The line between marketing and entertainment is more blurry than ever.
We see it on social media all the time; a headline will read “We have something amazing to show you!”; and that something has been compiled, packaged, tested to totally maximize the number of people who will see it, and therefore the number of people who will click on an ad (often accidentally) and make someone a couple of cents or get them another “like”.
We’re all buried in fake news stories, gross exaggerations, and deceptive advertising. As a result, we’re always on guard of someone trying to trick us or on the lookout for ulterior motives.
We at WatzThis? are weary of marketing and advertising. For Facebook and for Twitter, social media marketing is working out great; they’re making a ton of money. For every other company: it’s quite possible that the efforts going into creating “viral” videos or Instagram ads would be better spent simply improving their products or their customer service.
We see our newsletter as a weekly writing and collaboration exercise and a way to keep in touch with our customers, students, readers, and friends. We try and put forth our authentic selves, and we never want to come across as pushing our products. We hope that it works.
The people we’ve met in person who read our newsletter understand that we’re real people who are also trying to figure things out and sometimes pass along humorous, interesting, useful, or insightful information. The 80% of people who get our newsletter each week but don’t read it, would likely sometimes read it if they weren’t suspicious of our motives.
You may or may not have noticed that we’ve backed away from social media in the recent months. The 100 or so loyal fans of WatzThis? would however, notice if we stopped publishing our newsletter. You are the group we’re focused on and who we want to continue to speak to and hear from.
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter if you’re so inclined. If you’ve gotten this far in this post, you’re our core audience and we’d love to hear what you think about what we’re doing (with our books, videos, courses, and this newsletter) and talk to you about how we might do it better.