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Thursday, September 20, 2012

The semiotics of optimization.

A side effect of our increasing literacy around all things web is our increasing ability to know when we’re being scammed, gamed, or pwned. Much in the same way that we’ve developed filters against traditional advertising, we’re now developing sophisticated responses to deceptive advertising and marketing tactics.

I think the same is true for deceptive content marketing tactics like obvious headline and keyword manipulation and optimization of headlines for the greatest traffic. Sooner or later, we will all realise that not everything “is dead,” regardless of what the Harvard Business Review says, and that there are often more or less than 21 interesting things, even though Buzzfeed can’t find them.

But I think we don’t simply learn to ignore tactics like this, we also form impressions about the people and companies who use these tactics. In an age where relationships are often based upon shared values and interactions with most companies take place online, the methods you use online make your values transparent.


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