Wannabe viral marketers still getting it wrong

We covered it in Old Marketing vs New Marketing - the internet is a community of people and their websites are their nodes of communication.

Therefore marketing now needs to be able to access this community in clear niches that reflect a client’s marketing base.

And therefore directly connect products and services with the user market through recommendations and referrals.

Only some people *just do not get it*.

There are some really lame viral marketing campaigns out there trying to utilise online communities. Unfortunately, most of them simply end up forum spamming.

It not just the excusably amateur - we do have larger companies who should know better doing it.

Last year it was Accoona who were turned into a laughing stock, by their highly organised campaign of forum spamming to generate chatter that completely backfired.

I just had something posted to one of my forums that looks like another attempt at amateur viral marketing, in order to generate chatter. Forum spamming under another name. This time by a major UK publisher.

(Hey, forum spamming itself isn’t necessarily bad, but there are good and bad ways to leverage online communities, and this form of forum spam isn’t it.)

So I contacted the publisher directly, and raised a complaint with the marketing dept there. While they may not be directly responsible for such activity, where they are outsourcing the work, they need to be very aware of the dangers of what happens when viral marketing gone wrong.

That’s a lesson Accoona should have learned. Unfortunately, I don’t think even they have.