The last week or so, I've been meaning to post something about those people who keep doing the Twitter equivalent of pushing a flyer in my face by incessantly promoting their books/seminars etc. You know the ones where you want to reply: "yes, I saw that message the first 20 times you posted it, thanks". But you don't, because, well, you're a coward and you want an easy life.
But sometimes you see something SO bad, SO poorly executed, you can't help yourself. Friends, this is that moment:
Around lunchtime today, I received an @ message on Twitter from someone called Ellen Brandt, saying "I Don't Like What You Wrote. You Should be Stabbed With Stiletto Heels, Have Vultures Eat Your Liver".
Not so unusual for a journo to get that sort of thing - but the comment was followed by a tiny.cc link. Checking it out, it was a link to a blog post, which turns out to be a sort of long and kinda dull ‘humorous’ article about people attacking other people online. It's also the only post on the blog, which is sort of weird.
The article seems to be the work of Dr Ellen Brandt, an entrepreneur and Ivy League educated historian who has written 3,000 magazine articles. Cripes. Turns out she’d posted the same @ Tweet to hundreds of people today, most of whom didn’t really get the joke and thought they were being insulted – cue lots of conversations where Ellen accuses them of having no sense of humour, of not being sophisticated enough to understand her humour, and – best of all – not understanding how the Internet works.
Sending an insulting Tweet with a blind link to your own blog is a GREAT idea, Ellen says, because:
Now I’m willing to bet that Ellen’s Twitter feed, blog post and business website (she writes up the life stories of 'ordinary' Americans) got thousands of hits out of that stunt today. Yay, right?
Except it’s still the most stupid Tweet I’ve ever seen. By a long way.
Because at least 50% of people will instantly dismiss Ellen as a spammer and block her from their accounts. All those connections, all those relationships, are now dead. Another significant proportion will have followed through the link, realised it was a bit of shameless self-promotion, and blocked Ellen from their accounts. Or will just ignore her the next time she gets in touch.
And an unfortunate few, who asked Ellen not to send them that sort of thing - well, they got insulted for their trouble. I particularly liked the woman who said she'd reported Ellen as a spammer and was told: "Sweetums. It is OVER. Do not talk to me again."
Way. To. Go.
I think the lesson we can learn from this is:
- If it looks like a plug, sounds like a plug and clicks like a plug, it's a plug. Don't try and dress it up.
- Don't post links without telling people what they are.
- Don't assume people will get your sense of humour, especially when wishing them physical injury
And most important of all:
- If someone objects to your plug, don't call them stupid, unsophisticated or "sweetums" and ESPECIALLY don't do it online where it's indexed by Google and available for anyone to see for all time.
