How to Be Stupid at Marketing Yourself

What’s on the iPod: The Air Near My Fingers by The White Stripes

Did you have a nice Easter/nice weekend? Ours was lovely. Saturday was sunny and warm enough to go into the garden. I pulled up as much whitlow grass as I could find, and we cleaned up twigs. Saturday night was church, as was Sunday, and we had a lovely brunch at home (eggs Benedict with salmon, yum!) and then dinner at the local Japanese restaurant. Nothing like blasting through tradition with a jackhammer. 😉 I hope you all had a lovely weekend.

I wanted to share a blog post by someone I came across just recently. Shell Robshaw-Bryan caught my attention with this post revealing some of the lousy marketing advice that’s circulating. It sure had me shaking my head.

In short, there are people out there who are actually advocating picking a fight as a form of marketing. To that I say

Huh?

Let me repeat; there are people advocating that you build a marketing plan that includes whipping people into a froth because it drives traffic and builds an audience. To that I say

WTF?

Shell Robshaw-Bryan didn’t elaborate on who this perpetrator of lousy advice was. Her blog post states she’s unwilling to give the one in question the traffic, which is a smart idea. I don’t know who she means, but I have seen the theory in practice. It rubs me the wrong way.

 Here’s what I think is wrong with that theory:

It’s stupid. Yes, I’ll just call a spade a spade. That’s the most idiotic advice anyone could be doling out. The goal is to attract people, not piss them off. Who wants to buy from someone who enjoys stirring up trouble? Strike one against you.

It’s short-lived. Yes, you’ll get some traffic from it, but exactly what is the quality of said traffic? If your deliberately controversial post is about, say, how stupid people who wear socks with shoes are, you may draw in a few sandal supporters, but you’ve just alienated everyone who thinks you’re smoking something. They may come in droves to your blog to chew you out and set you straight. Your numbers skyrocket for about three days. Then…..crickets. See, people don’t want to hang around with people who insult them and make judgments about their habits. Would you?

It’s going to haunt you. Remember that torch you took up against a certain business practice… let’s say content mills, okay? If you’re talking about how wrong it is to work for a content mill and suddenly you’re now saying “I recommend it” you’re nuts if you think no one will notice or remember how easily you flipped your opinion. The same goes for these intentional attacks on someone else’s opinion. If you’re doing it just to get attention and you don’t really mean it, the more attention you get, the more people will remember who that blooming idiot was who couldn’t stop spouting off. And they’ll remember your stance, which means you have to remember it, too.

It’s not hard to guess what you’re doing.  People aren’t stupid — they can see through an attempt to drive traffic. Way to make the very people you’re trying to reach feel used. I’ve seen so many posts designed to drive traffic that I’ve stopped reading and lost the URL the minute it became clear what the poster was up to. I’m sure I’m not the only one who does the same.

It’s going to be seen by everyone. Sure, you may think you’re writing just for those people reading that particular blog on that particular day. Oh, but the Internet has a long shelf life, my friend. Potential clients are going to type your name into a search engine, and if that little stunt of yours got you all the attention you’d hoped for, guess what search result is rising to the top? Are you still wanting to stand by an argument you started just to get more blog traffic? Enough to lose a potential gig over it?

What lousy marketing advice have you seen lately?