Absolutely, Definately, the Wrong Way to Sell Online!

Blogging is an evolving part of the social media mix. That means there are few hard and fast rules abour how to do it effectively. But occasionally you come across an example of mind-blowingly stupid blogging that makes you wonder if the blogger really understands. One such blog post hit this and many other websites just a few hours ago.

If you search on Google for the search term "how to choose an ecommerce product" you will see literally hundreds and hundreds of entries on every imaginable type of forum. From badminton fora, through beauty tips fora, to pretty much everything else. They were posted by different people purporting to work for bona fide UK ecommerce software developer Palindrome Software Labs. They are all blog spam. Every last one of them. Most have already been removed by the website administrators, but you can still find the odd example if you look.

Why does Palindrome Software Labs do this?

Don't they know that blog spam on this scale only makes them look as though they really don't understand the Internet? Who would hire a company with so little understanding of how the Internet works?
Or don't they understand how social selling is done? Who would buy from a company that has to mass-spam the Internet to drive sales?
Or don't they know it is going on in their name? In which case it is time for human resources to step in with pink slips for the offending bloggers. Whatever the answer, it leaves Palindrome Software Labs with a serious reputational problem to deal with. And the Internet has an enormously long memory.

What do you think? Is blog spam acceptable as a sales tactic? Or is it tantamount to shooting yourself in both feet at the same time?

Post a comment and get the conversation going.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager