Arbitration & Mediation

Negotiating online relationships: a marketing mistake to avoid

By Diane Levin

As much I have been enjoying Twitter, the social media and instant messaging tool, it has one black mark against it: some followers try to sell you stuff you don’t want. I have quickly learned who not to follow back to avoid an influx of messages that are little more than shameless self-promotion or snake-oil ads.

Occasionally, these self-marketers will also pursue you beyond Twitter, sending you emails that push products or services.  One such effort backfired in a big way for the legal marketing specialist who deployed it.  They sent me the following message that begins with these words:

I have been reading your Mediation Channel and following you on Twitter. It is apparent that we have a mutual passion helping lawyers succeed. I have an opportunity for us to collaborate and do just that.

How flattering! Bloggers love to hear from their readers, so this isn’t a bad way to get a blogger’s attention. There was just one problem.

Despite the fact that my Twitter account links to my blog, which in turn provides my email address on a contact page readily accessible from the plainly visible navbar and from a link in one of my sidebars, this marketer sent this message to a different Diane Levin, who immediately spotted the mistake and took the trouble to forward the message along to me, the intended recipient.

This tipped me off that this marketer hadn’t in fact paid much attention to what was on my blog. In fact, it’s pretty obvious they hadn’t bothered to visit my blog at all. Since marketing is about building relationships with prospective clients, at least make an effort to be sincere and get the important stuff right.

Full post as published by Online Guide to Mediation on May 22, 2009 (boomark / email).