When blogger and readers have heated discussion (10 lessons)

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When blogger and readers have heated discussion (10 lessons)

I would like to share with you an interesting real life lesson. My friend KC Lau launched his book Top Money Tips for Malaysians recently and it was selling like hot cake until it went out of stock. Congratulations to him. The problem is that not everybody agrees with what he writes and one of the chapters of his book Get your first car free receives strong disagreement from a reader.

One of the readers protested strongly on KC Lau’s blog in a non diplomatic manner and hurled insults at other cementers. This problem persists quite some time. He even used multiple identities to create a dialogue between himselves to heat up the argument (he doesn’t realize that user’s IP can be traced).

Today KC Lau posted an elegant reply here.

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@Ivan,Thanks for your feedback. I totally agree that the saving in NCD should not be treated as an offset to what has been paid for the first car.
I just couldn’t agree that I should omit that chapter, as suggested by Marxy that the chapter is not a tip. In fact, it is one of the most favourite tips in my book.

@Marxy

I named it “Get your first car free” just for the marketing sake. It helps to sell the book. It helps to get more people reading the tips. It helps people save money.
I don’t see anything wrong with that. And Marxy, please don’t get hostile when I couldn’t agree with your suggestion (to omit that chapter).
I can always rename the chapter.. but that’s just a request from a reader. I won’t do that unless there are a lot of readers giving feedback that the chapter should be renamed.

For example, Robert Kiyosaki’s famous book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” was a great title. If he hasn’t titled the book such way, and write it in such an attractive story about his two dads, many would have missed the book.

I just want to make the idea “sticks”. If I rename it, I doubt that it will be any stickier than “Get your first car free”.

Everyone has his own perception. Some people do think that it is “free”. Some don’t. You can disagree with an idea, but you can’t force people to agree to your disagreement.

It is like walking into a restaurant. You ordered the best selling dish. After you tasted it, you think it sucks. So you asked the owner of the restaurant to remove that “dish” from the menu. But the owner told you that the dish is in fact the best selling dish, although there is a small group of people who can’t accept the taste. But you keep insisting.

If you are reasonable, you will do the following:
1. Suggest the owner to rename the dish politely. (He doesn’t have to follow your suggestion. He does what make sense for his business)
2. If you really hate the dish and the restaurant, or even the owner, you can choose not to visit there again in the future. You can tell your friends, your relative not to visit the restaurant or not to order that dish. It is your choice and you have the freedom to do that.

If you are not a reasonable person, you may do the following;
1. Insult the owner (saying his dish sucks, he shouldn’t open this restaurant, he cheated you to order this dish)
2. You insult other diners who think the dish is good!
3. You keep coming back to the restaurant, order nothing, making noise, insulting other diners.
4. You try to disguise as other diners (thinking the owner doesn’t recognise you), and doing all the thing in item 3.

Try to be diplomatic. You need respect, you got to give respect first.

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We can learn something from this scenario:

1. Not everyone agrees with you. That’s normal. Everyone has different opinion and deserves respect and rights to express it.

2. Agree to disagree instead of forcing someone to adopt your way of thinking. It’ll save a lot of time and energy and the mood is happy. So what if someone believes that pigs can fly?

3. Be diplomatic in discussion. You are interacting, not fighting. The blog owner has the rights to kick trolls out.

4. You don’t have to like everything, but that doesn’t mean you must burn down everything you dislike.

5. If you have any complain on the blog or blog owner, point it out politely. Hurling battle axe at the blogger will backfire and most likely you will get a kick in the butt.

6. The blog owner owes you nothing. He’s not your employee and doesn’t need to do what you tell him to do. Differentiate what is privilege and rights.

7. No matter how famous or rich you are, you are just a human being like me and others. You are just a normal dot in internet world so don’t act like Genghis khan and do a big boss. No one will listen to you.

8. Think win-win. It’s the best solution and everyone is happy.

9. Instead of spending hours squatting on the blog to play the flame game, you can do better things with the time wasted, such as creating more wealth.

10. Don’t take trolling personally. Trolls are always at the losing end.

Tagged as: blog, communication, Internet, social