I received yet another email this morning, from someone who’s lost a lot of money, after taking bad advice from a marketing blog. This seems to be a growing problem, as more and more small businesses look for free advice online, in a bid to help grow their business.
So, to help you (or your clients / friends) avoid making the same kind of costly mistakes, here are a few tips to help you spot the fakes.
Please share this post on your favourite social networks, as it’s really important that as many people as possible know about this.
Marketing blogs: What to watch for
If someone claims to be an expert at marketing and he or she can’t even market their own blog – stay well away. Because it’s so easy to fool traffic sites like Alexa.com into showing you get thousands of visitors a day, you need to look for more obvious signs that a marketing blog is valued by a large reader community.
A great place to start is by looking at the number of comments it gets. Marketing people, even very average ones, know how to build a blog that attracts comments on every post. If you spot a marketing related blog with no comments or very few, it shows the person behind the blog does not know how to market the blog correctly.
It’s also worth checking to see if their blog is listed or ranked by a respected, neutral, third party. This blog, for example, is ranked on what many consider to be the most influential in our industry, the Adage Power 150 – that’s their badge you see on the lower right hand side of the blog.
Testimonials are easy to fake: What to watch for
Look for proof that the marketing expert actually works with REAL people and companies! Testimonials are easy to fake. So, look to see if the marketing expert is talking about the companies or people they work with or the projects they are working on.
For example, if people want to check me out, they can see me write about clients I am currently working with AND they can see me openly tweeting with clients and former clients too.
Does the marketing expert exist in the real world?
Fake marketing ‘experts’ exist only online and in their imagination. The genuine marketing professionals you encounter online, are like any other REAL business. They will happily provide you with their FULL contact details; that’s their physical address and a land line phone number. We WANT people to call us and write to us. Always be extra cautious if a marketing ‘business’ only operates behind a website, a ‘box number’ and a Skype or mobile / cell phone number.
This is where YOU come in!
Those are just a few, very basic steps you can take to avoid bad marketing advice. I would really value YOUR suggestions. What are your tips for spotting the fakes in your industry?
Please share them here and make this post as valuable as possible for your fellow readers.
UPDATE:
This post from my ideas blog, covers another tool you can use, to identify how many people link to a particular website / blog.
Related posts:
I think many people find it hard to tell who is an who is not worth listening to. The problem with the web’s that its easy for anyone to get a snazzy site and look like they know what they’re doing.
Thanks for an thought provoking article.
You’re very welcome Alyson.
I would agree with most of this except that Seth Godin had never allowed comments on his blog and he is one of the most respected marketers of our generation. I think once people get past a certian level of authority, not having comments turned on is the only way they can get anything done.
Hi Molly,
Thanks for the comment, but you’re incorrect.
Seth (a commenter here on this blog) did allow comments on his blog, but stopped them only after they became too time-consuming for him to manage.
I mention his decision and strategy here: http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2009/02/02/the-seth-godin-blog-stragegy/
Hope you find it useful Molly and thanks for popping by the blog.
Fantastic advise Jim!
I would only add to say Google the person and see what results you get back.
I didnt know about the Adage Power 150 but everything else does come under the category “common sense” although it is very easy to be misled with smoke and mirror illusions.
Jim, your blogs, advice and approach is very open and transparent. More like you please!
Have a great weekend.
Nicky
GREAT advice about Googleing people first!
Thanks for your kind words Nicola.
Nice one Jim – but it surely reinforces that I stink at getting comments on and marketing my own personal blog. (thanks for a healthy reminder that I need to do something about that).
Dan
Dan, what is your blog? I am a serial commenter – I like to let the amazing people who blog that they are appreciated!
http://www.asimpleguyblog.blogspot.com and also http://www.salesaddvisorblog.blogspot.com serial commenter s and particularly those that follow Jim are most welcome.
The come with a built in ’street cred’.
Dan
sorry – typo salesaddvisor is http://www.salesaddvisor.blogspot.com
Jim,
Thank you. You’re right about people who know how to attract comments to their blot. They show they some of the skill of the trade.
You’ve hooked me in to commenting. So I know you have the skill. So I’m inclined to trust you have other skills too.
I admire your straight comment that something wasn’t correct – made me think of you as a clear thinker & communicator. Such elements start to reduce my natural suspicion that marketing people may well be bullshitters, fashion followers and valueless.
Your warning about testimonials is timely for me. I have a new website & blog and am thinking about how to use testimonials – when they come along. I love your practice of twittering with clients & look forward to following your link on that.
Feel like sampling a bit more of your stuff.
Thanks again.
Hi Dan,
Have had a quick look at your blog. No disrespect because I have no doubt you have your followers, but its not my cup of tea.
If I can give one feedback though, from a readers perspective, not a bloggers, its that I struggled to find a common thread to your blogs. Or indeed an intro to the blog itself.
Maybe a post about why noone is commenting and asking for some feedback might help cajole a reaction out of your readers?
Best of luck with it.
Nicky
Hi Jim,
You have changed the look (I normally read by email but felt compelled to comment)
I find it hard to believe a person booked a marketer based solely on their blog, surely they would have done some research first?
It took me 3 years to find a designer that I liked in that time I read thousands of blogs, was given both good and bad advice and yet I still asked questions and it was a designer that was calm, patient and forthright that won my business. They did no heavy sell, their website wasn’t the flashiest of the planet, I can’t even recall what their contact details on the site were!
If people rush into a sale based on one blog post then they have only themselves to blame! Not bad advice but bad judgment.
Hi Sarah – Yep, changed the look of the blog last week and the feedback’s been pretty good so far.
The post was not about someone BOOKING a marketing professional, it was about how someone took bad marketing that was offered for free on a website. The tips are for people who can’t afford to pay for help, but rely on free advice; so that can figure out the good from the bad.
Thanks for the feedback.
I find that a quick google search first to get the top 10 sites on the first page is the first port of call and then for “reach” pop on over to Yahoo and do the same search for total number of pages.
If it’s a strange name like mine then just do a straight search but if its something like John Smith, you might want to use something like:
“John Smith” marketing or
“John Smith” marketing advice
That will remove the gazzillion pages with good old John Smith on!
I’m on over 40,000 pages in Yahoo but Google doesn’t pick a lot of them up due to the way it counts and records the pages and it does not show all of them any more due to an algorithim change. I went down from 60,000 mentions to just 5,000 several months ago in Google so they definately changed something! lol
Also, put in words like “marketing consultant” or “marketing blog” into google.co.uk and see if the so called guru shows up anywhere or not
Hope that helps!
Sean
Hi Sean,
Thanks for the suggestions.
I think you covered most of the top warning signs on my list about how to spot a fake/shady marketing professional, but I do have one more I would like to add to that list. Another warning sign that tips me off that I’m dealing with a fake is, when they want you to take immediate action $ for their beautifully packaged marketing bullshit that they’ve whipped together in a total of 5 minutes.
Thanks for the feedback Toni.
Whilst this post is about how to avoid taking bad free advice from a marketing blog, it’s really important NOT to part with any cash until you have really checked the person and the product out first.
Let the buyer beware.
What ever happened to that?
There are more than enough so-called, marketing and social media gurus for me to take notice.
I think another warning sign is when someone calls themselves a marketing (or social media) guru.
I had a chat on Twitter with Chris Brogan about the term ‘guru’ and like me, he detests it. I would go a step further and call the guru term toxic.
Thanks Anthony!
Jim,
Very good and very needed. Nothing to add as my brain is fried – but just wanted to say that this has helped me!