By: David Armano
In a recent post I wrote about my dislike of the word elite in the context of describing Technorati’s top percentile of blogs. Some of you agreed, some didn’t. It’s all good.
But here’s the thing. As a professional focused on creating good experiences, I’m always encouraging clients to use words on their sites that are less jargony, less corporate, more straight-forward, accurate and dare I say it—conversational (you can be both conversational and professional by the way).
Ben McConnell’s recent comment crystallized it for me:
"I’m not sure I would consider a lot of the Technorati top 100 to be authorities on their subject matter. Popular, yes. To me, "popularity" would be more suitable than "authority."
Ben’s comment stuck with me. So I put it to the test:
What if we talked to each other the same way Technorati talks to us?
That’s right. People would think we were a little off. Who uses words like authority in simple, direct conversation? And is the word authority even accurate used in this context? Aren’t there more authoritative blogs not in the top 100—that are just less popular?
Now let’s try this:
There’s nothing wrong with admitting your blog is popular (if it is). It’s how people talk. It’s accurate and provides a frame of reference. And my guess is that the person on the other end might be curious—"why is your blog popular" "how did it get that way" "how do you know it is"?
Anyway, I could be looking way too deeply in to this. But I do like to ask the question "what if"? (On a related note, Ann Handley has a great article up at the Daily Fix talking about happy hour or something—go check it out.)
I’ll leave you with this final pearl of wisdom from Ben’s comment:
"What does Cartman say on Southpark? "Respect my author-i-tie!"
Original Post: http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2006/11/respect_my_auth.html
