WOMMA – wrong

I’m not very cross with WOMMA but I do think it’s important to remind them occasionally – not enough to harass, just occasionally – that they are wrong in disallowing anyone who is not an agency to join:

Connect to WOMMA; Join the WOMM Conversation

There are tons of ways to get connected to WOMMA and our amazing community of word of mouth marketing experts, thinkers, and trendsetters. WOMMA is a hub for people who “get” word of mouth marketing, and we’d love to have you join us. Here are a few ways you can get connected:

My comment (dunno if they will print it)

…actually, WOMMA is NOT the place to connect to marketing experts. It’s the place to connect to traditional agencies. Case in point: I’m not even allowed to join WOMMA as I don’t have staff. This is in spite of the fact that Advertising Age listed me as the #134 most influential blogger globally and B&T Magazine listed me as #4 in Australia.

I’m not allowed to sign the ethics statement in spite of the fact that I’m involved with social media projects in Australia, Asia, and the Middle East for huge global companies. For example: Middle East Broadcasting – MBC, funded by Royal House of Saud – flew me in to teach social media to Arabic women in Jeddah, Saudi as part of “iMatter” – helping Islamic women find a voice online. Social media at its’ most world-changing no?

I teach social media and word of mouth marketing all over the world, but regularly in courses at the University of Sydney and University of Western Sydney. But I can’t recommend WOMMA to my students – how can I recommend a word of mouth organisation that does not recognise the power of a single influential marketer or evangelist?

I suggest you look at Social Media Today instead, if you want to truly connect with people who “truly” get word of mouth marketing. Or anyone at the Twitter Agency http://twitteragency.com/ 🙂 Until WOMMA offer individual memberships or non-sole operator ones, they won’t “get” social media, unfortunately, in spite of clearly having the potential to lead in this field. 🙁

And I know that some of you sole operators out there joined – but you must’ve cheated. How many staff did you fib and say worked in your ‘agency’ 😛 and no, they won’t count the wife and kids… Heh.

No individual memberships = FAIL.

My previous post is here.

EDIT: currently getting 500 errors when submitting comment. So it’s here, in case they want to read it. Of course, I got no response from emails or blog posts last time…