Innovative Visionary

I’m still working on a full blown write up on the “experts” of Social Media but I just had to get this post out there while the fire was still hot. That will be coming soon.

You want to be an NBA Superstar. You know what every one of those superstars have in common? A coach who taught them when they were in the 3rd grade. If you want to be a superstar you need to have an awesome coach and I’m that guy. No, none of my kids have gone to the Pro’s but people like myself have had great results. I’ll give you a list and randomly quote them all the time. I’ve read all the big coaches books, Phil Jackson, Coach K, etc. You realize people in the pros are making MILLIONS of dollars. Do you want to miss out on those big dollars because you weren’t willing to invest $99.99 with me to learn how to get to that next level. You have to hire me for my “expertise” because if you are serious about success, I am your “best” answer.

Sorry I couldn’t help with using the sports reference after seeing the word coach repeatedly over the last couple days. Would you trust that guy to take your 3rd grade son to the pros? I know I wouldn’t but this is basically the proposition these “coaches” are making. Sadly there are tons of people who can’t spot this scam and buy into it. These “coaches” will tell you they are “experts” and that their “results” speak for themselves, except either they forget to give you these results they are talking about or the ones they do give are just a giant joke.

While this is about a lot of different people, the person that sparked most of this was someone who goes by Coach Lee and is the driving force behind the specific examples. I had first heard of her when a twitter spam campaign was being used to “promote” one of her classes. She never interacted with the local twitter community so I just made fun of her and kind of forgot about it.

Recently though she decided to pop her head out to take a shot at one of the people in the community I respect, Steve Dalton, because he has actually worked on building the local community instead of barking from a soapbox to build themselves up like many others. Steve did a lot of work and put together a nice list of people who are blogging in NW Indiana. He basically had 2-3 lines of personal commentary on each one, but nothing to crazy that I would think would produce any drama. Coach Lee decided to respond and brought a ton of things up that shed some light on how out of touch she really is.

On top of that comment, we had some additional activity on her own blog when Allyn Hane posted a comment that she responded to with more rehashed garbage. So with all that info out there, lets get into the nitty gritty of why people like this need to be outed for their worthless “experience and expertise” and let people understand why the things they are saying are invalid or of no real value.

I’m not going to get into the pointless “corrections” she made to some of Steve’s commentary as it was basically nothing. Allyn already took her to school on how pointless Alexa is though I have a slightly different take on it. The beefs I have are with her bragging about her own results that are just plain silly, pointing to other people who shill the same shit to justify her own greatness, and a complete lack of understanding in regards to the numbers she uses to justify why she knows what she is talking about.

The first part, which I started to get in to in a comment on Dalton’s post, was the spam comments that she replies to like they are real people. Now that’s fine if you want to believe they are real and talk to no one on your blog. But to then brag about it like you are getting some kind of amazing results? That’s ridiculous. I have 29 comments sitting in my spam right now from the last time I cleaned them last week and guess what? They are nearly identical to the ones you have on your blog that you responded to. On top of that, half the responses you are bragging about are your own. Yes you do say that some are yours but come on, it’s around half that are yours because you can’t figure out how to respond to more then one person in a comment, nor do you say who each comment is directed at. How is that number of any real value that you feel you should be bragging about it to others?

I can have 15 people RT this post in the first minute of it being online and have 100′s of comments as well but would I brag about that? No, because they are all me. And what’s even funnier is that there are giant clues to the fake nature of these comments but yet you respond with :

Leanne Hoagland-Smith: Agreement or disagreement is always encouraged. However, when two different people from the same URL make exactly the same comment, this suggests somewhat unethical behavior in and by itself. This comment has been approved, the second one has been deleted.

Only the SECOND?!?! Seriously how full of yourself must you be to think that these comments are real? And guess what happens when spammers see their comment on your site? They come back and put up more because you are gullible enough to actually allow them. And guess who that hurts? Everyone else who has a website and has to deal with spam bots because they are hoping to find another idiot like yourself who will allow their links to show up on their site.

“But hey, so and so said my site is getting great results.” That does more to prove the person is clueless about what they are talking about and shouldn’t be trusted then anything I can really say. If he thinks getting increased traffic because you allow spambots to post on your site “is incredible” then he does all the work for me. That’s some great traffic you got there if you are selling robot batteries, oh wait you are selling business “coaching”.

Coach Lee also talks garbage about other people’s SEO skills that someone paid “lots of money for” when she can’t take 3 clicks and get your titles in the address bar. Just like missing a proper title, that’s another huge idiot move and I’m not an SEO expert and know this. I’m not perfect when it comes to SEO, blogging and such, but I also don’t sell my services as someone who can help you with them. I don’t have to go to these classes to know that garbage is being peddled to people because of what has been shown outside the class. You out yourself on how completely clueless you are what you sell.

But why should anybody not trust you when you quote numbers from places like Hubspot that show what kind of value you can bring to the table? Lets see, maybe because if you actually understood anything about those topics you would see that everything in the report was of little value and comes from an “Inbound Internet Marketing Blog” that sells inbound marketing products. Should we ask Nike who the number one basketball player of all time is and expect an unbiased result or have them survey people who purchased Air Jordans? Justifying your value and expertise with garbage reports just helps the intelligent people spot your inability to understand the value of the source material but sadly there are many who will just take your word on it. Hopefully the later will read this or know someone who did who can steer them clear of the idiocy.

Why do I care? To go back to the sports analogy, I’m the Orthopedic Surgeon. I’m the one who has to deal with the messes left behind by people who peddle BS to those who are not able to figure it out themselves. When higher ups hear something stupid about Technology from some “expert”, people like myself are the ones who have to then implement this garbage because the higher ups “needed it” without an understanding or clue of why. This wastes time from tasks that would have been of actual real value to the organization. For large organizations, this is going to always be an issue and expected, but for the smaller businesses this wasted time and effort can be of grave consequence.

Am I another “coach” just trying to belittle another to make myself seem better, hell no. I may have my 2 cents to put in on these topics, but I’m doing it from a technical angle. I’m not “jealous” of another person’s traffic or trying to sling mud because you are so “successful”. I’m hear trying to let people know about the snake oil and BS techniques you are selling so I’m not having to do surgery on their kids body in the near future because they followed some idiotic coaches advice. “But doesn’t that mean you won’t make as much money because you will have tons of work because of this?” For some that is okay and they base their entire business on it, but for me I’d rather spend my time on doing cool new things and bringing real value to places where it is needed instead of doing work that will end being for nothing.

In the end I hope everyone here is able to get a little bit of what they needed to understand that they need to be skeptical of the people selling them on these things the “have” to be doing for their business to succeed. Most of it is just scams that they were taught by other scammers to try to get money for nothing. If you liked what you heard you can learn more in my upcoming e-book “Spotting an inbound marketing/social media idiot while prepping your kid to have a NBA worthy killer crossover for Dummies” that will be available for $99.99.

Side note to anyone who feels that I should be directly contacting these people and not making it public, do you really think me pointing out that they are horrible, worthless, unethical pieces of shit will make them change their ways? Obviously they don’t care that they are peddling BS because if they did they would actually do real research and actually educate themselves on the subjects which they speak instead of just spitting out the garbage reports that support their “points” so people pay will think they are what they are not. If sending them an email would make them stop I would, but I doubt I’ve got the Tina Meier skills to get them to do the only thing that would be of value to the community.