Linkbait, Reputation and the “Mental Unsubscribe”

If you run a business and your email is listed anywhere, you’ll be familiar with the spam you get. I’d like to think I run a pretty tight ship with my inbox — so as these come through, I immediately Cmd+F, search for unsubscribe and go and remove my name from their database.

I recently wrote a short piece about my frustration that there’s no way to punish linkbait headlines. They get attention in a social stream, users click and the Daily Mail laughs all the way to the bank. See the piece below for more on this.

But. While there’s no tangible cost, I’ve been thinking about how you express the intangible cost to your brand from this kind of behaviour.

When you race to the bottom and I see you posting some kind of rubbish, I head for a different kind of unsubscribe. I remember in my head to listen to you less in future. To trust you less, to break the cycle.

It’s a kind of ‘mental unsubscribe’.

Don’t underestimate the equivalent damage you’re doing to your relationships with users and readers. Yes, your data might make you feel like you’re onto something.

But if you do it at the cost of your integrity, you win a temporary marketing battle and lose a meaning war.