Learning by Doing
My friend Kate once rightfully gave me a hard time after a presentation in which I slammed a company for their poor execution of a podcast. She gave me a hard time because as she said, “at least they tried.”
I have to agree with her. I’d much rather see companies, campaigns and individuals try out new media and fail then not try at all. That was the point of talking about what happened yesterday with me and the Edwards campaign. I could have been angry and pissy about it, but instead I wanted to share some constructive criticism with them so that they could continue trying out this space, but also get better at utilizing it.
I was happy to see that the campaign understood the reason for my post and joined right into the conversation. We are continuing it off line as well and they are eager to hear input from everyone who has some! That’s great. More companies should be so open to feedback.
Something I will say over and over is that none of us are experts on new media. Sure, lots of us are very familiar with the space and can offer great advice and guidance, but we are ALL figuring it out every day. When we all first learned to ride a bike we fell down and crashed over and over. If we gave up we would never had learned. If we never fell down we wouldn’t have had a reason to figure out how to balance. It’s all important.
Don’t think I’m going after anyone. I’m just trying to help everyone take it to the next level. To work together to figure out this fun filled new media space.
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New Media |
Comments(3)
I know how you feel. I’ve been beating up on one company’s failed podcast solution for months, but at least they tried. So, instead of poking fun, I now use it to illustrate why everyone souldn’t be podcasting.
I guess that’s no better, but at least I no longer mention the company name
C.C.:
Criticizing for the sake of criticizing accomplishes little. But criticizing constructively so that an individual, company, etc. can improve and do better the next time is important. You were clearly trying to do the latter, and the response from the Edwards campaign shows that your criticism was well received and will help the team to make some positive changes.
“At least they tried” is sometimes fine at the outset, but just trying and trying and trying without making improvements isn’t likely to amount to much in the end.
Try. Listen. Learn. Improve. Repeat cycle. Get results.
Like “Lather, Rinse, Repeat.”
A lot of people in blogs and forums lather and repeat all the time but forget to rinse. What does that get you?
Dirty soap.