Please Stop Treating Us Like Idiots

Dear Social Media Marketers,

I can imagine how tough it must be finding something interesting to say about your products, day in, day out. And I can forgive you when your advertising or promotional materials don’t always make me smile or laugh or think. But please could you stop treating me and my fellow consumers as idiots?

Even with 24/7 communication channels and two way conversation capabilities powered by social networking sites, it’s OK if we don’t talk all the time.

Take T.M.Lewin for instance. You sell shirts, nice shirts. But why do you think anyone would want to complete random, unrelated sentences on your behalf? If you treat us like idiots, you should expect the suitably juvenile responses you receive:

And Cillit Bang, much as I understand why you desperately need those ‘Likes’, do you really think anyone wants to share their motivational cleaning song with you? Linda Church has the right idea:

I know this is the Internet we’re dealing with and all human life is there. But surely there’s something more interesting we could be talking about.

Or, as my mum taught me, if you don’t have anything useful to say, don’t say anything.

I and my fellow consumers would be very grateful if more social media marketers could also heed this advice.

Yours in despair,

Allister