In today’s rant, I’m going to take on three current “sacred cows” of Internet Marketing, all of which are the subject of a seemingly endless stream of clever (and mostly expensive) marketing schemes promoted by slick marketing by Internet Marketing ‘gurus’. (Yes, I did use the work ‘marketing’ 3 times on purpose.)
Twitter Tweets are the new Spam. At one point I had over 6,000 “Followers” … and it seemed like at least 5,998 of them Tweeted nothing but sales pitches. Here’s a statistic that should make you think twice about spending very much time on Twitter: 60% of all Twitters users quit after their first month. So your Followers list is mostly a bone-yard of Twitheads who will never read your Tweets because they’re not there any more. (Twitter does not have a policy of canceling or inactivating accounts that haven’t been used in over 30 days – but they should.)
Facebook is for networking and keeping up with “real friends” (vs. fake FB friends) wherever they are. How would you react if you were having dinner with a friend or acquaintance and they kept pitching you products during the meal? Another big problem with marketing on FB is that adding “friends” is a very slow process. FB will cancel your account – or at least ask you to explain why you have added 5,623-1/2 friends in the last 4 days. Even Will Rogers couldn’t make friends that fast.
Blogging
There are over 150 million blogs on the Internet as of the end of 2010, and that number is growing by leaps and bounds every day. One estimate is that more than 90% of blogs are not earning any money at all. Even very popular blogs with tens of thousands of subscribers are having trouble generating revenue. (So, you must be asking yourself, why do I have a blog? Well, do you see any AdSense ads? Do you see any banner ads? Are any of my posts pitches for some product or other [Except, of course, for this one: Shameless Product Promotion!]? Obviously this blog isn’t intended to make money. It’s just a place I can be cranky on the Internet.)
Please also see Part 1 of this series
