.0” meme represents a huge opportunity, and in a capitalist society, that manifests itself as the possibility of breaking out of the exceptionally dull 40hrs/wk job, doing something you’re passionate about, and becoming reasonably well off in the process. Not a bad deal, as long as you succeed.
But the problem, of course, is that everyone else has the same thought all at the same time. And no one can pull it off on their own. So you get schmoozing, sucking up, PR hacks, and marketters spamming you, hoping for a link, and entrepeneurs who just want to get a “fair chance”, and it kind of sucks that life will never be “fair” when there’s more supply than demand.
That said, I’m going to go back to building a killer product now.