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How Not to Market Yourself
By bbr
by Kelly Lucas, marketing and social media manager
We love blog comments. We encourage blog comments. When we write a post that inspires someone to leave a comment, we are happy. However, we recently received a comment on one of our posts that really took us aback. The blog post was about creating a great bio to generate interest and business. In the comments, one reader complimented our post and agreed that a good bio can mean good business. Thank you very much! She then proceeded to give a description of how she could write a bio for our readers and how much it would cost, oh, and by the way, here’s the link to her website. Um, excuse me?
Now don’t get me wrong, we don’t mind if we have competitors comment on our blog posts. In fact, we like that because it shows that we’re in step with the competition if they’re reading our advice. If another marketer leaves a comment that is constructive and adds value to the post, it helps us by continuing the online conversation and educating us and our readers. That sort of comment is totally fine and encouraged.
But selling your services and writing an online ad within our blog post? Not cool. In my opinion, it’s incredibly tacky. When I received the comment notification and first read it, I couldn’t believe it. I showed it to Bonnie and she didn’t have words. She hesitated to delete the comment because she never wants to discourage a firm or person from talking with us. She’s a little nicer than me. I told her flat out that I found it tacky and completely inappropriate. This person was basically stealing space our on site to sell her services. And besides, it won’t discourage the more professional competitors from commenting, since they’d never do anything so tasteless to begin with.
It’s important to create relationships with our competitors. There are times where our services are not a fit for a client, and we refer that client to the competition. And hopefully they’ll someday return the favor. Because of this one dumb comment, we will never have the inclination to refer clients or networking contacts to this competitor in particular. She basically burned a well-connected bridge.
So what do you think about this sort of thing? Am I overreacting? Have you also had something like this happen, and if so, how did you respond?
Oh yes, that’s tacky. That’s very “bot-like”, too. I’ve seen canned statements like this that are copied into any blog that fits a search criteria. That’s what CAPTCHA is all about. But … it’s even _more_ obnoxious that someone wrote a thought out response just to fit in a personal ad for their services without any sort of permission.
The picture is highly appropriate, too. I laughed. 😀
I might be inclined to send her a monthly invoice based on traffic to that blog post. If she didn’t pay, then I’d take it down.
Hi, I’m here to see your show and I brought my whole band with me. You’ll love our next song….