Is this a betrayal of trust?
Like a lot of Squidoo Lensmasters, I am on the mailing lists of people I want to hear from. I want to hear their news and I want to check out their recommendations. They are people I respect and many of them are bloggers I follow, so I can make sure I don’t miss their latest updates.
Yesterday I received an email from someone who is building quite a reputation for finding useful information. I was sent a link for something to check out. I looked at the link, which I recognised and thought yes, that is a website I do not mind visiting.
I clicked the link and was taken to somewhere I was not expecting. It was to a site that belongs to someone else.
How would you like it if I sent you an email that appeared to recommended you check out something on aj2008.com? Would you trust me enough to click on that link?
How would you like it if having trusted me enough to click on the link, you did not land on aj2008.com but someone else’s page?
How would you feel if you could see that I would get a referral fee, if you dowloaded the free document you thought you were going to see on my website?
Bet you can guess how I felt!
6 Comments »
spirituality said :
September 11, 2009 at 8:19 pm
I would feel I trusted that webmaster a lot less than before. We all have to balance the personal with the professional online and that person clearly crossed a line there.
That comes at a cost: online relationships get eroded if one does that sort of thing.
The power of the web is personal recommendation, not automatic referral. If we’re not up front with people online about what we’re sending them, we’re throwing away the relationship.
An online ‘friend’ of mine recently told me she’d blocked someone she knew in real life on twitter. I was like ‘WHAT’? in my opinion blocking people on twitter is a tool to avoid spam, not a way to manage what you get from people. If you really know someone, you’ll tell them certain communications aren’t welcome, instead of using a mechanical way to get rid of the unwanted communication.
Similarly: that lensmaster should have blogged about the product he/she was recommending and then posted an ordinary link to the product page they wanted people to see. That way you’d have known what they were on about.
aj2008 said :
September 12, 2009 at 12:07 am
Just to clarify – the person who sent me that link was not a personal contact – but someone who is building a presence (and an income) on the internet. It is someone whose mailing list I signed up to because I recognise that they have useful info to share.
However, Katinka you are right when you say that “the power of the web is personal recommendation, not automatic referral”.
By doing what this person did, they crossed the boundary. They compromised the reputation they had established for being a “trusted teacher” and, in my view, wrecked their reputation for giving trustworthy personal recommendation in pursuit of earning a few cents for a referral.
As far as I am concerned this means that this person has crossed the threshold to the “dark side” of Internet marketing.
As for Twitter, I will be posting about my views on Twitter and Twitiquette on SquidLog, very soon.
phiz said :
September 15, 2009 at 10:52 am
It’s stupidity – and since I’m not on Squidoo here I can say things like that. Most high value links on the Internet come about by personal interaction and building trust. None of us gets on with everybody – that’s inevitable – but it’s critical not to abuse the key relationships you build up. Katinka has it right.
Kate
mulberry said :
September 16, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Yes it’s a betrayal of trust. It takes innumerable trustworthy acts to establish trust and only one betrayal to lose it.
lakeerieartists said :
September 17, 2009 at 11:28 pm
I think that there is a certain level of honesty in all business relationships. It is okay for a business person to promote their business, after all, that is why they are in business. However, to lie outright to get you somewhere is not conducive to getting you to buy their product; it is actually counterproductive and yes, a betrayal.
Personally, in most cases, I would cut that person off entirely. But I am sort of mean about those kind of things.
In response to spirituality’s post, I have also cut off people I know on Twitter if I do not want to hear their tweets. I like to read tweets that are either personally interesting for me, or related to my business, and professionally interesting for me. Sometimes I will follow someone for a while, then stop, because the amount of tweets does not equal my interest level. It doesn’t mean that I won’t communicate with them via email, phone, or some other method, though.
You know, AJ, that I would love to give you a referral fee on a product that you endorse, because I trust you. However, that trust has been built over time, and I know that even though you and I do not agree on everything, you are a passionate, compassionate, and trustworthy person who I trust. Therefore, if you led me to a site that you recommended, it would be for a reason that I could trust. But if I don’t trust you, why would I continue to waste my time following you in any manner?
joanhall said :
October 4, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Definitely not cool. I wouldn’t remain on the person’s mailing list.
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