Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You’re only a stranger once.

November 10, 2005

Responding to Your Mistakes

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 11:31 am

Every blog is a work in progress–a public one. Every legitimate blogger I know is human. Humans make mistakes. I’m better at making mistakes than a lot of humans. Making mistakes in public is never fun, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world either.

What do you do when you make a mistake–a very public one? Big or little, public or private, mistakes have a way of stealing our balance, here are some ways of recovering that balance and moving on.

Here’s an object lesson:

Yesterday I posted two articles that had errors in them. I had the wrong glasses on, and my proofreader friend didn’t get the chance to look at them. I am sorry that I let those get to you that way. They are fixed now.

I wrote an apology to Yaro, letting him know his blog has the “r” back in its name. He was most gracious in his reply. I think we’re going to be friends.

I take some comfort in the fact that the nature of this blog made this event something worth posting about.

–ME “Liz” Strauss, who is now cleaning her glasses every hour.





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15 Comments to “Responding to Your Mistakes”

  1. November 10th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
    HART (1-800-HART) said

    That’s a good topic and important one too. It shows what character is. There is also the ‘flipside’ of this topic too. For instance, there was one comment made in another blog and a person said “oranges”. Then I commented and said “apples”. Next thing you know, the first person blogged about how “anti-oranges” I was. I didn’t get pissed off or anything, but I went to thank this blogger for the extra traffic :p and just pointed out that if my “apples” looked too much like “oranges” I was deeply sorry, but I wasn’t going to lose sleep over it because I know I am not anti-”orangist” or anything like that. The blogger did re-read and apologized back both publicly and privately, and the blog entries are still there as a reminder. I was never offended and the other blogger maintained his/her cool and I am still a regular reader of their blog. (there’s no point in providing links to bring this up again) // HART

  2. November 10th, 2005 at 4:39 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi HART,
    First of all, thank you for your comment and for sharing your experience. I think it only shows respect for everyone to let people know that I know when I screw up. :P

    It was a great opportunity too to show what you do when you do mess up.

    I agree, if you take a breath and don’t lose your cool, often you can end up gaining relationships. Bloggers are humans too.

    Most of all though, HART, thank you.
    Liz

  3. November 10th, 2005 at 5:25 pm
    CampusHound: $1 and counting… » Blog As Constant Work-In-Progress said

    [...] I came across this article on blogging and its significance did not dawn on me until much later. [...]

  4. November 10th, 2005 at 6:23 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Thank you, Campus Hound.

    Liz

  5. November 10th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
    Martin (HomeOfficeVoice) said

    The way I see it is if wasn’t for mistakes then blogs would become boring and sterile. Mistakes can be simple grammatical errors or judgements ones.

    Whatever it is if you’re open about it and can laugh about it and at yourself it should be okay.

    Case in point: When I first started to blog I wrote this great piece on a new CRM software that I thought was great for home business (my niche). I did the research (not enough obviosuly), wrote it and posted it. I was quote happy with myself.

    Then I realised my misake. The software cost $1,299 per year and was aimed at a slightly different market. Big mistake on my part.

    Rather than removing the post I simply fessed up to the mistake with an update and moved on.

    We’re all human here who blog (excpet some splog software) and if we aren’t allowed to make some mistakes then we would not try anything new.

  6. November 10th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
    HART (1-800-HART) said

    I was never a tickler about spelling, unless I’m writing a formal consulting report to a client .. I believe blogs (and instant messenging) should just be like you talk and how you present yourself. (yes there are a gajillion links out there that oppose me on this)

    LINKS should always be fixed! But, if there are spelling mistakes in my blog and someone pointed it out, I might correct it. If someone asked me to ‘FIX’ it - I’d probably ban their IP. I have enough people judging me in my life. What’s worse, if someone makes a typo or error, a comment asks to fix it, you do, then I come and read about it and see NO error or typos .. I miss all the fun! You guys should leave the typos for our amusement!

    Actually, that reminds me of that ‘Joke’ that was forwarded in our Emails many many moons ago (ya, I know - last time you heard this - you fell off your dinosaur)

    I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!

  7. November 10th, 2005 at 7:48 pm
    Martin (HomeOfficeVoice) said

    Hart,

    Very cool indeed. It was an easy read I must admit - I laern something new everyday :-)

  8. November 10th, 2005 at 8:02 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi HART and Martin,
    Cool. I read somewhere that you should never tell them when you leave your blog unattended. :) It’s so cool to come and find you talking.

    HART are you going to tell him about the comment FEED? I’m getting it fixed BTW, but it’s not ready yet.
    Liz

  9. November 10th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
    HART (1-800-HART) said

    Okay I’ll tell. Scrivs! Fix!~~ :p

    The links in your footer file show up as … feed:http:// and thus don’t work (half the show is in the comments!)

    (see below)
    Successful Blog is proudly powered by WordPress
    Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).
    © 2005 Paul Scrivens.

  10. November 10th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi HART.
    Sorry for the delay. The link put your comment in moderation and I was away for a minute. Anyway, I meant tell Martin. Wasn’t he the one asking about Feeds with comments? :)
    Liz

  11. November 10th, 2005 at 9:24 pm
    Scrivs said

    Actually if you want to get technical the links at the bottom are correct. Your computer should recognize the feed:// protocol and open your feedreader of choice ;)

    But yeah, just remove the feed:// part if that doesn’t work for you.

  12. November 10th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hey Scrivs,
    Good to see you. :)
    Thanks for coming by.
    Liz

  13. November 15th, 2005 at 3:39 pm
    Blog Blog » Blog Archive » Mistakes said

    [...] We are all human and we all make mistakes. The same applies for our blogs, we’re not always going to get it right, but we can make it right. Take a page from Ms. Strauss (who is no stranger to mistakes herself) and follow her steps to successful recovery from a blogging mistake. [...]

  14. November 15th, 2005 at 4:14 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Thank You, blog Blog.
    Liz

  15. November 8th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
    Successful Blog - Links Leaked over the Lyrics and Quotes said

    [...] The “half the show is in the comments” comment of Successful-blog [...]

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