Engaged In a Conversation

UPDATE: Stuart was kind enough to send me an email and I have since removed his last name from this post. Seems he outsourced a link-building project on a freelance board and was surprised to find the guy who took the job was not playing by the rules.

I hate the guys that comment on blogs like this:

"Cold air is certainly a relative term, but a name brand cold air intake is engineered to retrieve the air from the coolest part of your engine compartment. Cooler air has more oxygen by volume and therefore ignites better which turns into to increased power." - Stuart [last name redacted]

So I sent them a note on their "Contact Us" form.

Hey, Intake Systems:

Not sure if you have a guy named Stuart working for you in the area of "online presence management," but he's spamming my blog in your name.

Please see here: http://wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com/2010/08/well-stop-when-someone-sues-meantime-we.html

I will let slide his grammatical error at the end of the comment, but you'll note that his comment has absolutely NOTHING to do with my blog post and is of the haphazard copy/paste variety that annoys people to no end. This is not a good marketing technique and anyone who told you it was is feeding you a line. If they are an outside agency, you should fire them now.

We have come to expect these tactics from Third World operators of foreign currency exchange sites, Costa Rican real estate developers and (in the old days) Russian pornographers, but I'm sure that an upstanding auto supply specialist such as Intake Systems does not want to be associated with such practices. You're doing well in other areas: you've got the requisite articles stuffed full of keywords and opportunities for people to "like" those articles on Facebook or share them on Twitter, but you have to tell Stuart to knock off the blog spam.

I see your headquarters is in Ocala, not too far from where I live north of Orlando. Go Gators!

I have a good rule of thumb for you when questioning whether or not an online marketing practice is a good one or a questionable one: Ask yourselves, "What would Tebow do?"

Don't make Tebow sad.

Thanks,

Dave

PS: Since you chose to "engage in a conversation" (as your marketing genius likely told you to) I will continue that conversation now over at my blog. See here: http://wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com/2010/08/engaged-in-conversation.html