This is the time of year my people (New Yorkers) celebrate a holiday called Passover, commemorating our freedom from bondage in Egypt. A big part of the Passover ceremony is a reciting of the ten Plagues that God visited on the Pharaoh and the Egyptians to convince them to set the Israelites free, after which Moses would lead them to the promised land. Look for the film version soon, directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Malcolm McDowell as the Pharaoh and Nic Cage as Moses. Ok, that was a joke, but what’s not a joke are the very real plagues of Search and Social Media – the afflictions visited on marketers, publishers and users that sometimes feel like the vengeance of an angry lord.
We’ve split this up into two parts, not unlike the parting of the Red Sea, so today we present part one – the first five plagues:
1. Blood (Red Ink)
In Egypt, this was all about Moses raising his staff and making the Nile and all the waters of Egypt run red with blood. Way cool. Our version is:
Red Ink
This is what runs through your ledgers until you hit upon a viable business plan – this is, if you hit upon a viable business plan. A website can go for years (Facebook, YouTube) with the red ink running but eventually you’ll have to find a way to monetize or find a Sugar Daddy like Google to buy you out.
2. Frogs (click hopping)
Next up, frogs overran Egypt which seems like kind of a letdown after the whole bloody water bit. Anyway it was gross and the croaking kept folks up all night and a thousand French restaurants sprang up to serve their legs. Our version is:
Click Hopping
This is what happens when you get a horde of users to click on your paid or organic search result but you can’t close the deal. They hit your landing page and bounce off it like yesterday’s lilypad. Most of the time this is because the landing page lacks a clear call to action – people don’t know what it is you want them to do. Alternately, what you want them to do doesn’t make sense with the ad copy or the website description in search results.
3. Gnats (Social Media Leeches)
The third plague of Egypt can be translated as gnats, lice fleas, any way you cut it – nasty bloodsuckers. Our version is:
Social Media Leeches
These are the dumb marketers who try to piggyback on social media platforms but do it oh so wrong. You can find them in Twitter under the names “Guru” “Coach” and even, yes, “Master.” They leech your time and attention by constantly marketing rather than having a real conversation. Feh.
4. Beasts (Commenters Gone Mad)
Beasts, also known as wild animals (not to be confused with Wyld Stallyons) were set loose to stomp around Egypt – generally stinking up the place and knocking over stuff. In our world the dumb animals are:
Commenters Gone Mad
You can see these guys and gals on your blog, or your YouTube video just totally trampling over other commenter’s, acting rude, and generally behaving in an uncivilized way.
5. Pestilence (Bad Viruses)
The next plague was pestilence, or infectious disease. While God could simply have dropped Paris Hilton down amidst the Egyptians instead the farm animals were afflicted by a horrible, raging epidemic. Our epidemic is
Bad Viruses
While everyone wants in on viral marketing, sometimes it gets a bit too viral. Take candy maker Smarties who were embarrassed to find their candy being ground up into a fine powder which was then used to simulate smoking by YouTube savvy kids. What’s worse was that Smarties had no social media presence at all to counter this. Another example is when Skittles turned over their website to a Skittles Twitter search result page. Inevitably people gamed it so that disparaging Skittles remarks showed up on their own homepage.
So that’s our first five but tune in for tomorrow, the second night of Passover, for the stirring conclusion of – the Ten Search and Social Media plagues.
Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them here or check out Reprise Media folks on Twitter.
