“You wouldn’t worry so much about what people think of you — if you realized how seldom they do.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

While most of his advice had to do with humor writing and making people laugh, many of his suggestions are valid for copywriters and business writers, too. In fact, anyone who wants people to keep reading what they’ve written.

Here’s some of Dilbert’s daddy’s advice:

• Start with an attention-getting “lead.” Here’s Adams’ opening gambit in his Wall Street Journal article: “Last weekend a French fry got lodged in my sinus cavity.” Does that make you want to read more?
• Hook your readers with stories. You don’t have to be funny, like Adams’ tale (about his ignorance of the human reproductive system when he was 11 years old). But stories resonate with people, draw them in and make them feel closer to you. What if you told the story of why you started your business — who you wanted to help, and why? Show a little of your authentic self — I guarantee it will be a lot more exciting than your company mission statement.
• Make them curious. “Good writing makes you curious without being too heavy-handed about it,” Adams writes. “My first sentence in this piece, about the French fry lodged in my sinus cavity, is designed to make you curious.”

Adams also explains why “yank” is funnier than “pull.” Now there’s something every writer ought to know!

Now a PR firm has agreed to settle charges it had its employees pretend to be unbiased videogame buyers and post gushing, rave reviews at Apple’s online iTunes store.

When I read that, I felt like the French police inspector who was “shocked, shocked!” to discover gambling at Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca.

The same thing is happening elsewhere, of course, including Amazon and other high-profile online merchants.

My suggestion: take all reviews with a degree of skepticism. Look for more than a handful of reviews, Be especially wary if all of them were all posted within a few days or weeks of each other. You want to see 50+ reviews, spaced over the course of many months.

Two habits that will help clean up deceptive online marketing:

1. To keep the practice of phony reviews from spreading, simply never do business with a company that would engage in such underhanded practices.
2. Ditto for spam: Never do business with a company that sends out unsolicited spam. Period.

Zero tolerance. If we all followed those two simple rules, both practices would simply fade away.

Agree? Disagree? Maybe you’ve got an even better idea? Let’s hear it.

It’s understandable for business owners and marketers to dread nasty feedback from unhappy customers. It’s even worse when they vent their spleens online, posting negative reviews on the company’s own or resellers’ websites, in independent customer forums, Amazon reviews, etc.

Some companies even go so far as to try and squelch or remove them if they can. Which isn’t exactly the spirit of openness and honesty the interwebs are famous for.

But surprise! Negative reviews are not necessarily the kiss of death. As CNN/Money (via Consumerist) reported, sales can still increase. One company discovered that sales on a particular sweater increased 23%, even though its ratings were less than stellar  (e.g., three stars out of five).

“People are really researching their purchases,” said AlpacaDirect.com co-founder Jim Hobart. ‘We knew our customers liked our products, and we wanted them to tell one another.’

Here’s my take on negative reviews:

• All reviews, even mediocre ones, tend to reduce the “fear of the unknown” factor which can stop sales in their tracks.
• Something that might be a dealbreaker for one customer might not matter that much to another.
• The seller appears stronger, more confident, even fearless, by allowing both negative and positive reviews.
• And of course, negative reviews can be a form of market research. They can help you decide where you need to improve.

And be honest. Haven’t you ever read a negative review of a product or service you’re perfectly happy with? Haven’t you sometimes wondered, ‘What is this guy’s problem?’ A review that’s dripping with hatred and bile sometimes says more about the reviewer than the product.

photo credit: B Rosen

Yes, campers, every day or so, a warm, fresh Gaping Void will appear in that spot in the sidebar. For those unfamiliar, Gaping Void is the business-card-size philosophical treatise/cartoon by Hugh MacLeod.

Hugh is probably best known for his wonderful treatise, “Ignore Everybody” — a bracing dip into the waters of self-expression and self-confidence. It begins:

“The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you… You don’t know if your idea is any good (until) the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is… Feelings scare us.”

That’s also why market research is so often short-sighted and futile. It misses a lot of great opportunities simply because the people they survey have never encountered an idea like yours before, and simply don’t know what to make of it.

So the moral of the story is… If  your idea feels right, go for it!