What Bloggers Can Learn From Powerful Negotiators

Posted on 27. Apr, 2009 by Ashwin in Blogging

The other day, I happen to be reading a classic on Negotiating skills called “You Can Negotiate Anything” By Herb Cohen and I loved it ( I highly recommend you read it). I swung the bat a little and then realized that everything we do in life is negotiating in one way or the other and it dawned on me that every blogger is a digital negotiator in a way. Well, even though we bloggers don’t really sit and negotiate or try to haggle deals on a table, we come close to it. In fact, bloggers need to have almost all the skills consummate negotiators need to have, if not more.

1. Know Your Stuff: Needless to mention, all negotiators worth their salt know that they have to be completely prepared with as much information they could pump in before they seat themselves at the table. Not having information is suicide at its worst and there is no reason why a negotiator should go to negotiate with someone without knowing what the whole deal is about, a little about the opposing party and other such details.

Lesson for bloggers: Know your niche. If you don’t know, go and learn. No excuses for half-assed approaches and rehashed content.

2. Relax and don’t let the delusion of time get to you: Often while negotiating, the party facing the ugly smirk of a deadline buckles under pressure and makes a decision it shouldn’t have made. The party succumbs to pressure and knows that something must be done, now that the deadline is up. Such deals, made under pressure, lack juice. There wouldn’t have been any element of fun in the deal making and only one party would have walked away with a winning deal while the other party makes do with a rather dumb one.

Lesson for Bloggers: Don’t let the pressure to post on time get to you. Consistency is important and there is no doubt about that; but that doesn’t mean your blog has content that can be classified as “PLR on steroids” or worse, just PLR, rewrites and copy-paste ( try to do this and you will be boxed into a permanent digital quarantine).

3. Be willing to walk away off the table: It has been said before – Raise a shit-storm. Have an attitude that really irks people. Get on to peolples’ nerves. I liked this random tweet from Gary Andt — an amazing guy who keeps traveling around the world and blogs from everywhere ( Am I not mentioning too many of these digital nomads, off late? Passion has a way of showing its teeth this way, eh?) — who tweeted saying that he had begun to receive hate mails and that he was finally doing something right; he’s bang on, isn’t he. The best negotiators are always willing to walk away from the tables if things don’t go the way they ought to, if their demands are not met; or most importantly, their real needs are not being met.

Lessons for bloggers: Get ready to pee on the world. Say anything that comes to your mind — as long you are making some sense and 1 of 10 people like what you have to say, you are in business. Don’t afraid to flirt with controversy. Make that your middle name. Go Irk, my friend.

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