Disappointed — Duct Tape Marketing Promotes Spamming
May 29th, 2007 by Mike Reining Read more about Traffic TacticsI am a big fan of Duct Tape Marketing, one of the leading Internet Marketing blogs for small businesses. However, I am very disappointed to see that they are encouraging their readers to abuse Truemors, a new site that just launched just for the sake of some free traffic.
Yes, getting free traffic is nice but I would advocate that ethical marketing is more important. It is sad that most people just ignore ethics and will do just about anything to get free traffic and links.
The temptation to spam social media sites (especially social news and bookmarking sites) is growing and to see some of the thought leaders endorse and encourage this is unacceptable.
Why do I say that Duct Tape Marketing promotes spamming of Truemors?
Duct Tape said this:
Here’s an easy way to use Truemors for a little PR. Post a truemor that has a newsy feel or announcement theme about some aspect of your business or products. Think PR not sales.
Here is what Truemors is all about:
The content that we want is true rumors that is relevant, helps you make sense of the world, and also possibly entertains you.
Now, I think it is very clear that the content that Truemors wants is not to have every small business owner create a Truemor saying “Did you see that.…?”
I just went to visit Truemors and all I could see on the site is spam. While I don’t blame Duct Tape for this, I think they should encourage their readers to be more responsible and not to abuse sites.
NOTE: Duct Tape did say in their post “Don’t spam” but when they write an entire post educating people how to abuse a system is that really credible or just a worthless disclaimer?
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About the Author
Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype.
Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.
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Vishen Lakhiani
This post is a little whiny for my taste.
Truemors is a crappy web site, and as Loren Feldman stated, was dead within about three minutes of launching.
I’ve been on the truemors site and it seems to me that what DTM is suggesting is exactly what it (meaning the site Truemors) wants. It really is just limited to that site and taken out of context it could be used to justify spamming other sites.
Thanks of the mention of Truemors. As long as the posting is “news” or a “true rumor” we’re fine with postings. For example, “Did you hear that Microsoft introduced a new product called Surface?” is cool with us.
Also, you say you went to Truemors and “all you could see is spam.” When did you go? There’s maybe 10% spam at any given time. You are implying that there’s nothing but spam.
Guy Kawasaki
Mike,
Thanks for being a big fan of Duct Tape Marketing. As such, you surely know that I don’t encourage abuse of any tools, particularly online tools, there’s simply no point in it.
What I do promote is what I believe are legitimate ways to network, build trust, and spread the word using all forms of media, including social media like Truemors. Heck, I encourage people to post relevant comments on blogs just like this one as a way to join the conversation, network and yes, gain some extra traffic and page views.
I guess what I wrote could be interpreted with your view, but it certainly wasn’t meant that way — people who want to abuse a site like Truemors or Digg will do it without my prompting. What I was trying to do was introduce people to a tool that they may not ever think about or think to use in business building ways. I sure could have been much stronger about what I thought was legitimate content and don’t advocate spam nor think that’s all that Truemors has to offer, but sometimes small business owners need a little push to try things like social networks. If someone actually does abuse the system, the network usually takes care of it.
Again, appreciate your past support of Duct Tape Marketing
one of the biggest problems is that things that used to happen in small proportions have elevated to unimaginable proportions. People have been using free publicity via various means since times immemorial…atleast hollywood and bollywood.….and now the mass proportion aowed by internet is definitely alarming.
Another problem has been the dimnishig importance of custom content, especially if anyone can get to it and refurbish it to their need.
I am in total agreement that spam of any sort, on any site or blog, is wrong and has no place on the Internet.
On the other hand, social media sites are the biggest new wave on the net and a business, especially a small business, would be crazy not to try and grab some publicity.
If a business can post relevant content on a social media site that will be of value to all, and get some nice word of mouth buzz, then by all means do it.
In the end spammers will be purged from the system by the commited members of the site.