Before Gary Vaynerchuck's presentation at SXSW they were projecting a livestream of twitter search on the two ginormous screens to each side of the stage, and lots of the tweets were off topic links back to a site or other self-promotion at the expense of the quality of content/conversation. This left me with the distinct impression that many of the 2.0 entrepreneurs out there have absolutely no respect for the people they are selling to. 

Now I've definitely had to do some marketing that I hated. Not out of necessity for success (I don't actually think that cutting corners gets you anything), but because somebody was paying me and I needed the job. But some of you have your own sites, and you own your own businesses, and you still resort to spam and auto-replies and other tricks to get clicks and page views and otherwise make the people who encounter your message want to run away screaming. 

Let me ask you a few questions: When @garyvee replies to you, do you think you just gained cash or credibility? When 999 people look at your hashtag hijacking and want you to disappear, does the one click make it all worth it? When you have thousands followers on Twitter, but can't get an @ to save your life, do you feel important?

Imagine for a moment you were at a big event, in the midst of a huge crowd of people. You wouldn't hold up a sign for your business, or start interrupting other people's conversations with your pitch, or throw handfuls of your business cards into the crowd expecting them to gratefully gather them up and spend wads of cash on your whatever-the-fuck-it-is-you're-peddling. You might listen to what they were talking about for a minute, chime in if you could add to the topic, and leave them contact information if there were some mutually beneficial reason to continue the conversation in a more long form venue. 

This brings me back around to my title point: Would you do it? Whatever it is you're selling, however you're selling it, and whatever you expect people to do to get it or pay to own it... would you do it if you were in their shoes? If the answer is 'no', you wouldn't be attracted by the message, you wouldn't value the product, or you wouldn't support somebody who took so little care with an interaction, then maybe it's time to think about another way of dealing with people.