Follower Fail: Like Us ... Or Else

In between creating marketing strategies for clients, launching new projects, and spending time with the hubs and kidlets, I've developed a bit of a secret stress-relief habit that I'm really not too proud of and certainly didn't ever want to share with my friends and clients.

But, for the sake of my clients and helping them learn from bad social media marketing examples, I'm coming clean. Here it goes ...

I am a fan of those certain "real" housewives. Doesn't even matter which town - the OC, Beverly Hills, New Jersey, the ATL, or even the completely dull DC cast, I turn off my brain and happily watch their over-funded, often near-hysterical antics.

In fact, every now and then during the work day, I would even go to a certain gossip website that dished the dirt on the "characters" of the Beverly Hills cast. I liked to quickly peek in there, like when you're on line in the grocery store and you browse the tabloid headlines when you think no one is looking. (Come on, you do, don't you?)

And this is where I encountered that really poor example of social media marketing I mentioned.

After perusing the home page list of salacious headlines, I selected one, clicked, and received the following page:

As you can see, after just a few lines, a little purple ad box with no "close" button covered the copy. Not paying much attention and not even reading the ad box, I back buttoned it to the home page headlines, selected another, clicked, only to have the same thing happen again. Looking at the box more closely, I realized it said this:
Basically, to read the article, the website was forcing me to "like" them on Facebook. Where the whole world would see that not only do I like those real housewives, I tend to frequent a gossip website that discusses their important issues - like getting a nose job before season 7 begins. The humiliation - right?

Then, I began thinking about it like a marketer. First, this little ad was literally forcing me to do something I didn't want to do, giving me a bad feeling about a brand I had been fond of; effectively giving me an instant negative opinion of that brand.

Then I thought, what if you switched the venue from an online site to a brick and mortar store? Say you like specific type of underwear from Kmart, or you like bargains at TJ Maxx, but don't want people to know. One day you go to the store and before you can enter, an associate bars the way and makes you yell at the top of your lungs, "I like Kmart's 100% Cotton Beige Granny Panties and am about to purchase some right now!"

Which brings me to my point - we must always remember that communicating with our target audiences online is as personal an experience as communicating with them in real life, because even though they can't be seen through the monitor, they are still real people.

To be successful in online marketing, the same rules for professionalism, courtesy, and dare I say it, discretion and privacy, must apply when we communicate with customers and potential customers online.

Have you ever had an experience online like this? How did you feel? React?