Immersiversity.com with Clay Cotton

When you consider your competitors, just how are you feeling? Scared? Jealous? Angry? Frustrated? Intimidated? Hey - How about Excited? Friendly? Admiring? Generous? Even grateful?

Well, hey… It may be time for you to reframe and to say nice things about your competitors! This is the advice of an excellent article at Presentation Zen entitled Love thy competitor! (And it wouldn’t hurt to say nice things about them either).

Here are a couple of great quotes:

"Good bloggers operate from an “abundance mentality” rather than a “scarcity mentality.” They are more concerned with being linky than being sticky. Readers trust a blog that happily points them to other cool and useful sites. Likewise, people respect someone who has enough confidence in themselves that they are not afraid to introduce you to others who are perhaps even more talented than themselves."

…and…

Former Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble included this idea in his Corporate Blogging Manifesto:

“Link to your competitors and say nice things about them. Remember, you’re part of an industry and if the entire industry gets bigger, you’ll probably win more than your fair share of business and you’ll get bigger too. Be better than your competitors — people remember that. I remember sending lots of customers over to the camera shop that competed with me and many of those folks came back to me and said ‘I’d rather buy it from you, can you get me that?’”
— Robert Scoble

By putting a human face on the company, Robert did much to make Microsoft seem “less evil” in his three years with the company. Although he was a Microsoft employee and used and even loved many of its products, he also criticized the company and often praised its rivals. To many this made him more trustworthy that Bill, Steve B. or the Microsoft PR machine.

To read the whole article and gain insight on how to better handle competitors, click here: Love thy competitor!.

And many thanks to Bonnie Lowe for heads up on this piece.