Can I have your attention?

It amazes me that there are still businesspeople, who have not figured out that there’s a right way and a wrong way to grab someone’s attention.

For example, I’ve been emailed this morning by 2 unrelated companies.  Both wanted me to write a review here on the blog, about their service.  Each email consisted of a poorly written, cut-and-paste sales pitch.  Both senders thought that the best way to grab my attention, create a great initial impression and inspire me to blog about them, was to spam me.

Attention grabbing

If you walk up to a stranger at a networking event, you can quickly grab their attention by simply poking them hard in the chest with your index finger.  However, this is not going to be the kind of attention you want.  Spammy emails are just like that! They may gain someone’s attention, but only to alert them that the sender is a spammer.  That’s not the kind of attention any business wants to attract.

Now, if one of the companies that spammed me earlier had actually took a moment to market their service to me correctly, I might have checked it out. If, for instance, either of them had followed me on Twitter and then tweeted to me, I would have definitely checked out their website.  This would have presented them with a window of opportunity, to make a great impression.

Attention grabbing – Done right

• Seth Godin didn’t spam me and ask if I would write a review about how brilliant his marketing blog is – but I did!  Seth’s blog was mentioned on a radio show I was listening to years ago.  I read it and was hooked.
• The reason I bought a Samsung when I was shopping for a netbook, is because there were universally excellent reviews for the NC10 all over the Internet, from trusted sources.  I even mentioned the netbook in a blog post.
• When Danny Brown told me how great the Headway (affiliate link) wordpress theme was, I had to check it out.  Within 15 minutes of reading about it, I had bought it.  A few hours later, I had it installed.  A week later, I became an affiliate; the first product I have ever been an affiliate of!

The bottom line is this: If you want people to write positively about you, recommend you and buy from you – don’t poke them in the chest.