As anyone who reads this blog or follows me on Twitter and Friendfeed will know I am not a big fan of people professing to be SEO (search engine optimization) gurus and Marketing experts. More than once I have berated these professions often equating them with things like pond scum.
While I haven’t done a complete turnabout concerning these opinions I have found that that sometime one can use too wide of a brush when dealing with subjects like this. I have reconsider some of my thoughts on this primarily because of comments by people like AJ Kohn here on this blog and conversations with him on Friendfeed.
That doesn’t mean though that I have totally been swayed over to that dark side.
As I have become more well known as a blogger who deals with technology and the Internet my email inbox has seen an increasing flood of what can only be called PR crap and SEO pitches. It never fails that just about every email I get from marketers and PR firms is for something that if these people had taken even a minute to scan the blog or my Friendfeed stream they would have seen what they are pimping has no interest to me. On top of that is even though they try to appear personal you can tell right from the subject line that you are nothing more than a faceless entry in their mailing list database.
Needless to say just about every pitch I get ends up in the trash and in some cases their email addresses are added to my email client’s junk mail filter. Increasingly though I have found that both my Twitter and my Friendfeed streams have apparently become magnets to everyone who has tacked on SEO Expert or Marketing Ninja to their profile.
Even though I have made it more than plain in both places what I think of this kind of thing the follow requests keep coming. Well here’s a hint to all of you wannabe experts – I never follow back and in some cases when the same person keeps trying they get blocked.
How can this change?
Well actually it’s pretty simple – get to know who the hell I am. Once you know that and you still feel I can be of help then reach out personally – not through some electronic mimeographed piece of market-speak crap email.
You want to know how you can be successful with bloggers?
It’s simple – quit trying to sell us something every time you turn around.
You know who a successful marketer is?
It’s the person who you can talk with on Twitter or Friendfeed or by email and feel like you are having an actual conversation – not the target of a sales pitch or that you are riding trapped with them on an elevator. Sure you could be talking about product or service but the moment you throw out a buzzword or two you have crossed the line from being an interesting person to talk with to being just another marketing dreck.
The same applies to all those SEO ninjas out there that are forever trying to convince you that only they know how to get you to number one on Google. Sorry but that sales pitch grew old the second time it was proved to be bullshit.
The one last thing to remember – trying to convince people that success in this social media world depends on great SEO and even better marketing is nothing more than showing that you have fallen for your own hype. The world of communication and conversation is changing but unfortunately these two professions seem to be stuck in a Mad Men’s world.
[picture courtesy of CenterNetworks]
