Ignore anonymous feedback

This afternoon, having blasted out a mailer to several hundred contacts, I've spent the last hour or so unsubscribing people and answering pointless (no benefit for they or me) comments. Something might come of this (it has before), but I have to say, this process is a little depressing and in terms of time spent versus results, I could be doing something better. 

Anyways, in comes a blog feed from Seth Godin (my favorite marketing guru) titled "You won't benefit from anonymous criticism". Sounds good, read on...

He says that he recently heard from a speaker who people had posted properly nasty comments about. He asserts that no author ever benefited from reading a bunch of crappy reviews.

He goes on to say that there are plenty of good ways to get useful and constructive feedback, starting with looking someone in the eye and having a direct one on one conversation or email correspondence with a customer who cares. 

Forms, surveys, mass emails, tweets and so on - all this will do he says is depress you, confuse you (no audience all want the same thing) or paralyze you. 

Seth argues that it's a positive habit to deliberately insulate yourself from this feedback. Don't ask for it and don't look for it. Improve what you do, but don't punish yourself by listening to the mob! Sounds good to me