4 Sh*tty Things Marketers Need to Stop Doing Right Now

I’ve got a lot to learn.

When it comes to marketing I’m far from knowing it all, and I’m constantly learning new things and wondering how does everyone know about this but me?

That said, there are some things I think are just plain bad form. Things I see people doing out there in the big old world wide web that make me think why the hell are they doing that? Someone should tell them to stop.

So just as I’d hope you’d tell me when I have a piece of lettuce stuck between my two front teeth, here I am offering you a subtle suggestion to quit it with these obnoxious online behaviors.

1. Twitter autoresponders

These are those annoying messages some people send out automatically to everyone single person who follows them on Twitter.

They usually look something like this: Hey, thanks for following me! I’d love it if you checked out my e-book/course/product/tchotchke-I’m-trying-to-get-you-to-buy!

This is a real screenshot of my Twitter inbox at the moment.

How insane is that? Not a single real message.

Twitter autoresponders were effective for about five minutes in 2009 before people figured out they were automated and started ignoring them. They’re spam. Make it stop.

2. Adding me to your email list when I didn’t ask for it.

I recently reached out to someone I’d consider a “major” blogger to ask a question for a post I’m writing. I didn’t expect her to respond; I’m sure she’s very busy. But I figured, what could it hurt to ask?

Well, I was right. I didn’t get a response, at least not from her.

What I did get was a form response from her assistant saying she’s very busy and not taking new commitments at this time. And then? I started getting her email blasts on a daily basis, trying to sell me marketing courses.

Not cool.

If someone doesn’t explicitly sign up for your email list, buy from you or give you permission to add them to it, don’t put them on it.

3. Making it all about me, me, me.

And by me, I mean you.

It’s amazing that companies and marketers are still filling their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts with posts shouting BUY FROM ME!

How’s that working out for you? Let me guess… not too well?

If you don’t know by now that marketing your business via social is about providing value to others, you have no business being on those platforms.

4. Being on auto-pilot, all the time.

You’ve seen them. Those Twitter feeds of self-professed “marketing gurus” with 300K followers that send out a robo-tweet every hour on the hour, no human interaction in sight.

What’s the point?

You have 300,000 followers, cool (and yes, I’m jealous). But you have zero engagement, and that I don’t envy.

If you take one thing away from this post, let it be this: without real, live engagement, social media is worth nothing to your brand/business/blog.

Who cares if you have a million followers if none of them click on anything you post? I’d take 100 highly-engaged followers over a million shell accounts any day. Work to make real connections; those are the ones that will pay off in the long run for your business.

What about you—what are your biggest marketing pet peeves?