How to Avoid Being BlogBashed, by law prof blogger Jim Maule [Politech]

1. Create quality products and services.
2. Sell what you advertise.
3. Make certain your products and services do what they claim to do.
4. Fully test and study your products and services before offering them for sale.
5. Disclose all risks posed to purchasers of your products and services.
6. Tell the truth.
7. Fulfill your warranty promises.
8. Don't cut corners.
9. Comply with all applicable laws and regulations.
10. Don't try to buy influence.

A reasonably good start at what companies should worry about, rather than Forbes' fear-mongering. Fits in nicely with the thesis behind Douglas Rushkoff's forthcoming book Get Back in the Box, which he's sampling on his site:

That's when it hit me: What this fellow needed was not to hire companies who could market like craigslist but to be more like craigslist, himself. That is, simply understand what specific product or service he's really offering, and then do it as well and expertly as possible. That's not what he wanted to hear. No, he wanted a new marketing campaign to define his business for him, from the outside in.

Too many companies are obsessed with window dressing because they're reluctant, no, afraid, to look at whatever it is they really do and evaluate it from the inside out. When things are down, CEO's turn to consultants and marketers to rethink, rebrand or repackage whatever it is they are selling, when they should be getting back on the factory floor, into the stores, or out to the research labs where their product is actually made, sold, or conceived. Instead of making their communications less Saatchi and more Craig, they should be reinventing their core enterprise.