Blogs are a great way to deal with critics, misquotes and inaccuracies. Probably the single best example of this is the recent TSA blog where a mommy blogger claimed the TSA took her child and the TSA responded in their blog with video tape showing that she basically made the whole thing up.
tsa agents took my son @ My Bottle's Up
The TSA Blog: Response to "TSA Agents Took My Son"
Dave Jones has a great wrap up about the TSA's response and what they did well. Let's go to the video tape: blogger's complaint exposed as hyperbole
But what if you don't have video tape? What if there aren't even any facts to dispute? What if it's just your opinion against someone else's opinion?
Malcolm Gladwell, like many other authors has a blog. It's not very active and it's mostly used to address his critiques. Here are 6 of the last 7 posts have been responses to other's people criticisms of his books or New Yorker articles.
Pinker on "What the Dog Saw."
Pinker, Round Two
Underdogs
More on Quarterbacks
Brooks on Outliers
Teachers and Quarterbacks
Malcolm demonstrates one of the best benefits of having a blog. He does a great job framing the argument and then without getting emotional or taking to personal attacks he states his opinion and often backs up his statements with supporting arguments.
Malcolm also lets the debate continue in the comments, both pro and con. Often the people who he has called out join in the comments to further their argument. This is kind of brilliant because it brings the argument to a place where he has home field advantage.
What could he do better?
I am slightly hesitant to make the following statements because I refuse to believe there is a "right way" to use blogs and social media. My statements are meant to point out best practices of what a company should do if there were to try this. IMHO Malcolm can bloody hell do whatever he wants as long as he keeps writing.
Get a better theme. Malcolm uses TypePad and a very skinny column for his posts, but he tends to use a very big font. The readability of his blog would be greatly increased if he went with a wider column and slightly smaller font.
Links are the new footnote. Malcolm makes a lot of statements and claims of fact without providing any source. He usually links to the article that prompted his response but usually fails to link to further sources. A simple link would make his statements more credible. Most people don't click through to read the "foot note" but seeing it there ads a lot of authority.
Stay Engaged. Malcolm does a great job as I mentioned by letting people comment and respond to his posts. It sucks people in and brings the debate to his blog. The problem is that I can't find a time where Malcolm responds himself in the comments. It's obvious that the comments are moderated to some degree because there isn't any spam. Not even the manual spam you know is really a person because they left a legitimate comment but left a spammy profile link. (It kind of makes me think someone is managing his blog for him.)
Link I said, Malcolm can get away with this. He's up there with Seth Godin and can use his blog however he sees fit. He's probably much more private or introverted than many in this space and doesn't feel comfortable with or the need to respond. It can be very time consuming and he obviously has a day job as a writer and does public speaking and has to work on that next book.
But if your comapany were to do this you can't get away with it. (Unless you were a high profile CEO maybe.)
What do you think? Does Malcolm do a good job? What companies do this well?
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