I am always leary when I see ads, emails, and blog posts with “SECRETS EXPOSED” or “THE TRUTH ABOUT” in the subject. It seems everyone has jumped on the “shock value” marketing bandwagon. If they can titilate their potential audience, convince said audience that something really is a secret, then they will rake in the bucks.
The latest offender on my list is Salary.com who sent me an email titled “Job Interview Secrets Exposed.” Usually, Salary.com is a fairly reliable industry source for job market information such as interview & resume tips, salary ranges based on jobs and locations, and detailed descriptions of the most common job titles. But when they send me an email purporting that the interview process is some secret society with handshakes, passwords, and mysterious processes that only they can decrypt for me (which is inferred in the email subject), then they lose points on my Reliable Source Scale.
Writers get sucked in by these tactics a lot. So do would-be techies trying to crack into the Information Technology industry. In fact, it’s safe to say that anyone trying to change careers or find their big break is a potential target for exactly this kind of useless marketing sensationalism. Getting a job and getting published are difficult precisely because someone decided to play upon the fear of failure. The more convinced we are that we are failing because of the system (and not ourselves), the easier it is to play to those fears and sell millions of books or self-help courses to fix the problem. And, of course, for the authors or marketeers to make buckets of money in the process.
There is no secret to writing, getting published, or becoming employed. Legitimate organizations and mentors are freely sharing this information everywhere, including on the internet. Yes, there’s a lot of information out there, but if we use our common sense, we can tell the difference between the crap advice and the good advice.
Here’s the truth as I see it: Any campaign crying out about secrets exposed is just repackaging well-worn common sense advice in a shiny wrapper so they can get into our wallets. Or maybe they’re conspiracy nuts, journalists, politicians, or specfic writers.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
