Dear Crabby,

I love reading Blogs and online articles like those at Zdnet, that allow random people to post user feedback.

But recently I’ve seen what appear to be advertisements posted as feedback. The notes seem to have nothing to do with the topics, and provide URLs for where to learn about home-based businesses, body-part enlargement, and tractor purchasing.

I’m confused; what’s all this about?

-- Bewildered in Boston

Dear Bewildered,

Seems like the silly spammers out there have come up with a new wrinkle, adding yet another tactic to the “stupid marketing” list.

They’re now using scripts (and in a few cases, some remarkably poorly paid people in 3^rd world countries) to post ads as article feedback.

Now, the tactic in general isn’t a bad one. Like email marketing, specific feedback can be an inexpensive marketing mechanism. If I’m reading an article on Spyware, and an “innocent poster” talks up their favorite product (with an URL), arguably their marketing is correctly targeting me.

But as SPAM is to Email, those untargeted bogus posts ruin the game for everyone. SO note to all Blog owners – police your site and use coded registration to foil scripts & automated posting, or we’ll have to abandon yet another great communications mechanism to the barbarian hordes…

-- “Crabby”

[ps: Please buy my book. http://buynow.stupidmarketing.com -- and tell your friends!]