MGM caught leaving bogus comments
Word of Mouth Marketing author Andy Sernovitz has seemingly caught MGM leaving bogus blog comments in an attempt to promote a new DVD.
Sernovitz found two examples of comments left promoting the DVD release of The Cutting Edge 3 on two different posts, one on John Frost’s The Disney Blog and one on a TV Guide blog. When he emailed the generic Gmail address left on each post he got an automated reply from a publicity person at MGM.
Andy is absolutely right when he condemns the practice of leaving what amounts to comment spam by marketers. It’s a shady practice that is every bit as harmful to the community built up around these blogs as when marketers started leaving fake messages on message boards and such.
I have some experience with this (remember I do social media relations in my day job) and I work hard to make sure I drop comments only when it’s relevant, when it actually adds value and when I feel it’s going to be a welcome addition to the conversation.
So I start off by explaining who I am, who I work for and why I’m leaving them a comment. I then drop whatever information or linkage I have that’s going to add to the value of the post in a respectful way, just like I would do if I were talking to them in their home. And then I get out. Short, clear and to the point.
The comments Andy found have been deleted but he grabbed screenshots of one of them and I’d encourage you, if you’re a marketer, to go over and look at how not to do comment marketing.
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Hi Chris,
I delete almost all comments that contain what appear to be commercial links. I prefer to get them via email and add them myself as updates or new posts. It definitely helps if there is some sort of relationship between me and the contact as well (a Disney connection is usually enough in my case).
I deleted the suspected comment that Andy found as soon as it came across my radar and marked the sender as SPAM too.
It’s almost as if we need a “robots.txt” equivalent for communication method for commercial links.
Thanks