Seth Godin on Spammers

"You should be careful about headlines.

It's pretty easy to write a headline that will get someone to forgive your spam, and perhaps even to open your note (CyberMonday! 85% off...). It's pretty easy to write a headline that will get someone to click through on their RSS reader. It's even easy to write a tweet that will get a click through.

But is it better to get a click and then annoy someone, or better to only reach the people who care?

The mindset of the brazen copywriter is, "Well, even if only 1% of the people I trick are actually interested in the content, that's worthwhile. After all, there are a lot of people out there, and offending 99 to get one subscriber or one sale is good math."

The word I use for people like this is 'spammer'.

The mindset of the modern marketer is, "I can build a reputation in everything I do. If I teach people to trust me, then over time, I'll conserve their attention and build permission. That's priceless, particularly in a world that's getting more skeptical by the minute."

Of course, the best thing of all is to have content that deserves a great headline. If you can't do that, though, I think you should forgo the headline.

Fore!"

So very true. The internet is simply hyper saturated with people trying to tell you something. Or more often than not... people trying to sell you something. Long gone are the days (I would hope) when people would click through the obnoxious flash games that would pop up and lead you to some online store (or worse). Advertisers take heed! Make your content exciting and people will be excited about it.

via Seth Godin