Epinions Advisor Write-Off. How to become a "favorite guy"Feb 19 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Despite all odds, Epinions advisors (I'd like the term mentors) are the keychain and the backbone of the community. Try to imagine Epinions without all the advisors you like! This review is part of the “Epinions Advisors Write-Off”, initiated by Epinions.com member WorkingMomOf2. Please check out the valuable contributions of these members to this write-off: erik_kosberg, conradd, counsel, CurtisEdmonds, dannyzmom, Dr_Steph, Grouch, Irishma4, KCfoxy, pogomom, Prepoia, ptiemann, Redlass, sgentile, and WorkingMomof2. Little Story here… Imagine a day when your folks went off to see your in-laws (I’d prefer the Spanish term familia politica - do I see anyone smile over there?) and you were actually pushing it a bit too by quite lamely but insistently “admitting” that you are sooooo sorry that you really can’t make it this time because you got to finish this report over the w/end…Well nobody believes a word anyway but at least you made them believe that you would be doing something meaningful this day – while being all alone, on your own, lonely, bored, left behind (how sad) but YIPPEE!!!!!!!, YES! Here is what you can do to leave a lasting piece of yourself in this world; you’re planning to run an Epinions day (again). O.K., let’s see, what can you write about today? The new smoker you got for a Christmas present but haven’t used it yet because you’re afraid of the incapability to cope with the management of the cleaning process that should conclude any of these types of gourmet adventures? Or what about that brain-mashing freepunkjazz-like live album of your favorite band that is very likely not only unhearable and entirely unknown to anyone on this planet but totally out of interest from any third part brain (as long as they haven’t mashed theirs with any similar noiserecordtrashing hardcore sound), so stick that one too. Hey, but you could post a neat editorial about your habits to choose the right socks in the morning (sorry, I couldn’t resist…) or any other private talk in entertaining editorial form? Well, after two hours brain squeezing you are still sitting in front of the square and haven’t even touched the keyboard yet. But wait, why don’t you just surf around a bit to see what’s new at the site and if they opened some new categories (kidding). There we go, in the Just-in pages you actually recognize quite some “old-timers” and actually most of them always seem to find a neat topic or at least participate in a way that gives you new ideas or motivation or both. After reading three of the newest you are really hungry and click right into the advisor list (the featured reviewers that is, at least at the moment before they fix their consolidated lists in the member section) to get the real stuff, which means there are the hard guys, the ones that contribute a lot, don’t post any thin soup and generate new ideas all over the neighborhood. And there he is, your favorite guy (let’s call her/him favguy for the sake of this little tale), an advisor par excellence! Why? Because the guy seems to breath this Epinions stuff, participates in discussions with comments and on message boards, answers emails real quick and satisfactory in terms of solutions offered and sticks to the topic in all reviews. Anyway, there might be more reasons you like this reviewer, well – right now you need an idea for a new post. While reading favguy’s newest piece you realize that there is certainly tons of room for improvement in your writing when you compare honestly. So, you start checking the structure of the reviews and try copying it while writing about something favguy reviewed as one of the first. After adopting the structure and some of the type of information but put it down with your own words and experience background you realize all of a sudden: “Wow! I didn’t actually know that I can be quite good at this…” Well, let’s check out what favguy does besides writing, possibly you can learn a bit more about this member’s success? There are many comments in every review, most of them receive an honest and rewarding answer and from your own experience you know that favguy likes to communicate ideas and comments across the Epinions communications spectrum. One day you needed to know about a new site development after coming back from vacation and you wrote an email to favguy about the matter, not even 1 hour later there was an answer delivered with a nice, motivating note to keep contributing and having fun at Epinions. “Where does this guy get the energy from and where the confidence?” did you think back then and you wrote two more reviews that night, just because you liked to. And the other day, when there was a little fight going on in the message boards, folks yelling at each other and stuff, wasn’t it favguy too who broke in and tried to calm down the situation by moderating a bit? And at more as one situations you read articles, editorials and comments from favguy trying to challenge developments that provided disadvantages to the members, trying to fight through what was proven best for the community. And favguy’s reviews are of outstanding compact, understandable and knowledgeable content, featuring personal experience and professional understanding of the product described. Very often you read the guy encouraging others to write themselves and giving hints on review stricture and content building as well as answering questions to the products described. So, after thinking this through while writing your new review you changed somewhat yourself by reading more message boards, reviews and comments, trying to understand why you like and trust this member a lot and actually find Epinions a massively better place than la casa de la familia politica and this, my friend, is the reason I am really darn proud to be one of Epinions.com’s advisors (software) and this is the reason I’d like to express my gratitude to all the favguy’s of the Epinionsworld. Hang in there and make it happen!  |
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