It was around early 2009. I was working on the blog that would become Hunting Business Marketing. I can’t remember the exact moment, but I do remember getting a comment that disagreed with what I was writing.
Back then I was creating posts that would be useful for hunting businesses. There were quite a few folks out there with great ideas for hunting products. In fact, there still are quite a few of these folks out there and some have really great ideas.
Anyway, I wrote what I felt were pretty useful posts for these folks because they were looking to market their new ideas and businesses online in various ways. The blog got off to a pretty good start and the first few months went along swimmingly.
But then someone disagreed with me. It wasn’t that I was wrong although that did happen often enough. This was simply a situation where someone disagreed with me. They weren’t mean although that does happen. They simply disagreed, but I remember it catching me off guard.
Then it continued to happend. People disagreed with me and even today people disagree with me all the time on all the blogs I write for.
Bloggers Need Thick Skin
It turns out that as more people read your blog the more people you will notice that disagree with you. In fact, in the online world people get real brave and they’ll say some mean things. They’ll just straight up disagree with you for the sake or arguing. If you’re not prepared for it you’ll drive yourself crazy.
I know because when it first happened to me I went into crazy research mode and started doing all I could to prove my point. I was right and nobody was going to prove me wrong. I would outwork the person until I threw enough stats and articles at them that they couldn’t come back at me.
This was all over some marketing idea.
Really it wasn’t worth the effort. Instead of arguing it would have been better to just focus on the work and focusing on the results.
And that’s why you need thick skin. People are going to disagree with you. They’ll disagree with you especially if you’re doing something right. When they disagree I’ve tried to learn that it is not worth any effort to argue. It seems better to focus on creating something and helping people with your business instead of worrying about the people that don’t care.
Disagreement is Good
There is a show on ESPN called First Take. This show takes disagreement to laughable levels. The entire show is based off the fact that people love to disagree with each other. There are two main hosts with a few additional guest hosts every morning. There is a plate of sports news and each host takes a different stance.
It’s all for entertainment, but what the show does really well is get people to take sides.
I’m not sure why but we all seem to want to take sides in life.
This is why controversy can be such a great blogging strategy. If you can create a little controversy with your blog posts you might get an argument in the comments and in social media. Word will spread about your blog and interest will grow.
That’s the point of this article.
You need thick skin to blog. People will disagree with you.
Don’t let it affect you. In fact, you don’t even have to address it if you don’t want to. Simply let the person say what they want. It’s not like it will affect your business. Just let it go and embrace the disagreement because it can actually work in your favor.
Please don’t become First Take, though. :)