Comments on: “Thank you for your patience”

By: Anna Green

Anna Green — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:38:34 +0000

I would have to admit that writing about a frustrating boss is more fun than simply a success story – but successes are not boring, they are informative. I personally would enjoy reading them and learning. Though somewhat subjective, people like to write about what *actually* worked when they didn’t think it would. Maybe you could run that contest after your book comes out – or offer one as the prize.
Also, you could have a contest that focuses on a problem – something that was done wrong quickly, and you had to fix it – quickly. For example, when I started my job, the company had only done a little PPC for a couple of years, if that. The campaigns were a mess, and the landing pages were all the web site’s homepage. I was given that, and told to fix it. And I did. Something along those lines also might be an interesting contest and is not boss/ job specific or endangering.
Hope that helps, good luck with the contests!

By: Mike Moran

Mike Moran — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:43:24 +0000

Thanks, Anna. I had originally thought about a contest for people to tell me their case studies of how they successfully did it wrong quickly, but wondered if that was too boring. Do you think that would work better next time?

By: Anna Green

Anna Green — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:36:22 +0000

You asked for comments about why your contest isn’t taking off. I would like to offer a guess. No one wants to write about their boss online. I know you aren’t using names, but bosses know who they are, and it is jut too dangerous jobwise to write something bad about them. That is why I haven’t entered, and I have a feeling a could win – I have three bosses who all want to do things differently – the old way, the new way, and the lazy way – try working with that!! Besides how are you going to explain to them how you won the conference passes? “I won a contest writing about how horrible my boss is”? Right.
Good thought though.