In my Technical Blogging book I wrote the following on marketing: -- Correct a Self-Sabotaging Mindset -- Marketing is bullshit. Marketing is evil. Marketing

In my Technical Blogging book I wrote the following on marketing: -- Correct a Self-Sabotaging Mindset -- Marketing is bullshit. Marketing is evil. Marketing is everything that’s wrong with this world. Marketing is the root of all evil. Marketers should be shot. I have heard all these statements—and plenty more like them. If you agree with any of them, you are not alone in your dislike of marketing. I’ve found that technical people, particularly programmers, tend to have a strong hatred for marketing. Antimarketing stances stem partly from bad experiences with manipulative marketers and partly from a misunderstanding of what marketing actually is. Wikipedia defines marketing in this way: "Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers and what strategy to use in sales, communications, and business development." At its core, marketing is about connecting people to solutions. For example, some people may have an interest in buying an environmentally friendly car. Good marketing involves identifying this segment of the population, then devising a strategy to let that portion of the population know about the existence of your brand-new hybrid car and its benefits (in a style and manner that will appeal to them). Though the ultimate goal is to sell a car, marketing isn’t about convincing people who are not interested in your product to buy it. It’s about exposing the right product to the right audience. Done correctly and in an ethical manner, it’s possible to promote without deceiving, manipulating, or forcing people to spend their hard-earned money on goods they don’t want or need. It’s important to understand that marketing is so much more than just advertising. Marketing encompasses countless aspects of your product, including what you name it before it even exists. If you still feel that marketing is mostly evil, I encourage you to reflect on the forms of marketing you already do, perhaps without even realizing that they’re marketing. Ever applied for a new job? Or dated someone? While you probably didn’t misrepresent yourself with your future employer or partner by blatantly lying, you still wore nice clothes and tried to showcase your favorable traits. In doing so you were marketing yourself. In blogging, the aim of your marketing is to reach as many people who are potentially interested in your content as possible. As we’ll see in future chapters, you may also have related additional goals, such as promoting yourself professionally, marketing yours and other people’s products, and so on. Like all tools, marketing can be used for good or in unethical, obnoxious ways. In this book, I advocate only white-hat marketing techniques that will get your content in front of the people who need to see it. So if you are the stereotypical antimarketing developer, please approach the rest of the chapter with an open mind. I promise that you won’t have to sell your soul.