Whack A Mole. Did you ever win a stuffed animal at fair playing that game? I recall two friends from law school challenging each other to a round of Whack at Mole at the PNE in 1999 or 2000...I remember all the laughs, all the energy they exerted and the disappointing prize for all the effort.

Whack A Mole.

A game.

An annoying one at best - unless you're in it only for the laughs. Your laughs.

Why am I musing on Whack A Mole? Chris Brogan's brilliant blog post this morning..."Whack A Mole Marketing"

The killer line "Treat Your Community As A Privilege".

Here's Chris's blog:

I watch people beat their marketing prospects all day. It’s easiest to watch them do it via Twitter. Pick any marketing you feel is filling your stream, click into them, and watch their recent tweets. If it’s a nearly endless stream of promotional tweets, what are you getting?

Whack a Mole.

We do this in email marketing, too. Beat a list twice a week, or heaven forbid, daily, and watch people slowly unsubscribe. The only reason they slowly unsubscribe is lethargy. But they’re leaving.

Treat Your Community as a Privilege

Yes, you need results. But are you going to get them by beating people? Are you tracking the responsiveness of your beatings? Does it really help anyone?

Stop. Push back. If the mother ship says that’s how you should use Twitter, point them to this article.

I’m at the point where I’m going to unfollow people. That’s the beauty of tools like Twitter. I can opt YOU out of MY community. Email? I push the spam button a lot more than I used to, especially knowing that it’s the nuclear option for email marketing.

Please stop. Please come up with more unique ways to market than retweeting and beating your online communities. There are many other ways: co-op marketing in the community, content marketing with video and other good lead generation. Comments without being spammy on related and pertinent blogs. Searching for people in that community looking for help.

See what I’m saying?

Stop. Please. Thanks.

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/whack-a-mole-marketing/