Idle Thoughts

Belkin has been receiving a lot of flak today, rightly, for their attempt to buy positive ratings on Amazon. Marketing is inherently deceptive, but we have grown accustomed to it, and to an extent skeptical of it, with time. So at what point does marketing become unacceptably deceptive?

One obvious answer to me would be that it becomes unacceptable when the viewer is unaware that content is an advertisement, because they will then tend to drop their guard, and take information at face value. This would explain why Belkin’s plan was so badly received, after all, advertising agencies hire celebrity spokespeople all the time, who have likely never used the product they’re endorsing. So long as people are aware of the ad, it is relatively acceptable.

Why, then, is search engine optimization seen as acceptable? Certainly, some forms, like link farms, aren’t, but using keywords, rearranging content and the like are all quite normal. This is curious, since it’s entirely undetectable by end users. The keywords may be appropriate for a given site, but why should that site be pushed ahead of one which is more relevant to a particular search, simply because it gamed the system, in however minor a way.

If you consider this acceptable, why is it distinct from what Belkin did and, if not, why don’t you think people mind? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Marketing, SEO

I was just reading this post complaining about the overuse of the term “social media consultant”. And Michael is right, people are very eager to pronounce themselves thus, but I think there’s more to it than simple egotism or self-promotion, I think they have a point. I think his titular assertion is true, everyone is a social media consultant.

Promotion via social media isn’t terribly difficult - time consuming, but not difficult. As self-styled gurus say ad nauseam, the trick is to ‘join the conversation’. And that is the only trick. People don’t want to be advertised at, they want to interact with a company, and more importantly, with a person. They want help with their problems, but only when they ask for it. And they want help from someone they trust, so companies need to give themselves a face, a reputation. They should communicate for communication’s sake, even when it doesn’t help their business. Because it does help their business.

People tend to be puzzled by the fact that companies can’t work out how to use social media to their advantage, because it is so simple to anyone who uses it without an agenda, it doesn’t seem to be knowledge at all, but common sense.

If companies would just listen to someone, anyone, about how to interact with users, they would quickly learn how to properly leverage social media, because every one of us is a social media consultant.

Marketing