How to use your MBA to write more convincing spam

Ms Paige Turner received an email yesterday from a Daniel Roos who claimed to be representing Best Professional SEO and Web Design Services Company.

The dilemma for Daniel is that one of our students received an identical email from Daniel, even though it was meant to be a tailored email for the MBA School Of MBA Credentials.

As the wonderful MBA publicist helping the disgraced US President Richard Nixon once said, this is not lying, it’s just a credibility gap.

So, with Daniel’s credibility undermined due to his ignorance of how small our community is, I toyed with the idea of how our MBA skills might have been used to help scoundrels like SEO salespeople write more convincing spam.

I have some tips below but first, let’s look at the email Daniel sent many people yesterday.

A fresh serving of SEO spam

Here’s Daniel’s opening.

Hello, Hope you are doing well. I came across your website today when searching for the Australia search engine “Podcasting Service Adelaide” and noticed that you don’t show in the maps section and are #8 in the organic listings. That’s a lot of calls you’re missing out on.

Interestingly, young Daniel is telling us we are missing out on calls but then admits “I came across your website today”. And, interestingly, he came across it when searching for podcasting services, which is not a service we actually offer. Right off the bat, I can see that Daniel would benefit from our MBA education.

As a side note, Daniel sent this to many people who all seem to have been dominating position 8 in search, a position that Ass Pro Robert Lloyd tells me is still considered decent because that is still on the first page of Google results.

So I have made an audit report of why your top 3 competitors have out-ranked you. Competitors that we have considered are doing good business are: 1 https://podbooth.com.au/ 2 https://solsticepodcasting.com.au/ 3 https://narrativemarketing.com.au/

Thus far, Daniel has hardly drawn breath and has lurched from a questionable claim about lack of visibility to an attempt to make us jealous of other sites being higher than us.

Are you the right person to send this report? If you are, please reply to this mail and I will send it to you. Otherwise just let me know. Have a great day. Daniel Roos

It seems Daniel was in quite a hurry to leave this email and was out the door before I had a chance to mark his missive as spam.

So, let’s see how an MBA might help.

5 leaderships qualities for better spamming activity

In a succinct and helpful article by Simon Lovick of Business Because entitled, 5 Leadership Qualities Every MBA Should Have, we have a handful of principles that could really improve the effectiveness of amateur hacks, fraudsters, and SEO specialists. Let’s work through them briefly in this MBA Thought Of The Day.

Willingness to listen. Indeed, if Daniel were less breathy and breezy and more relaxed and warm, he might have had a chance to endear himself to me. As Simon points out in his article, leaders who take the time to listen embody a “compassionate type of leadership—not one based on authority and discipline, but based on trust and respect.” And with Daniel’s generic email address not tied to any company – roosdaniel3@gmail.com – his grammatical errors, and his vague claims, he could do with all the trust and respect he can garner.

Perhaps, he could have led into his email by asking if we are worried we might not be coming up high enough in Google? To a school of MBAs, that would be a juicy question to ponder.

Ability to coach. In the article, Simon quotes Julia Milner, leadership coach and academic director of the Global MBA at EDHEC Business School in France, who says a leader (or in our case a spammer), doesn’t “have to be the best in everything, but [needs] to be able to bring out the best in everyone.” What an admirable aim. Indeed, how much more warmly received young Daniel would have been, had he taken the time to gently praise something we had done and even tenderly demonstrated a little manoeuvre that Ms Turner and I could have tried together in her office?

We do teach, in our Lunchtime MBA, that it is important to share generously when communal lunch items are brought to the table, thus invoking the Law of Reciprocity which will reward you by the time dessert arrives along with your MBA Degree certificate.

Giving and receiving feedback. Simon’s article outlines the discomfort and importance of listening to and sharing feedback. Daniel is quick to level judgement at our website but how much nicer had he paused to ask us to give him any feedback about his email or about his company website, not that he shares a company web address at all.

An important point from Julia in the article, those at the top of the ladder get less feedback, so it is surprising that Daniel has hoisted himself mightily above an MBA Professor!

Being supportive. This is valuable in all coaching and leadership dynamics, explains Simon in his article, and we certainly felt unsupported by Daniel, apart from his belated offer to send an audit report.

Daniel would do well to heed Julia’s insight that you “need to want to see the positive in people”, which is not achieved by opening with “you don’t show in the maps section.” Imagine starting a dinner party conversation with that tone? As an MBA, I might have started by posing a supportive question, something like: Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to attain higher rankings in search engine listings through sharing your wonderful wisdom in a timely and succinctly composed manner? Wouldn’t that be a nice email to receive?

Understanding the benefit of self-reflection. Ah, yes, Simon finishes his article strongly. We must all self-reflect. Sometimes I spend quite about of time alone, in front of a mirror, often while enrobed. I use this time to look at who I’ve become, which is why it was sad to see this element completely lacking in Daniel’s spam.

I would have preferred Daniel to insert a sentence like this:

Finally, as I close, I will spend some time now, deep in thought about my possible role in your life in relation to your website, to act as your servant doing everything I can to help you get it up. I am not perfect, few of us are, but I want to continue improving and if I get the opportunity to work with you, I will apply my self (both hands at once) to ensure we have a productive coming together of minds and hearts. It has been an honour just to think you have read this far. Thank you. Your beloved, Daniel Roos.

As you can see, once you have your MBA, you look at the world differently and even the humdrum annoyance of producing spam can be lifted to a majestic endeavour.

PS Please let me know if this article turns up on Google in the Maps section.