Dodgy Marketing methods?

[Willowsong]

Google "viral marketing" and read a bit. Part of the reason I'm changing careers at 40. =/

 

[surbitonPete]

Google "viral marketing" and read a bit. Part of the reason I'm changing careers at 40. =/

and so you think you may as well jump on the bandwagon and there is nothing wrong with it if it makes money?

 

[mamu]

Beware of buzzwords, enthusiasm a bit off the scale...

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out

Are we allowed to post these?

 

[surbitonPete]

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out

Are we allowed to post these?

Yes mamu. It's beginning to seem everywhere you look.

 

[Willowsong]

and so you think you may as well jump on the bandwagon and there is nothing wrong with it if it makes money?

Quite the opposite, in fact. I am, by trade, a sales/marketing/biz dev consultant and freelance copywriter. I'm going back to school in the fall to get my RN.

 

[Mary Kay]

Don't sweat the "can we post these" thread, it is innocent. She never even heard of the "Other" place.

 

[surbitonPete]

As ordinary members, just keep in mind that there will be thousands of people joining this forum just to recommend their own products or products that will get them paid if they recommend. Beware of buzzwords, enthusiasm a bit off the scale relative to the subject matter, links in signatures, engrish, copy/pasted materials (google a sentence or two in quotes and find it posted on other forums verbatim), outrageous claims, anything involving sending money via wire transfers, Nigerian bank accounts, etc...

There's a whole lot more to look for as a mod with access to IP's and advanced search engine usage, but that's just a few things the average user should look for. Basically, if it looks like a sales pitch and not a genuine recommendation, don't trust it. Train your intuition and analytical reasoning to spot this garbage and your forum life will be a lot easier. Get a mod or two that can do the same, and the burden to sift through the garbage is taken off the users completely. I don't mean to sound too judgemental because I have used the model a long time ago on a particular board of mine, but the whole "charge the spammers money and give them recognition" thing seems to be the status quo here. It works to an extent, and rather than eliminating spam it just quarantees it to certain areas. But once you have so many of these "pay to advertise" merchants on board at the forum, it gets so competitive that they start taking it to newer levels, using different tactics to get their products noticed over the other guys.

It hasn't quite hit that level yet here, but when it does, it won't be pretty.


EDIT: Forgot to add my rule of thumb when it comes to sig links. If it's a link to a site that you've never heard of, and you halfway pay attention to the internet, then that site is owned by the person posting it and it is an advertisement. If however there are more than one sig links, to two or more different sites you've never heard of, either the above case is true or the person is selling their sig space to post links for other people. Multiple sig links you have never heard of = 99.99% chance that one of the above two scenarios are true.

That certainly points out a few things to be watching out for.

 

[willsgirlie]

When I see a new member, with only like 3 posts, and they are raving about something, I go and look at their other posts.. just to see if I can tell anything from that and sure enough there is a member on here without about 3 posts and they are all raving about the same thing I'm not fallin for it ! lol could possibly be innocent, but I think you have to take everything you read and sort through it yourself.

 

[surbitonPete]

When I see a new member, with only like 3 posts, and they are raving about something, I go and look at their other posts.. just to see if I can tell anything from that and sure enough there is a member on here without about 3 posts and they are all raving about the same thing I'm not fallin for it ! lol could possibly be innocent, but I think you have to take everything you read and sort through it yourself.

One thing certain there is no way of proving who is innocent and who isn't. You can only have suspicions and that isn't enough.