How To Ruin Your Reputation Online Before You Even Have One
Building a reputation as someone who knows what they’re talking about is crucial if you’re marketing online, especially now that web 2.0 and social networking makes it so easy for your customers to spread the word about you, good or bad.
Someone added me as a friend on Twitter a few days ago. Now, before automatically adding them back, I took a look at their twitter page and what they had written seemed cool. The person seemed to be coherent, social and knew what they were talking about. So then I clicked the link to their blog and that first impression I had of them was immediately swirling in the digital sewer…
As their blog loaded, the page greyed out, a huge window popped up with an extremely obnoxious multicolored sales pitch and email sign up form.
At that point, it was obvious to me that this person didn’t really want me, or anyone else for that matter, to read their blog… all they wanted was my email address so they could hammer me with spammy ads. Why, you ask, would I assume that?
1. Heck, the blog greyed out automatically and was covered by a bigassed signup form for some email thing. If the blog was the reason he wanted me there, that wouldn’t have happened.
2. The signup form was sickeningly spammy and over the top, like a virtual used car salesman or pickpocket trying to distract me and trick me into doing something I didn’t want to do, so it was safe to assume that any emails I would have gotten would be of the same flavor. No thanks.
“But Paul…” you say, “Those tactics work like crazy…” sorry, not on me, and I’d not want to do business with people who basically assault their readers and site visitors like that, unless they came to me looking for blog consulting…
