I’m not clever enough to even make up some of the nutty examples I see as people try to pass themselves off as marketers and social media gurus.

 

“We are consummated professionals.”

Really!  It’s nice to your know your wedding nights or date  nights are sexually-fulfilling for you! (The correct term here is “consummate”.)

 

“We service all kinds of people.”

Really?! You breed all kinds of people? (The correct term is “serve.”)

People service machines, studs service mares and bulls service cows.

People serve people. They don’t service people (as a verb) unless they’re prostitutes!

 

I bring this up again because someone on Upwork wants me to fix his brochures, which tout his marketing and social media services as bringing “consummated professionals” to their various tasks.

 

And that was just the first WTF?! of more than a dozen equally awful expressions and descriptions.

 

Now, if the service they’re offering were as graphics designers or  web designers (purely technical services), it wouldn’t bother me quite as much, because designers don’t put themselves out there as copywriters, marketers and social media gurus.

 

Web designers house/frame virtual storefronts to make them easy to get through and compelling

Graphics designers make sure their clients’ information presents well visually

These professionals aren’t usually also writers or editors.

 

They know what they do well. They outsource the rest if their clients can’t provide what they need to complete the project.

So, turning the aforementioned guy loose on an unsuspecting public to shoot them in the foot is simply not something I’m going to help with. I’m a gatekeeper as much as I am a copy, content and features writer; I’m not going to shill for a sub-par self-proclaimed marketer and social media guy who came to me saying his brochures were GREAT but he wants them to be EXCELLENT.

 

They aren’t even good. They’re so sub-par, they’re painful to read!!!  

I kept flinching, as if spattered every few seconds by burning coals!!!

 

And any copywriter so freaking hungry that he or she would HELP him by doing their best to make a silk purse out of a sow’s hear must be starved half to death.

 

I won’t serve anyone whose product or service I wouldn’t be willing to endorse and stake my own reputation on. I’m not in the business of “bait and switch.” If someone posing as a marketer or social media guru isn’t at least as good as I am as a communicator (or better), they shouldn’t be putting themselves out there as “consummated” communicators in those fields. That’s fraud! Period!

 

But there they are… doing exactly that!!!

 

So, once again, I’m practically shouting this: Buyer beware!

 

If you don’t know great marketing or social media when you see it, hire someone to interview and test the providers you’re thinking of hiring. There are as many bad ones (maybe more) than there are good ones.

 

And the bad ones won’t help you at all. They’ll only hurt you.