What I’m reading: Night Crawler by Diane Parkin
What’s on the iPod: No Good with Faces by Jack Johnson
Nice slow day yesterday. Slow in the sense that I had time to breathe a little and think as I arranged interviews for a new project. I took some time to read a little industry news and tweets from other writers, and I managed a guest blog post for Anne Wayman’s About Freelance Writing. Go give her some love.
I had time too to read through emails more carefully. It’s funny what you notice when you have time to pay attention to details. This one email subscription – from a self-proclaimed marketing guru – has netted me 14 emails in two weeks. From the same person. Who has that much to say?
Apparently, this guy does. Not only is he emailing, he’s commenting on blogs and tweeting up a storm. In every case, he shifts the attention to himself and his blog. Every. Single. Time. His tweets consist of self-promotional slaps on the back, such as “Just scored another gig! That makes twelve this week! I ROCK!” (paraphrased)
There’s only so much you need to know, right? Then why don’t some people get that promoting one’s services is great, but over-promoting is not only possible, but downright contradictory to one’s goal?
After seeing the plethora of emails, I unsubscribed. After seeing that the last 20 or more tweets were entirely “me” related, I unfollowed. If this guy’s goal was to get my attention, he did. And I didn’t like what I saw.
So that begs the question: How much promotion is too much promotion? My own basic rules for promoting:
1. If you’re not talking with other people, just to them, you’re doing it wrong. Who wants to hear about you all day? When was the last time you asked someone how they were? And did you hear the answer? When you’re tweeting or blogging or posting, think about impressing you as a listener, not impressing your listeners with you, you, you.
2. If every communication is about you or your business, people will see that as selfish. And it is selfish. It’s also a lousy way to promote anything. Who wants to listen to you banging out the same “I’m so great!” message every few minutes or days?
3. If your communication is relaying information about you, you’ve lost our interest. The idea is to show others how you can benefit them. It’s not a “Look at me!” fest.
4. Changing the subject to you every time will result in no one listening anymore. Ask the guy whose emails and tweets I’m no longer subjected to. Then again, don’t ask. He hasn’t noticed and won’t notice I’m gone.
5. If you don’t leave them wanting more, they’ll want you to leave them. Many of the email subscriptions I’ve dropped are the result of too many irrelevant/useless messages and nothing that makes me want to click on those links.
6. If everything you say is all about you, no one is going to care. We all want to hear how friends and colleagues are doing. Yet none of us want to have one-sided conversations with people who haven’t asked or simply don’t care enough to bother asking how we are.
What are some of the sins of over-promotion you’ve seen?
15 responses to “Yes Virginia, You Can Over-promote”
Too much affiliate marketing – that is, sending out emails with a cover note saying things like, "My good friend X just alerted me to the 5 things you have to know about garden snails and the coming destruction of your spring garden! Read a special message from him, below!" Day after day after day. Cross promotion is smart, but not in excess. I often get the same affiliate email sent from three different gurus. Funny how they're all such good friends. Enough already.
I agree with Eileen. I get really annoyed with the well-known folks who constantly get involved in joint promotions. If I gave a damn about their business pals, I'd follow and subscribe to them. Once in a while, if it's completely relevant, I don't mind. More than maybe 2 cross promotion emails in a month and you probably just lost a subscriber. They definitely lost a potential buyer.
The other one that gets to me is when people close their blog comments with a link to their site. Blog comments are not meant to have signatures. Leave it for your friggin' email. If you want to share a link, it should be incredibly relevant to the post, and it should be incorporated into the content of your comment — not an afterthought thrown in with a "you might be interested in…" or "I talked about this recently; check it out."
It's kind of like people who kiss ass too much. In the beginning it might help them get attention by sucking up to bigger folks in their industry. Eventually though they start to look like a leech.
When it comes to marketing, you can definitely have too much of a good thing.
Wow! This topic is touching a nerve! I thought I was the only one frustrated by too much promotion.
Eileen, I'm fortunate. I've not been inundated with cross marketing. That would be frustrating. I'm okay with introductions to someone, but if it's a constant "Here's my new best friend with the most brilliantest ideas ever!" I'd be unsubscribing.
Sounds like those "gurus" would be better off if they'd join forces and start an alliance.
Jenn, that one is a peeve of mine, too. I don't mind if it's relevant, but if it's clearly not, leave it off. It's stepping on toes – the virtual version of taking credit at the office for someone else's hard work.
You know what drives me crazy?
Similar to Jenn's, but what happens when you DO follow more than one of the "gurus?" Along comes the next "great whatever" summit for hundreds of dollars, you not only have to live through the 500 emails from the originator, but every blasted speaker at the summit. LAST DAY FOR 50% OFF – which takes it from ridiculously outrageous to merely outrageous.
Yep, hit a nerve, Lori. 🙂
Oh, that I've been subjected to, Cathy! And those people no longer accost my email – I've unsubscribed from their notices.
We all like reminders, but not beaten over the head repeatedly by them! LOL
It's not even talking to us, but talking AT us that drives me nuts.
And I'm one of those people, if you ask me or tell me something once, it goes on the list and I get to it in order. Every time you nag me about it, it immediately goes to the BOTTOM of the list. Nag me enough, and I will NEVER get to it.
Social media is about INTERACTION, not ME-action.
What I hate are the 'click here' safari hunts. You get an email telling you they want to share something with you, so "click here" to find out what it is. So, you go to a blog post, start reading and then you get another "click here" to find out more. It takes you somewhere else for more click-click-clicking! Yes, I have nothing else to do but wander around the cybersphere trying to find out what exactly your point is.
Sorry, I can't do your work today, because I'm too busy clicking links for no real purpose. Do you wonder why I hate seeing the word 'here' hyper-linked?
As a survival tactic, I've become brutally quick on the "delete" and "back" keys.
And Devon, that is EXACTLY how I react to nagging: parabolic downward curve of event likelihood.
On a related note: I'm wondering if anyone else out here has received a few emails from a woman offering to do "internet research" at a discounted rate? Better still, it's FREE if you refer your client to her.
Not. Bloody. Likely.
Have a great day, y'all!
Jake, is she serious? She'll do your research if you send her all your clients? We have a saying for that – F*** that! What a shameless, brazen way to steal business!
Devon, amen. If you nag, you lose my interest. Worse, if you nag, I delete your emails and blog about you. LOL
Wendy, I hate that, too. Tell me what you want. Otherwise, begone!
"…if you nag, I delete your emails and blog about you."
Kind of a modern update to the old saying about never picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel!
LOL! Great point, Jake. 🙂
Jake, AWAI has a biz-op course that trains people how to do internet research and then pitch their research services to direct response copywriters. Lori, it's "free" in that if you're the copywriter and don't want to pay for it, you're supposed to ask your client to pay for it instead. Because I'm on AWAI's "Wall of Fame," I have gotten literally dozens of these pitches from aspiring researchers. The saddest part? They are all using the same boilerplate sales copy given to them in the course.
I'll go Jenn one further: people who put links to their site / blog / deal -of-the-day in every comment they make anywhere. Throw one in now and then, but some people do it incessantly.
I'm late to the party. I've been shoveling. And shoveling. And I'm about to go out and shovel some more, but have no clue where to put the snow.
I'm still waiting for karma to kick in. Some of these folks are seeing great results. Not from me. I unsubscribed to their stuff, or if that doesn't work — I create a filter to send it to my trash folder.
Unfortunately, some folks have only one mailing list. So if you like the content, but get tired of the "Save X on the conference you should not miss!" — you can't opt out of the promotion emails. Some places do make this possible.
One way to work with this is to create a filter. It's possible the regular content and the promotional content may have a pattern so you can filter one to the trash and the other to read.
I'm with Meryl… waiting for karma to kick in… maybe another lifetime?
I agree with everyone. And I delete and unsubscribe like mad.
Oh, and Lori's article on my site is about how to leave the content mills behind… getting a ton of comments.