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Patience, Criticism and Apologies

by JimRaffel on February 16, 2010

A day in the life of the struggle to live a real, authentic and sustainable life.

Yesterday I signed up for a cool new tool for on-line copywriters. It’s called ScribeSEO and it analyzes your blog posts and web pages to make sure you are getting the best possible placement is search engines like Google. It’s a brand new tool put out by people who’s reputation I trust. One of the key players is Brian Clark.

Within minutes of signing up I had analyzed and made minor changes to a half dozen posts here. Search Engine Optimization changes occur behind the scenes in code most readers don’t even know is there. This is all about making sure more readers can easily find me and my company ColorMetrix when searching for relevant terms in Google. Then, I got back to my work fully expecting to wade through lots of older content after hours yesterday evening. No such luck, the brand new Scribe system was down. After dinner it was still down.

Scribe was still down when I woke up this morning and I lost my patience. Next, I publicly criticized Brian on Twitter. Then, I started to calm down and think about it. My favorite quote of the moment is “writing is the doing part of thinking.” You will notice this post has links to lots of my own posts. I went back and re-read all the ones linked here (and a few others). I finished by reading item number six from this post. I sent Brian an apology on Twitter.

I then got out of my own way and offered to help them diagnose any problems they are having from my end. So far they have not needed my help but I decided I’d rather be part of the solution than part of the problem.

Through it all Brian was pleasant and helpful providing as much information as he could. Intentionally or otherwise he even reminded me to read my own post flagship post – Real, Authentic and Sustainable.

Brain Clark my new friend, thank for teaching me a thing or two about how to treat others in a “crisis.”

Tagged as: Apology, Brian Clark, CopyBlogger, Criticism, Patience, ScribeSEO

  • http://copyblogger.com/ Brian Clark

    Hah, it’s me who should be thanking you. You’ve been very helpful by guiding us through our initial hiccups. I just finished an email to all Scribers explaining what happened and how we’re fixing it, so all will be well soon. :)

  • http://copyblogger.com Brian Clark

    Hah, it’s me who should be thanking you. You’ve been very helpful by guiding us through our initial hiccups. I just finished an email to all Scribers explaining what happened and how we’re fixing it, so all will be well soon. :)

  • http://www.jumpstartguy.com/ Patrick K. O’Brien

    Jim – You’ve got some great tips here. Glad you stopped by my blog and left a comment. I didn’t sign up with Scribe until they were past the big hiccups of the first week, but from what I’ve heard they did a great job providing transparency and support.

    If I had to create my own personal criteria for how I want to operate going forward, based on your inspiration, I think I would say “authentic, transparent, and sustainable”. I tend to be a rather private, geeky kind of guy, so the transparency thing doesn’t always come naturally for me. But I decided I just need to be out there doing my own thing for all the world to see, and if that exposes me to more criticism that’s just one of the costs of doing business online in this age of social media and a rapidly shrinking world.

    Pat

  • http://www.jumpstartguy.com/ Patrick K. O’Brien

    Jim – You’ve got some great tips here. Glad you stopped by my blog and left a comment. I didn’t sign up with Scribe until they were past the big hiccups of the first week, but from what I’ve heard they did a great job providing transparency and support.

    If I had to create my own personal criteria for how I want to operate going forward, based on your inspiration, I think I would say “authentic, transparent, and sustainable”. I tend to be a rather private, geeky kind of guy, so the transparency thing doesn’t always come naturally for me. But I decided I just need to be out there doing my own thing for all the world to see, and if that exposes me to more criticism that’s just one of the costs of doing business online in this age of social media and a rapidly shrinking world.

    Pat

  • http://JimRaffel.com/ Jim Raffel

    Patrick – All my favorite bloggers do hang it out there to some extent or another. Everyday I search for the courage to put a little bit more of me out here. It’s what makes blogs so unique. JimRaffel.com is after all at the end of the day ME!

  • http://JimRaffel.com JimRaffel

    Patrick – All my favorite bloggers do hang it out there to some extent or another. Everyday I search for the courage to put a little bit more of me out here. It’s what makes blogs so unique. JimRaffel.com is after all at the end of the day ME!

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