When I was on vacation last week I read a fascinating story about the rivalry between the two top gadget blogs in the world: Engadget and Gizmodo. It turns out these two blogs are the Hatfields and McCoys of the blogosphere and they're taking aim at each other every day in the form of scooping each other with the best gadget and gear news available.
This blog on blog conflict is great for the readers because they reap the benefits of the rivalry. The dark side of the feud is that it turns personal from time to time. Apparently each blog has accused the other with various accusations and that got me thinking about the rest of us who blog. After all, I personally advocate content that will "outrage" as one of the five categories of good social media content so what if we developed a rival who seemed to have us squarely in his crosshairs on a regular basis? How would you deal with that given you have a public platform with which to fire back? Or maybe you're the aggressor and you're gunning for someone else for some reason. How do you decide what's in play and what's out of bounds? As I've thought about these things I've come to this one statement to sum up how I will act in either case: Accuse slowly and apologize quickly.
The BeautiControl Lesson
The thing about having a publishing house at your fingertips is that you can say (or do) just about anything and send it out to the world only to think better of it only a few hours later. That's part of the power of a blog or online video. You get things published quickly, but once something has been online go ahead and assume it's indexed and cached somewhere (probably by Google) to be found later...which means whatever you publish likely won't disappear forever even if you want it to. I remember a story from a year ago when the company BeautiControl was promoting an online video called "Cars, Money, Friendship, Bling, and Travel" as a sales and motivational tool for potential BeautiControl consultants. The company started catching some heat from their consultants for the video so they pulled it down, but someone else had already captured it and republished it on YouTube. That video has over 10,000 views as of this post. That's 10,000 more views than Beauticontrol wanted, but there it still is, a year later, still getting views.
The lesson here is that just because you can publish something quickly doesn't mean you always should. If you're going to accuse someone of something you should really make sure you know what you're getting into. Do you have all the facts? Do you know another side of the story? If not, why not take a little extra time.
Dear AT&T: I'm Sorry
If you do screw up or there's even a hint of misunderstanding on your blog, be willing to apologize very quickly. You'll be forgiven. You may lose a little credibility, but in the end people will remember you apologized as soon as you realized it was a mistake. Don't delete the mistake either. Unless you've published something that's gotten you into legal hot water leave the accusation up with a link or note to the correction. In the spirit of full disclosure and transparency you need to leave it there for all to see...even if you were a jerk or an idiot.
I had to do this last summer. I accused AT&T of missing the launch of the iPhone on their website the day it launched. I thought I had a big story there...until about an hour later I got a phone call from a friend who told me I was 24 hours early on the iPhone launch. AT&T wasn't late. I was early. I quickly updated the post (leaving the original, incorrect post) and admitted I was an idiot. I think AT&T got over it.
The Bottom Line: The ability to publish quickly is good and bad. You determine which it will be every time you post. Accuse slowly and apologize quickly to stay out of a little less trouble.