5 Internet Marketing Buzz Words That Are Annoying as Hell
rkelley
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4 min read
I've been doing Internet marketing in some form or another for nearly four years, and while I'm nowhere near the seasoned veteran as some of the old dogs in this industry, I've worked with my fair share of clients, met lots of people, seen trends come and go, and heard plenty of eye-rolling buzz words that make me want to cobra punch someone right in the face. I polled some people on Twitter, and most of the respondents came to a consensus that these five words are annoying, aggravating and just plain douchey.
- Guru -- Why the hell does everyone have to be a "guru" at something nowadays? "Shooter McGavin is a social media guru who has spoken at fifteen billion industry events and wrote a 723-page book about Twitter that is undoubtedly already outdated." Usually when you hear someone tout himself as a guru, it's a pretty solid indication that his head is so far up his own ass, he could fart a burp. Besides, the last time the word "guru" was marketed heavily, we were given this:
Yeah, that didn't turn out so well. - Evangelist -- Quite possibly the only moniker worse than "guru" is "evangelist." When did evangelist stop meaning this:
and start to refer to some jerkwad who convinces people he can make money online? The word traditionally stems from religious connotations, so now apparently anyone who does Internet marketing is now bordering on godlike or is preaching the gospel ways of SEO. No wonder so many people think we're snake oil salesmen; with so many "evangelists" in our business, it's a wonder we haven't come out with our own flavor of Kool-Aid yet (Page Rank Punch?). - New media (or "nu-media") -- Apparently since "new media" isn't quite ridiculous enough for us to all rally behind, some real winners in the industry have started spelling it "nu-media" to really illustrate how new (or nu, I suppose) it is. These same people seem to conveniently forget that most "new" media is simply an evolved form of old media. "Holy balls, social media is NEW MEDIA!! Everyone needs to get their act together and hop on that money train before Wesley Snipes tries to rob it!" Not really. Sure, Facebook and Twitter and these other sites are new, but the marketing fundamentals are largely the same as traditional marketing we've been studying and learning about for the past few hundred years. Unless we start downloading advertisements directly into our cerebral cortex, there's not much that's "new" about marketing.
- Super affiliate -- What the hell? Are affiliates so cocky that they have to "level up" to boast about their success? Is there anything above "super affiliate," like, oh, I don't know, "EX-TREEEEME affiliate"? If so, I'm pretty sure that this is the most successful affiliate marketer to ever grace the interwebs:
- Blogger -- Everyone's a blogger nowadays. It's fine to blog; there are tons of free platforms out there and now blogging is more accessible to non-tech-savvy people than ever before. However, when someone asks you what your job is or what you do for a living and you respond with "I'm a blogger," your blog better be making money. And by "money" I'm not talking about $6.57 each month from Adsense; I'm referring to the fact that you should be able to pay your bills and live comfortably from the earnings your blog makes, whether that's from ads, products, donations, whatever. You're not "a blogger" for a living if fourteen people read your quilting blog and you spend more on the $10 domain and $100 hosting package than your blog has earned for you; you're more likely "some schmuck with a day job (or no job) who blogs in his spare time."