Tuesday 4 December 2012

THE GOLDEN RULE OF Self-PROMOTION.

Nobody likes to be spammed. That much is obvious. Yet some individuals insist on leaving anonymous comments and adding links to their sites in the comment areas of blogs. I wonder how those folks would feel if I posted anonymously to their blogs and then left a link to my own site. Often these web pages are totally unrelated to the post that they've been added to. Worse yet, some sites contain malicious code. Nobody but a fool wants to click on an unknown link.

Like submitting queries to magazines, people with a service or product to sell should consider how it fits with the needs of the individuals they approach. For example, a blog about Christianity isn't the place to plug a porn site. Likewise, gun collectors would be much more interested in pages where rare firearms are featured than ones where gun control is advocated.

People also appreciate being asked to review or promote products. I've received several e-mails from people promoting software that's unrelated to the theme of my blogs. I politely refused their offers. On the other hand, I have reviewed a couple of books because they tied into the themes of past posts. Blog readers subscribe to blogs because they enjoy the content of them. If the blogger posts widely divergent topics, readers tend to lose interest.

Having written this, I want to make it clear to anonymous commenters that I don't post links to sites unless I know them well. I don't mind opposing views if the argument is framed politely but I won't publish hateful rants or blatant plugs for suspicious web pages.

The purpose of this blog is to feature my writing. I've recently published How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Use the search box at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm to learn more about this testimony of God's grace and providence.

1 comment:

  1. I doubt spammers read the post they're spamming, but a couple of spam comments I received yesterday on my blogger site which I no longer use might prove otherwise. The post that was spammed was one I'd put up over a year ago about how corporal punishment changed my behavior for the better when I was a child. You can read it on my Wordpress blog at http://abbiescorner.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/corporal-punishment-2/ The spam comment contained a link to a pornography site. Since pornography sometimes involves inflicting pain as part of the sex act, I can see how the two topics are related.

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