Are You Killing Your Brand For Peanuts ?

A well-known so­cial me­dia guru is pro­mot­ing his new blog post on Triberr today.

I fol­lowed his link and came to a site … well, I’d like to show you a screen shot, but I don’t want to harm anyone’s reputation.

The first thing that jumped at me was a big ad space with Google Advertising.

  • It was in­serted af­ter the first sen­tence of the blog post, shov­ing the rest of the post be­low the fold.
  • It ad­ver­tised Eti­had Air­ways to me - not a good fit on a so­cial me­dia blog.

Eti­had is a great air­line, by the way. I had 2 flights with them last week, and their ser­vice was outstanding.

Re­fresh­ing the page gave me „Ak­tion Deutsch­land Hilft. Bünd­nis deutscher Hil­f­sor­gan­i­sa­tio­nen. Jetzt spenden.“

Trans­la­tion: „Do­nate now.“

Yes, I’m sure he needs the money!

He’s not alone.

I’ve seen this on count­less web sites of mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als, con­sul­tants, per­sonal brands, web agen­cies, and SEO agencies.

Don’t do this!

Ad­Sense on your busi­ness site makes your brand look poor.

  • You’re ask­ing $ 600 for a 1 hour con­sul­ta­tion, but you need the cents from AdSense?
  • You’re sell­ing $ 3000 SEO ser­vices on your web site, but you need the cents from AdSense?
  • You don’t trust your web site to mon­e­tize it­self by sell­ing your services?

How good a con­sul­tant can you be?

Well, I might just go some­where professional!

Ad­Sense on your busi­ness site dis­tracts from the con­tent that’s sup­posed to sell your service.

  • Read­ers might fol­low the ad and click away from your site. Google Ad­Sense doesn’t even open in a new win­dow. Once I clicked the ad, your site is gone for good.
  • It shoves your ar­ti­cle con­tent be­low the fold. Read­ers might be … let me cor­rect that… Read­ers ARE too lazy to scroll be­yond your ads to find your valu­able content.

Please, if you want to build a pro­fes­sional brand, don’t lit­ter your busi­ness web site or blog with AdSense!