READ MY BLOG! BUY MY STUFF! I’M THE GREATEST! I CAN MAKE YOU RICH! I AM A SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT, AND YOU CAN LEARN A LOT FROM ME!
Does this still work in today’s day and age? I guess the same can be asked of spam, and the inevitable answer is yes, it does. “He who blasts, lasts,” once joked a colleague of mine who ran direct marketing. Nevertheless, I and many others found Matt Bacak’s hard sell a little hard to swallow. His (social media-friendly, I might add) press release yesterday took every rule out of the 1995 Internet Marketing Playbook and ran with it. I haven’t seen so much hyperbole in one place since WrestleMania III back in 1987.
Now I’m told that Matt is a multi-millionaire, and probably has a lot of great techniques, but his credibility has been hurt a bit recently. This kind of blatant self-promotional, superlative-rich, content-free press release died back in 2002 along with sock puppet corporate mascots
Press releases are designed to attract attention, and he did well at that. But can he execute on a strategy for responding to the criticism that’s cropped up all over the blogosphere and the Twitterverse?
I hope so. His supporters are speaking up, and he has come out of seclusion (he’s been teaching a class) to respond to at least one blogger (Media Pirate–you’ve got to scroll down a LOT to find his response). Here’s an excerpt:
I never suggested to my writer to have it even say that I am a twitter god or an expert in social media or to challenge anyone because I’m not. I am new to social media (as you can tell) and have a lot to learn. But, I am very good internet marketer and email marketer. I have over 300k subscribers to my online newsletter. That’s exactly what I teach my clients (email marketing and direct response marketing).
Kudos to Matt Bacaks for coming clean, fessing up, clarifying and apologizing (with just a little chest thumping on the side). Now, get to commenting on all those other blogs that may start to get some Google juice with your name… And think about revisiting your messaging and marketing strategy for the Web 2.0 world…
5 Comments Received
December 3rd, 2008 @2:10 pm
Hi Todd…
As you might know, I’ve been having a little bit of fun kicking the concept of the “Personal Brand” on Twitter. My Personal Brand often talks about how wonderful it is, and invites others to apply for such lofty titles of Minion and Sycophant. (The winner emerging from the Thunderdome gets to be the one and only Sidekick.)
Part of the schtick included the revelation that a Personal Brand of that magnitude needed tending 24/7, and as such necessitates the “outsourcing” of the Brand.
Lo and behold, within Mr. Bacak’s comment, we find the truth of the matter. He is merely a victim of his own success, so busy that he can’t prevent his Personal Brand caretakers from embarrassing the hell out of him in an emerging online culture.
Inflate your Personal Brand to the point you need others to keep it stoked, and you’re destined for trouble. So says Ike, and Ike’s Personal Brand concurs.
December 3rd, 2008 @8:38 pm
It’s good that he “came clean” but he’s still failing at Social Media here. He didn’t go where his audience (at the time) was. He should have reached out through Twitter to do this, and thumped his chest a little bit less. Now isn’t the time for him to act like a helpless victim of an overzealous PR agent. As I say for anyone, people representing you are your representation. They stand in for you, and when you enable other people to do that you take a lot of risk- but you still need to own up 100% to not managing them better when they falter, not blaming them.
Great writeup. I just wish that Matt had made a statement on Twitter, and maybe one that wasn’t just in a comment all the way deep in a blog.
December 4th, 2008 @1:16 pm
He is, for the record, back on Twitter with a vengeance, and is responding to folks: http://twitter.com/mattbacak
So I give him a lot of credibility. And I give the social media community a lot of credit for handling things fairly responsibly. The ad hominem attacks died down quickly as the picture became a lot clearer: maybe Matt isn’t a raging egomaniac like the press release would portray him as. Hell, he’s given a lot of money to charities and even has a sense of humor about the whole thing. Kudos again, Matt.
December 4th, 2008 @2:43 pm
I’m rooting for him. And I hope we can find him a shirt that says “FORMER social media douchebag.”
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