“Just the place for a Snark!” begins Lewis Carrol’s The Hunting of the Snark. But the blogosphere? You bet. Today’s new media provides plenty of snark as I mentioned in Snarky Blogging – Part 1.
Snark – Sometimes explained as a contraction of snide and remark. When it comes to the subject of snarky blogging there are just about as many opinions about it as there are blogs themselves. But snarky business blogging? Google the words snarky + business + blog and you’ll come up with over 700,000, so there must be something to it.
Blogging provides a great format for communicating with customers, marketing in the truest sense. But can one be professional and snarky at the same time? Is snarky blogging appropriate for business?
To snark or not to snark . . .
The questions arise, but there is no real code to go by. Common sense offers some basic guidelines: If your blog is humorous, be funny, not degrading. If it’s personal, let your personality shine. If you are blogging about business, then be professional.
Seth Godin, marketing guru and founder of Squidoo, in his somewhat snarky article where he lists How to Get Traffic to Your Blog says this, “Be snarky. Write nearly libelous things about fellow bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.”
Is there a method to this madness? Yes. It works.
Snarky is attractive. It gets peoples attention. Steve Pavlina offers 10 Business Lessons From a Snarky Entrepreneur. You might not agree with his tips, but at least he gets you to read his post and hopefully return for more.
Take a gander at snarky blogging empress, Elizabeth Spiers, founding editor of Portfolio, Gawker/DealBreaker. She has been coined the “godmother of the snarky-blog movement”. It was her cheeky ironic commentary that made her media gossip blog Gawker.com and online business tabloid/Wall Street gossip blog Dealbreaker.com Manhattan must reads.
Many of today’s business bloggers think the key is to wrap their prose in snark and they’ve got an audience. John McWhorter of the New York Sun in his article Barbaric Blogging discusses that bloggers will often claim that their snarkiness is “all about attracting readers, and thus ad revenue, but there are other ways to attract attention than being mean.”
Are You Burning Blog Bridges? asks Chris Garret. “Is the short-term traffic boost and 15 minutes of attention enough reward to compensate for the loss of reputation?” He continues, “Those with the social skills to match their writing skills will have more success than people who use their writing always on the attack.”
Do you want people to value your thoughts and opinions or are you “selling out”? Brian Clark at CopyBlogger says Snark Doesn’t Sell, especially if you aren’t normal snarky. He suggests that you maintain a sincere and authentic conversational business blogging voice.
I hope my physician doesn’t take up snarky blogging, I may never listen to him again. To me, that kind of snarky attitude is insulting. It is a blatant attack on my intelligence and integrity. Am I taking it too personal? Well, ya. It is personal. What ever happened to being relational, practical and enthusiastic. What about blogging to gain my trust?
I was always taught to be polite. To speak pleasantly and that talking back was fresh. I guess there is a time and a place for everything. Only snarky bloggers know for sure. Just don’t get snarky with me.
What do you think about snarky blogging for business?
