Don’t assume

I recently joined a new online forum and, after four whole posts, got my butt handed to me from one of the other members, online and in front of the whole group. This person noted that I had mentioned my website in all my posts (which, btw, he was wrong about as it was in 3 of the 4) and chided me for “hawking” my site.

Thing is, I wasn’t hawking anything. As most of you know, the material on my site is free–you don’t even have to give an email address or anything to access everything, including the Manuals. I thought it would be redundant to rewrite the manuals on the forum, especially since they are long for a forum post, but some of them were directly to the questions asked. So I mentioned the info in my posts and left it at that.

We are so distrustful today that we forget that people sometimes do things just for the doing of them. Not everyone is expecting something in return every time. It was apparently impossible for that one poster to imagine that maybe I was just offering the info in the spirit of trying to help, instead he assumed that I must be selling.

Of course, it is entirely possible that someone who reads my posts might want to hire me, but that isn’t my main motivation for participating on forums. I actually want other people to succeed and, if I can share some bit of information to help them on their way, great!

So often creatives assume their clients are out to get them in some way. While there are those clients, there are a lot more who are only trying to make sure they don’t get taken advantage of themselves or are terrified of making a mistake in their marketing–they’re trying to keep their jobs.

Next time, instead of assuming the worst, why not assume that the client is struggling with itself some way and ask how you can help?

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