A Personal Brand is Demolished by Being Selfish Instead of Useful
December 3, 2008 at 12:33 pm | In People, Personal Branding, eBrand, social media | 13 CommentsTags: Facebook, twitter
It is very rare for me to single people out for bad personal branding, especially when I made mistakes when I first entered the blogosphere a few years ago, such as spamming the press/bloggers and leaving self-promotional comments on blogs. Those days are over and by learning from mistakes, it’s helped me teach you how to do it right!
I’ve spoken before about how personal branding is not about you, but the audience or community that you serve. I’m never going back on that mantra, I promise. I constantly promote others, which in turns helps promote my brand. You should do the same if you want to be successful!
Today’s personal branding case study comes from the crazy self-promoter known as Matt Bacak. Now, I’m sure he had great intentions in all that he’s done on the internet, but the perception is terrible and his brand has been engulfed with negative tweets and blog posts as a result. I wasn’t going to originally blog on this today, but Scott Bradley told me that it was a “must-post” for my blog.
Who is Matt Bacak?
Matt Bacak is Entrepreneur Magazine’s e-Biz radio show host. He has branded himself as “The Powerful Promoter.” He considers himself a sought-after internet marketer but also has marketed for some of the world’s top experts whose reputations would shrivel if their followers ever found out someone else coached them on their online marketing strategies. Matt, an entrepreneur from the time he could pull a wagon, started his first company with employees at the age of 12.
Selfish press releases
Within the past few months, Matt has paid for two press releases (PRWeb Wire Service) that have bragged about the number of friends he has on Facebook and the number of followers he has on Twitter.
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October 13th: “Matt Bacak Hits Facebook’s 5000 Friend Limit”
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December 2nd: “The Powerful Promoter Promotes Himself Straight to the Top of Twitter – Matt Bacak Achieves Another Social Networking Milestone”
Branding analysis
Matt’s Twitter profile isn’t branded whatsoever. In fact, it’s completely white, which in no way matches his personal site or his corporate website. He has almost 2,000 followers, but doesn’t follow almost any of them. I know many people with thousands more than him. This comes off as very selfish and shows that he doesn’t care about his community. I’m still not even sure what Matt does because of the amount of focus he’s placed on his own achievements.
In the Facebook release, he starts naming successful people that he’s “friends with,” yet I can bet you $100 that he’s not and they don’t know who he is. Also, I’m sure he didn’t get permission to use their names in commerce (for the release), so they could sue him, if they even cared. He’s not the only person with “5,000 friends” on Facebook. Anyone can get 5,000 friends in Facebook if they dedicate an entire day to adding random people. Is it worthwhile? No. Spend time posting on your blog instead please.
Results
- If you view the Twitter hash tag for Matt, you will notice all the harassment he’s gotten today.
- Matt gets laughed at on Digg for not having skills.
- Digg users have named him “The biggest douche in social media”
- He has an entire website dedicated to mocking the amount of people that know him.
- There have been countless blog posts, some of which have called him a fraud for labeling himself as a top Twitter user when he’s not.
Final word
I’m sure Matt is a nice guy and probably has some credibility and “raving fans,” but having thousands of Facebook friends and Twitter followers isn’t a big achievement. If he had 100,000 RSS subscribers to his blog, then I think that would be noteworthy, but you can’t force that type of loyalty. I’m sure Matt has learned a valuable lesson here and I hope to God that he doesn’t send a press release entitled “Just got 500 LinkedIn contacts, you should do business with me!”
Let this be a lesson to all of you: You gain the privilege to promote yourself, after you’ve promote everyone else.
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WOW Dan – what an analysis! I honestly didn’t know who Matt was, but noticed the Digg articles and Tweets on my Twutterly. So your post has educated me a little on what works and what doesn’t. The other point you bring up is how critical authenticity is in personal branding. Autheticity makes consistency in brand image and promise so much easier.
Comment by Ivana Taylor — December 3, 2008 #
This “case study” approach is very helpful to put some subtance iinto the sometimes hard-to-nail-down art of personal branding. But I wonder if a lot of people feel like “any publicity is good”? Start a firestorm, then mea culpa to the community and you end up better off than the “careful” people. I think if someone is making “honest mistakes” like you probably did, then people “forgive and remember.” But people HATE a phony/fraud. Same deal in customer service…problems are opportunities to show how you care whereas “perfection” is under the radar and noody notices until it breaks. Have to always be ready to “defend” your brand, product, service with actions, not just words…
Comment by Dave Atkins — December 3, 2008 #
Authenticity is absolutely key, and this guy seems to be authentically bad. Bad at social media.
I just wish it would frontpage on Digg…
Comment by Daniel — December 3, 2008 #
Have you ever thought of doing a case study on Julia Allison? She’s a wonder to me. She gets so much negative publicity, but she believe any publicity is good publicity so she takes it anyways. And it’s worked for her — she’s found some success from her self-promotion…
Comment by Nisha — December 3, 2008 #
I wouldn’t be so quick to pile on. I in no way endorse this guy’s PB, or approach, but as a fellow “student” of personal branding, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it.
I can think of tons of other “crazy self-promoters” out there that have stood out from the crowd, or at least achieved some form of career longevity, based purely on bombast. Donald Trump, Jim Cramer, Gene Simmons, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Kanye West and others come to mind. Funny, I couldn’t think of any women. Now there’s a case study.
I don’t subscribe to the brands of any of these guys, nor Matt’s. But I do acknowledge that they are, while not my cup of tea, effective in their individual pursuits. So too is Matt… if you believe him. Somebody is buying what he’s selling, and let’s face it, there is some truth to the old cliche “nice guys finish last”. We all know successful, ahem, “douches”.
There are a couple of lines I’d point to in your post:
1. “Personal branding is [about] the audience or community that you serve”.
2. “his brand has been engulfed with negative tweets and blog posts”.
Matt’s target audience, from what I can tell, are people with absolutely zero understanding of social media that are looking to make a quick buck “riding the wave of 2.0”. In other words, they have never even heard of Digg, let alone be on it, and they are nowhere in the vicinity of twitter. The only people that appear up in arms over this Matt Bacak guy are the bloggers, twitters and social media gurus that are offended by his apparent lack of respect for (or ignorance of) the purity of their art.
If you look at his brand at face value, the “follows versus followers” on twitter argument is irrelevant. Matt’s value proposition, from the best that I can tell, is that HE has the knowledge that you (his audience) DON’T, and he will GIVE IT TO YOU, for a price. What about that describes the desire to partake in a “conversation”?
I guess the lesson to be learned is that not all personal brands will be pleasing to The Many. Some of them will be down right repellent (case in point). But if they effectively reach, engage and deliver to the target audience/community that they serve, are they not successful?
SG
PS: you know whose personal brand I wouldn’t want to have? The SECOND biggest douche in social media
Comment by Scott Gow — December 3, 2008 #
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Pingback by GeekCast 46: Is Matt Bacak Really the Biggest Douche in Social Media? : GeekCast.fm — December 4, 2008 #
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Pingback by GeekCast 46: Is Matt Bacak Really the Biggest Douche in Social Media? | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins — December 4, 2008 #
Interesting post but he’s currently following 407 people on Twitter. I looked before I wrote this comment since I’ve never heard of him before.
Comment by Shelley — December 5, 2008 #
I think the biggest hit to his brand is lack of authenticity. Those in Facebook, Twitter, and other communities will question what he knows and if he’s just trying to sell something rather than engage and expand. There’s so much focus on how many followers you have rather than how many real conversations you have. Should anyone engaged in social media networks really care how many followers they have? Be passionate about what you do and numbers will go up anyway.
Comment by Michael Buechele — December 5, 2008 #
I wouldn’t hire him or pass him on to clients.
Social media is a long-term strategy, and it’s an attitude more than a strategy. I have no doubt that Matt has clients, and probably makes good money, but it doesn’t mean that he’s successful at what he does.
Big companies have been mistaking astroturfing for social media since the introduction of blogs. Adding followers just to boost your numbers is a form of astroturfing, and while it may have some value, the real problem lies in converting those followers for clients.
You can buy traffic you want to juice the numbers. $50 for 5000 “hits.” You can buy Digg submissions and daily PR 6 links as well, if you know the right people. That some companies might fall for it, doesn’t mean you can do it indefinitely.
Some shady web companies still sell “blogs” for $2000 that are just the free version coming from GoDaddy. That they can do so, doesn’t mean they are successful. They’re scam artists.
I don’t know Matt, but the fact that he counts numbers instead of results is not a good sign that he’s a results oriented marketer.
And he just got pwned by the system. In what way is that good? And will his clients still trust him?
Comment by Jim Durbin — December 5, 2008 #
I am fairly new to social media and branding and find this post and comments very interesting.
Comment by Mark Leonardh — December 5, 2008 #
This guy is so full of snake oil and hot air its laughable. Seriously – a press release announce the number of Facebook friends or Twitter subscribers? There are some seriously dumb people on this planet if a single person takes that seriously. What a joke. I do not think he has good intentions, I think he is slimy.
Comment by Adam Singer — December 14, 2008 #