New post on MarketingResilience.com: Is Internet Marketing a Scam? I actually want to look at the whole business climate, but lets start with the online scam industry that I had been ignoring, but apparently is a much larger problem than I thought. You definitely have to look at what you’re doing and decide for yourself where you draw the line between a business and a scam.
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- Danny Sullivan in The Verge’s “Scamworld” Profiles “Internet Marketing” Schemes You Should Avoid. I just got finished reading the latest post on The Salty Droid, responding to the ongoing clash between Jason Jones and Chris Brogan (Chris Brogan in Scamworld), but I didn’t want to quote that article. I was very impressed by The Verge’s article, which, ironically, I found after Chris Brogan pointed to it. I was hopeful that the Salty Droid and his mission would take root. But now I’m not so sure… My problem isn’t with his original message: the fraud online is a problem, and calling them out is part of the solution. My worry is that he is casting his net too wide, seeming to suggest that this “A-team” is more entrenched and empowered than I first took him to mean. Of course, I haven’t done the research and the digging into it that he has, and maybe if you pay attention to the scammers it may seem like they are everywhere. I don’t pay attention to them, though. Is it possible to cross over the line from alerting everyone to a problem to shouting “FIRE!” in a movie theater? I would agree with everyone who uses online mediums to call out legitimate scammers for what they do. I would not support a witch hunt. The reason I quoted Danny is that I think he is very wise and has taken an excellent course of mediation. His article makes clear the scammers, and the business people. All business people are not scammers, though. Maybe it is a good idea, as Danny says, to switch terminology from “Internet Marketer” to something like “Digital Marketer”, to help clarify the distinction. But I don’t think that is doing enough. Meanwhile, a type of cynicism or even paranoia about what is ethical in business and what is not won’t respect a simple terminology change. And that’s what I fear The Salty Droid may slip into. His post today raises that fear. What do you think? |
One outcome of social business, which isn’t talked about much, is how it can enable better marketing — from creating content that matters and the creation of a cross- functional command center for real-time moitoring… to a collaborative analytics framework for consistent metrics. Another benefit: the creation of centers of excellence for management of communities and policies. Via Britopian
No doubt. We’ve seen before the difference between transparency and obfuscation in business. Nothing enhances transparency like social media. And, it seems more resistant to “hype” that plagues traditional journalism today…
