I feel lucky, but still need The Scrupski Rules

susan-scrupski

I feel lucky. My husband always says that it’s not luck, it’s that we make smart choices. But sometimes it just feels like luck. Lately I feel lucky to be healthy, to have a vegetable garden, and to live in Austin, which often feels like the Social Media capital of the world.

When I first met Susan Scrupski, Ms. ITSinsider, at a holiday party over a year ago, I had no idea of how connected she was in the 2.0 community. I quickly came to realize that she is very smart and on the cutting edge of just about everything. I was intrigued and impressed by the story of how she began her Enterprise 2.0 career. She is one of those people that you hear about, but rarely meet. She started writing about what she was interested in, and her blog launched her into an exciting new position. She started working for nGenera, a company known for it’s on-demand technology and groundbreaking expertise. From nGenera Susan went on to found SoCo Partners, “a boutique consultancy specializing in socio-collaborative engagement.” Sounds interesting doesn’t it?” Check out their about page to learn more. Austin businesses don’t know how lucky they are to have this kind of 2.0 expertise nearby.

A mutual friend, Tina, emailed me Jerry Bowles‘ 2007 article, “How to be a successful blogger: The Scrupski Rules and after reading it I thought, if this is Susan’s top ten then it’s officially my top ten as well.

Luckily rule number one is a piece of cake, I have no worries here.

1. “To thine own self be true.” Find your voice – be sincere.

I can’t help but let my own voice out, I just need to curb it a bit. Sometimes I have a tendency to sound super corny or sappy. I can’t help it really, I think it’s in my DNA. My parents had kind of a George Burns and Gracy Allen thing going on. It’s rule number seven that I see as more of a challenge, in fact I’m quite sure I have already violated it.

7. Don’t ever edit or rewrite something that you wrote in the past. The common courtesy in blogging is to strike through and then rewrite on your blog post, if you have made an error.

It’s hard when you look back at something you wrote and see a better way of saying it. I guess I’ll just need to “let it go”, or suck it up and do a strike through, if I want to be considered a serious blogger. 

So how lucky am I that the first real blogger I meet is an Enterprise 2.0 corporate power blogger? Pretty cool, huh?

Seriously, this a great list, so if you’re a blogger, or thinking about becoming one, you should take a minute to review the ten simple Scrupski Rules. I’m going to review them again right now because I really don’t want to make any mistakes with this post! :)

3 thoughts on “I feel lucky, but still need The Scrupski Rules”

  1. Wow Susan sounds interesting. Would love to meet her and talk Enterprise 2.0 someday. Hey, since your friends, will you set that up? :)

  2. Thanks for the comment Liz. Of course I’d love to introduce you to Susan sometime! I think you’d really like her.

  3. Seriously?

    Don’t ever edit or rewrite something that you wrote in the past.

    You’re supposed to muck up long lines with strike outs ad nauseum really killing the flow… what’s the justification for that? So you can be “true” to some kind of external judge and jury or self? Why?

    I write a technical blog, it’s not an easy short read. I absolutely and without reserve, hesitation or guilt, will rewrite awkward or confusing verbiage as I come across it. Until I read this, I didn’t realize editing was a no-no. I think this is one of those made up rules that somebody thought sounded good at the time but serves no real purpose other than the blogger’s ego in some perverse way.

    In sum, your internal editor and judge is the only one who cares whether your entries remain “pure”. Nobody else cares. All a visitor will notice is how crappy it reads and they may even think you’re lazy for not fixing it. Anything else is a disservice to readers.

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