Helping You Navigate Digital Marketing B.S.

My name is Darren and I offer practical help, ideas and tutorials on my blog, as well as reviews and recommendations of handy tools.

This is the kind of business person you probably are:

✅ Business owner, manager, employee, freelancer, virtual assistant, tech support

✅ Often works from home or remote location

✅ Reader of books, listener of podcasts

✅ Hates spammers, scammers and idiotic salespeople

Computer Love?

Society is firmly entrenched in computers. If you’ve still not figured that out, or are “stuck in the nineties”, well, FFS, what the hell have you been doing? Digital this-that-and-the-other has been breathing down our necks for a good twenty years and is integral to commerce.

And yes, you’re correct in saying that anyone who enjoys shoving Bakewell Tart up their own backside on TikTok for likes, shares and comments needs to exiled to Siberia in a Soviet-era Gulag.

Look, whether you’re controlling your boiler thermostat or trading in the financial sector, computer technology is all up in our faces. No putting the toothpaste back in the tube now!

On the other hand, please, please, PLEASE tread carefully in this dangerous world of internet myopia, mass social media groupthink, technology panacea ideology, and misguided, boneheaded marketing and sales disasters.

Asleep at the Wheel

For decades, influencers have been selling shovels and pickaxes for the internet goldmine, and the walled garden of Big Tech social has lulled us to sleep amongst their massively profitable but wildly-changing rented land algorithms.

Yep. The shifting digital sands beneath the very foundations of our businesses are in fact sinkholes that can and do indiscriminately swallow entire livelihoods.

One bloke told me “it’s ridiculous having to rely on Google the way that I do.”

One thing we all loathe is scams. Those represent not just problems but in many cases, disaster.

There are plenty of frauds, scams, cybercrime… there always will be, and it grows in sophistication by the day.

Sadly, because of the internet, many of us have become indoctrinated by, addicted to, and willing participants of cultural hysteria. Often leading the charge and stoking the flames are dollar-eyed gurus dangling gold-plated carrots wrapped in clever online clickbait right in front of the gullible, greedy and desperate.

For example, during the pandemic, there was a huge uptick in Tinder-related cryptocurrency scams. People honestly thought communicating with and sending vast sums of money to complete strangers online was a good business investment.

“Well that won’t ever happen to me, Darren!” I hear you cry. That’s what everyone thinks… right up until the point that it actually happens.

Take me for example: in 2006 I managed to find myself participating in the Amway pyramid scheme. That was a close call! No harm done but, oh my… was that an eye opener.

Here's some slam poetry... well, "scam poetry" as I call it. A satire on those late night commercials from the 90s, or indeed any number of stage gurus who work the scam speaking circuit...

I went on a podcast called Life After MLM to talk about Amway...

There’s all the stuff about fake reviews too. Yes – that’s something else we all need to be aware of, lest the result of a bad decision made on faith actually lead to a fatality. We’re talking about cheap, badly-manufactured products such as melting phone chargers that have started fires. No exaggeration there!

Sorry to sound like it’s all doom and gloom. It’s not all negative, but people really must wake up.

All I ask is that you be careful and make decisions wisely. Watch out for charlatans. Avoid Yell.com. Realise that echo chambers surround us even if it doesn’t feel like you are the one suffering with myopia.

I went on a local radio show to talk about small business. There are some very obvious mistakes made by new or small businesses who don't understand marketing. Some of this is frustrating!