I've spent most of this week with my nose in Google Adwords. I've even been dreaming about keywords relating to the UK property rental industry, and there is nothing I can't tell you about the relative merits of "rentals" versus "lettings". So you'd think that I might be up for hearing other people's thoughts on keywords, and I would... unless you call me a loser in the process.

A link to this article just popped into my email inbox, subject line: Why single keywords are for losers. And before I'd even processed it, I got an icky feeling and then I got defensive. Before I'd even started reading, while I was still considering deleting the email unopened, my mind was running ahead, imagining reading some sneering "guru" who was going to tell me my hard worked-out strategy was wrong. It wasn't the words - though "loser" is never a good word - so much as the tone that set the expectation that I was about to be called stupid.

That's not a good feeling to give your readers and potential readers. Let's assume you have good advice to give: you have a choice - good advice + making your audience feel good, or good advice + making your audience feel stupid. Someone who's being called stupid is on the defensive, and someone who's on the defensive isn't open to hearing what you have to say, they're too busy defending themselves. So your good advice is going to fall on deaf ears, and that's a waste of everyone's time then.

Don't call your readers losers. They're reading you, after all.

Posted by Sue on March 5, 2010 in Blogging.