These days, it seems that absolutely anyone can declare themselves an online marketer and start advising clients on the intricacies of web marketing. All you need is a laptop and a phone line and you have access to most of the same tools and techniques the professionals use. Even better – you can pretend you understand them too.
You are probably aware that I am rather passionate about the uses and abuses of online content as a source of information and misinformation. The ability for the internet to completely distort and manipulate our view of the world is immense and so far isn’t taken seriously enough – particularly by the media operations that still use the internet for fact-checking.
The internet has been touted as the greatest ever revolution in information technology. The entire sum of human knowledge may one day be accessed through this portal of wonder. But what actually is ‘knowledge’ and how reliable is it anyway? With the internet using more ‘democratic’ methods to compile information, are we getting the facts we need or misinformation to lead us astray?
After last Friday’s post discussing the issue of fabricated linkbait, I thought I had said everything I needed to on the topic. No one was more surprised than me to see the debate rage on and on over the last seven days, with a number of arguments put forward on both sides. It quickly became apparent that for many, the problem wasn’t merely the fabrication of news for linkbait, but the large number of SEM professionals that applauded the development.
Good linkbait is the holy grail of online marketing. The right post or web article can spread through social media sites, or sometimes mainstream news sites, to point potentially hundreds of valuable links back to you.