My trolls and I

This isn't a sulk. This is an observation. I'm a lucky guy. I work for a hugely successful digital marketing agency; we have over 200 staff, nearly a dozen offices and have ranked in the best place to work for two years in a row.

Here in the UK bigmouthmedia has really strong search positions too. We do well for the vanity phrase [search engine optimisation]. I know that annoys some people.

So, I'm a lucky guy but sometimes that luck attracts detractors and I just have to live with that.

For example, if you take the time to scroll down through recent blog posts and checkout the Outbrain star ratings you'll see that lots of my posts have been given 1/5. It could be that my blog posts suck (and yeah; Spore Creature Creator to draw search engine spiders... heh!) but I'm pretty sure those posts could have been about anything and would still have been given the 1/5 mark.

I owe Mixx some time but I've had a stint of trolling there too. Look at these minus results. On that occasion I know the detractors are a set of spammers that I'd marked down myself. I started that one.

I don't care. I really don't. What's inspired this post, however, was a junior member of staff asking me what was going on. They cared. They didn't like to see it happening. I suppose that's why competitor/detractors do it. It's childish but they'd like to mess with your head.

It's a sad truth that because we've been relatively successful that we'll attract resentment from competitors. It's even sadder when you see people wasting their time on petty campaigns. I think it's true to say that some people try and make a name for themselves by being known as that guy who slags off the successful company.

This doesn't just happen to me. I've seen people sling mud at the likes of Lisa Barone and Rand Fishkin (not that I'm comparing myself to either of those two) and what elevated both of those two in my estimations of them was the mature and responsible way that they each handled the criticisms.

Often the best thing to do is to simply ignore it (I'm not ranking my own posts with Outbrain, for example) but that can be frustrating when people spin three year old half-truths or simply act annoyingly!

Comments

MarkDigerati said…
"Don't feed..." ^_^
Andrew Girdwood said…
Even if they look skinny!
NorthSouthMedia said…
Andrew, don't worry about it. To the many you bring some great posts, your a great diplomat for BMM.

With great success comes great envy!

Now, onto more important matters, watcha think about me new avi, it is my aim to bring back Captain Caveman to the masses.. :)
Andrew Girdwood said…
I think it's a great avi. In fact, I have a Captain Caveman (perhaps the same exact) avatar in my LiveJournal.
Anonymous said…
"I'm pretty sure those posts could have been about anything and would still have been given the 1/5 mark"

Doubt it Andy. I'll tell you I 1 starred both your spider post and the "i" post because they left me scratching my head, thinking "why?", and I want to encourage you to post better stuff like you have done in the past! I can only speak for myself, but there's no vendatta or trolling, and it has nothing to do with any old "half truths".

I have to say I was impressed that you'd left the scores up, but was hoping you'd have taken it as constructive criticism - why else would you ask people to rate your posts?

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