Awhile ago the Huffington post, in its infinite wisdom, decided to publish a list of the “Top 100 Cloud Computing Experts on Twitter“. Now before I go any further, I have to say that, despite stroking the ego, these lists mean very little – a new one comes out every week or two and it’s a standing joke amongst the clouderati to compare rankings and laugh when we do, or do not “make the cut” for a list. I’m not even going to link to the list itself, since it was pretty much linkbait of little value.
But something resulted from the list that was kind of interesting. A week or two after the list came out, I received the following email:
Mr. Ben Kepes,
Your TOP 100 Cloud Computing Experts On Twitter Recognition Preview is now available.
As Published In: The Huffington Post, August 2013.
The plaque is $159 plus S/H.Regards,
xxxx
Attached to the email was an image of the plaque (gaudy huh?).
Anyway – before anyone thinks for a second otherwise, I didn’t even considering buying the thing. Just hanging it up, let along paying good money for it, is pretty much the definition of what it means to be a douchebag. But I wonder if the plaque company isn’t missing an opportunity here. Instead of sending out what is essentially a phsishing email, here’s a novel approach the company could take. Select a few lists as a test and send plaques out to the people that made the list – select lists, and people on the list, who are obviously influential on social media (maybe the first ever real world use case for Klout?). It’s a fairly safe bet that socially active plaque recipients would talk online about the plaque and send a shout out to the plaque company – I can’t help but think that would be a far more valuable long term marketing approach than just bombarding list members with unsolicited emails.
The world of marketing is changing forever – traditional approaches just don’t cut it any more. (Oh and just in case anyone thought otherwise, no I’m not angling for the company to send me a plaque. For one I very much doubt they’ll see this email and for another anyone coming into my house and seeing the plaque hanging up would never let me live it down!