Spam makes it harder for the good stuff to shine

Spam is just a bad thing. We all hate it. The problem I’m finding lately is that it’s also making good things appear to be more questionable.

“Why did you write about that?”

A while back, I shared on my Facebook about some great new charging cables we bought for our devices around the house. They weren’t cheap, but they did an excellent job and I wanted to tell my friends about these great cables.

I had some good discussions, but one response was:

Are you writing reviews for free stuff? I used to do that then amazon caught me and busted me lol

She assumed that I talked about these cords because I was benefiting from it, which wasn’t the case. I can see where she was coming from — it’s hard to trust anyone’s review of most anything because of affiliate programs and tracking links. You always need to wonder what the motive is behind someone talking about a product, which is very unfortunate. I just wanted to tell people about some great cables that I found, but it was hard for some people to trust my motives.

Seriously, open my video

A few months back, I used the Dubb service to send some quick videos to the people on my membership committee for the Kennesaw Business Association. I spent some time and created 20 separate, unique, 30-second videos to each person on the committee, seeing how they were doing and letting them know about our next meeting.

Of the 20 that I sent, three watched the video and just one replied. That was it! I think people are so used to being hit with “email blasts” (often sent from noreply) that it’s hard for a personal message like that to come through. While I think Dubb is an excellent service, I just have a hard time getting people to open them — even those that I know personally that have specifically asked me to reach out!

Online trust is fading. We shouldn’t hustle people that we want to serve, but it can be hard to stand out among the hustlers. Regardless, I encourage you to stay strong and do the right thing, and the people that watch what you do will see the ways that you stand out.