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10 Sneaky Marketing Tactics You Need to Avoid

Every once and a while, I get approached to write an article for a non-healthcare publication. I like to do these because they help ensure that I don’t get too narrowly focused on healthcare and pharma and lose track of everything else out there in digital marketing. When iMedia Connection asked me to write an article about deceptive digital marketing tactics, I knew it was right up my alley.

The article was just published today as an “In Focus” article, which they do twice a week. That means you can see my mugshot right on the homepage of iMedia Connection if you head over there right now. If you missed it, here’s what you missed…not too exciting, I know.

Jonathan Richman iMedia Connection Article

The article is entitled: “10 Sneaky Marketing Tactics You Need to Avoid.” Suffice it to say, if you work for a pharma or healthcare company and you’re doing any of these, you need to stop immediately. I think the industry is already lacking enough in the trust department that you don’t need anything else to cast you in a negative light. The 10 sneaky tactics include: AstroTurfing,lucky guesses, anonymous cleanup, image manipulation, trapping visitors, an inability to cancel, stealing credentials, bundling, pulling the switch and, crafty SEO. Clickthrough to the full article to see what all these mean and to ensure you’re not doing any of them: “10 Sneaky Marketing Tactics You Need to Avoid.”

4 Technologies That Are Killing the URL

A few weeks ago I submitted an article to iMedia Connection that I originally wrote for this blog. However, I couldn’t really figure out a solid pharma and/or healthcare angle, so I sent it to them to see if they were interested. They were. As you know, I just started writing a blog for iMedia Connection. I’m including stories there that aren’t really healthcare specific, but I’m also including a link from this blog because I think they are still interesting for most of Dose of Digital’s readers. (PS: Thanks to all of you who read the Twitter article I wrote. It’s still the most popular blog post on iMedia.)

Apparently, the folks at iMedia Connection liked my latest article, as they’ve made it the featured cover story. Check it out:

imediaclipcover

To read the full article, please check it out: 4 Technologies That Are Killing the URL. If you really want to see my mugshot on iMedia Connection’s cover, then go to their homepage: http://www.imediaconnection.com. It’ll only be on there for a few days though. After that, you’ll have to take my word for it.

Here are the article highlights:

Article Highlights:

  • Search engines and browsers elevate solid search marketing strategies over mere URLs
  • URL shortening services negate the branding of your web address
  • QR codes and image recognition technologies represent the URL killers of the future

More pharma/healthcare blog posts later this week, but wanted to share one more non-healthcare post with you.

Diagnosis In: Twitter’s Dying a Slow Death

One more post that’s non-pharma/healthcare specific, so I put it on iMedia Connection.

Please check out my latest post: Diagnosis In: Twitter’s Dying a Slow Death

Here’s a little teaser: “Okay, so Twitter may have more than a few months to live, but it’s not going to be around for much longer the way I see it for one simple reason. It’s not because of all the issues with security that have been all over the digital news lately. It’s not because there’s something better. It’s not even because someone’s going to buy Twitter. Twitter has a terminal disease and nothing really can save it. The disease? Spam.”

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More Digital Insights (Now with LESS Pharma)

That’s right. I know a little bit more about digital than what’s happening in pharma. Since I know the audience here really likes to tackle pharma and healthcare-specific issues, I haven’t really posted any general digital commentary. I may in the future (let me know your thoughts in the comments), but for now, we’ll stay focused.

Since I do have a bunch to say about digital in other industries, I needed a new venue. The people at iMedia Connection just gave me one. They’ve taken me on as one of their bloggers. If you visit my blog there, you’ll  see some more of my thinking on general digital issues that aren’t directly relevant to pharma. You might just pick up a few things you can use.

As a Dose of Digital reader, you’ll see a few of the posts from here appear on my iMedia blog as well, but mostly it’ll be new content.

So, please check out my first post on iMedia Connection: Do I Know You From Somewhere?

Here’s a little teaser: “Remember business cards? Remember meeting people in the real world? Not the Twittersphere or on LinkedIn, I mean the actual, physical world. Of course, we still meet new contacts in person from time to time, but more and more we “meet” them online. It only makes sense. We spend a lot of our time online searching for information and with that comes the fortunate by-product of finding others with similar interests. I follow you, you follow me. I add you to my connections, you add me. It wasn’t always like this.”

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