Is it just me or is the marketing profession slowly evolving into a legion of Homer Simpson clones? I’m not referring to our beer swilling antics, because quite frankly I enjoy an ale as much as anyone. Rather, I’m referring to the modern marketer’s ability to display amazing feats of laziness. While most of us aren’t brazen enough to sleep at our desks, I continue to see cases of marketers taking short cuts and looking for the quick win. One example in particular took my interest this week – the notion of buying an established social media profile…
During my reading this week I came across an article discussing the practice of buying & selling social media profiles and the ethical ramifications of doing so. While the debate is indeed quite interesting, I’m not going to enter the ethical discussion (for once). Instead, I’m more interested in the fact that marketers actually want to buy social media profiles in the first place. Seriously? To me it’s one hell of a meatball sundae – an awful mesh of new media marketing with old school thinking.
I understand the fuzzy logic behind the purchase of a social media profile. The story probably goes a little something like this… A lazy marketer hears about how sites such as Digg & Delicious can send literally thousands of visitors to a site in a matter of hours.
‘I gotta get me some of that’ he thinks.
So he creates an account. After a week he’s utterly frustrated because nothing he does seems to be working. Nobody votes for the content he submits. Nobody views his bookmarks. Nobody’s paying attention. Chances are he’s behaving a little like this…
So the old school marketer reverts to the tactics he knows best…
‘If I want some attention around here, I’m going to have to buy it’.
And that my friends is where the laziness kicks in, and the meatball sundae is cooked to perfection. New media simply doesn’t work like that. Attention can’t be bought… it must be earned. Powerful social media profiles are built on the foundation of regular participation, expertise, trust, selflessness & respect.
Most of today’s social media rockstars have spent years crafting their profile. And now that the mainstream marketers have recognised the power (and attention) they command, they want in. What they don’t want to do however is put in the hard work to develop their own social profile. Because it’s so much easier to buy someone’s attention then to actually earn it…
Lazy.
The economy of social profiles
Despite the strong interest from mainstream marketers, I don’t expect to see a wholesale of social profiles any time soon. For one, power users are unlikely to want to hand over the reigns to a profile they’ve heavily invested in. That level of reach and visibility is not easily replicated, particularly given the sheer size of networks such as Digg & Reddit nowadays (as compared to when they started).
Secondly, it doesn’t seem to make sense to sell off an account when mainstream marketers are willing to pay for single post submissions. Indeed, the economy of paid submissions seems to be thriving according to an anonymous top Digg user:
“A little known fact is that most top users from Digg offer social media promotion services. It is easy money. Once you reach a certain number of following and you start being recognized by the community its not that hard to get a certain number of diggs.”
“There are couple different ways I offer my services. If someone wants me to submit an article without any promotions involved, I charge anywhere between $300 – $500 depending on the quality of article. For a submission and promotion I charge $700 irrespective of whether the article is good or not. These prices are irrespective of whether or not the article makes it to the front page. If the article does make it to the front page there is an additional charge of $500″.
Hmmm… bless my pure heart… it seems I have to take back my earlier statement. Attention can be bought in social networks after all. How naive am I…?
So where does that leave our lazy marketer?
With an escape clause. For now he can continue to apply his old school way of thinking to new media. He can continue to buy his page views rather than earn them. But lazy marketing tactics rarely provide a sustainable advantage. You only need to look at the paid links debacle to understand why.
Our lazy marketer probably spent years buying inbound links to boost his organic rankings. Because it’s far easier to buy links than create link worthy content. But now his links are worth jack all. Rather than earning his links, he took the easy way out. And he paid the price… literally… with little to show for it now.
Digg recently banned hundreds of users for allegedly breaching their terms of service. This should serve as a major warning to our lazy marketer. Just like Google, Digg (and any other site categorising content on the web) need to guard the integrity of their ranking process. Their results are their product. What works today may not work tomorrow. Just ask any black hat.
So while our lazy marketer may be laughing for now, it’s highly unlikely he’ll have the last laugh…
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Ah, taking the ‘social’ out of ‘social marketing’. I have a feeling that I read about this happening with the telephone (telemarketers) and email (no more viagra please) as well. They may appear and irritate but it doesn’t take much to see that there is no substance to the content.
Yup Nathan. Over time we marketers have managed to take the the personal touch out of pretty much all forms of communication. Although, I do some work in email marketing now (not viagra spam thank you) and we try our best to maximise personalisation and message relevance. So all is not lost I suppose.
Absolutely – and that is what will cut through and continue to surprise/impress consumers
Wh?t a data ?f un-ambiguity and preserveness of valuable knowledge
?bout unexpected emotions.