Are you a Social Media Spammer?

One of the worse accusations to be accused of these days is the act of spamming.  However, most of us do not know what constitutes spamming on social media sites.

The last couple of years has brought a major change in the way we market our products, sites and companies with the coming of social media. As always, you have people trying to do it the right way and you have people trying to cut corners and get an edge by engaging in unaccepted practises and strategies.

Google fights against two main groups of Internet criminals. I use the word criminals because we treat and view these groups just like we treat and view criminals in the live world. We watch out for them and engage in practises to help stop them from achieving their goals. Which is to get around the accepted system of doing business or the acquisition and use of personal property.

In this case your personal information is your property.  These two groups of people can be classified as spammers and SEOers. Now you might say that you have to SEO in order to get notice by Google and get the free traffic that Google provides. Yes you are correct but its not SEO that google has a problem with. It is the abuse of the SEO tactics that Google has a  problem with.  SEO tactics such as “Link Farms” are the types of SEO practise that Google frowns upon because of the blatant attempt to manipulate their algorithms.

SEOers basically try to manipulate traffic to a commercial message with out putting in the time and effort of sharing relevant and quality content.

Spammers are also a problem and Google and other Internet giants fight hard against them. Now you ask what is spam and why is it a problem. The interesting fact about spam is this, although its been around since the birth of Internet interaction, most people do not have a very good understanding of what spam is and what spam does. This includes myself until I researched the material for this article.

I don’t remember what was going on when I came up with the idea to write this article but it stemmed from a question I ask myself one night. That question was…am I a spammer?

A more specific question I asked myself was this…. since I research social interactivity on the Internet, which social media has become the main tool for, do I Spam on Social Media?

Those questions got my brain spinning because I did not think so but as my research has revealed, I do spam social media sites and other social interactive sites to promote my sites and products.

I am a unknowing spammer but before you judge me, you may want to learn what constitutes social media spam.

Note: I have cleaned up my frowned upon promotion tactics that I will say I did not take into any extreme but still doesn’t give me the right to use in any function.

So lets go over some questions that need to be answered to better understand how we Spam with out knowing we’re doing it.

What is Spam?

Here is the Definition of Spam:

Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages…

Basically, it says that spam is auto generated bulk copies of the same “unsolicited” commercial message to a lot of people.

Now, as communication on the net has changed over the years, I personally believe that the above definti0n is not completely accurate. Spam is not always automated.  Basically, in its most simplest form, is a unsolicited message (commercial or not) placed in front of people to get them to engage in a commercial interaction or to give personal information away with the purpose of a commercial interaction at a later date.

That’s my personal interpretation of what Spam is and I believe most people would agree with me. Now the net is changing daily so that definition is not keeping up with what people feel spam is but it does shed some light to the other questions about spam.

I guess one could argue what exactly is a unsolicited message on a social media site but I will give my interpretation of that as well.

Why is Spam so bad?

Well beyond the obvious reason of it being just plain annoying and time consuming, I was surprised to learn that it cost me money for people to spam me. Maybe not a lot of money but if you are anything like me, I do not appreciate someone costing me money when it doesn’t have to be spent.

Google, Yahoo, other search engines, social media sites, forums, submission sites (Article/Video), websites and blogs are all working together to fight spam. 

Why you ask?

The Internet was created for people to share information and not to do e-commerce. Although it has become accepted to do e-commerce. The most basic reason for the Internet however is to share information.  As time has gone on people realized the financial potential to sell information and to sell product and services via Internet.

A typical person gets online and immediately gets on their favorite search engine and for instant recognition we will use Google. Google’s primary goal is to connect a searcher with relevant information as soon as possible. Google does not want the searcher to have 10 middle men between their searcher and the content they are looking for.

Who are the middle men?

Junk Sites, Mirror Sites, Fake blogs, Spammers and SEOers. The list could go on and on.

So google created their algorithms to get around all the spam and junk so that the searcher can have a better experience finding their content. Google also created AdWords to help legit business get a solicited message in front of these searchers. Google has recently, cleaned up their AdWords program to get the Spam and SEOers out of it as well.

So Google wants businesses and Infoprenuers to work with them to stop spam. That’s why social media sites for example have their policies about spam. They will suspend or terminate spammer accounts in order to work with the other Internet spam fighters. Forums will ban a spammer for life if they post irrelevant content or blatant attempts to drive traffic off their forums without contributing to their forum.

Spam is abuse of the intended use of the site for its real customers or members.

Also, have you ever gone into your email account and saw that you had 10 unread messages? However, when you started reading the messages you realized you really only had 1 or 2 real messages. Doesn’t this just make you angry!

But why does it make you angry?

Because it was a complete waste of time and who gave these people the right to invade your privacy. This would be the same thing if someone kept putting a business flyer in you mail box everyday. That’s a federal offense that the government takes very seriously. At least in the United States they take it seriously. Why, because its your personal property and they have guaranteed to keep your property sacred to you. That’s their job as the United Postal Service.

Well since its such a big deal in the live world can you see why its such a big deal in the virtual world. Spam is Privacy Invasion!  On a social media site, spam is when someone has friended/followed you and them starts to try to sell you something or send you somewhere.

Here are some real life examples of Spam and SEO activities.

SEO and Spam activities would be like throwing a party at your home or business and some stranger asking if they can join. You say yes and then they start trying to sell your friends vacuum cleaners or trying to get your friends to go to the party they are throwing at their house. Uhh No!

I would have a major problem with that and I am sure you would too.

Or lets say a business is having a promotion and they have spent money generating a lot of buzz in their marketing and achieved bringing a big crowd together at a specific location. Then a competitor (directly or indirectly) comes and sets up a Mobil booth beside the crowd.Then with a load speaker, starts to solicit these customers.  Now is this right or fair for the other business to piggyback the marketing efforts of the first business?

Of Course not, but that’s what a SEOer does online, they piggyback the marketing efforts of others in the attempt to steal that traffic and make money. 

Why do Sites fight Spam?

Sites fight spam for two main reasons:

1) User Experience

2) It is too ”Expensive” to allow spam on your site.

If sites ignored spam, they would eventually lose all of their loyal members. This is why you have hundreds of social networking sites out there but only a couple of popular ones. I have notice that these sites have way too much advertisement going on and this is a big turnoff to most people.

Why, because people are sick to death of being advertised too. Myspace walks a thin line between to much advertisement and quality networking. Facebook is the leader because it has minimum advertisement and only recently started to advertise at all.

So applying the proper amount of advertisement to fund the site (No one is doing this for free) is a thin line to walk for popular sites. So, if people have such a problem with normal advertisement can you see where if someone got spammed a lot on a site, they would sooner or later stop using the site. This would kill a social media site specifically because the whole concept of the success of these kinds of sites are built upon popularity.

Spam is enemy number 1 for social media sites. In fact, these social media sites are oking the practise of pulling traffic off their site because of the added benefit that more commercial users join the site.Also they get free promotion from these commercial users like bloggers, network marketers and Internet marketers when they say join me on (whatever site).

Some people join the site to keep up with them that would have never joined on their own.

So, the strategy of not allowing people to pull traffic off the site is going away and this ironically helps fight against SEOers because its just as easy to get free traffic from a media sites than to engage in SEO tactics.  Spam however, is still a problem for social media sites.  Where is the line drown for too much spam. I would say that these sites accept a certain amount of spam until the spammer gets to ridiculous with it.

Why? Well if they kicked off everybody that spammed on their site, a least 1/3 of their members would be gone. Most people do not know they are spamming. The confusion comes from social bookmarking activities. Lets take Twitter for example, sharing a amazing content rich article with your followers is great and a correct way to use twitter. Sharing a great income making opportunity that requires someone to join a continuity program is not what Twitter had in mind. People are confusing sharing content and sharing commercial advertisement as being the same.

It is not!

Now are their strategies to get someone off of Twitter or Facebook and into your opportunity without spamming them.

Yes, but do most people practice these methods.  No, Its way too easy to just Tweet: 

Click here to learn how to make $5,000 a Month in just 60 Days!

I am not going to go into the methods of how get someone into your business with out spamming in this article, maybe for another post.

The other reason sites fight spam is because they have to store the information on the site on their servers. It cost more money to store spam on their servers. So if you get on Twitter and just spam away, it cost Twitter more money to store that spam and they are not getting their money’s worth in User Experience. It’s ok to have a free site and pay to store information for people to get access to, but its  a complete waste of money to store spam.

Oh yea and for businessess such as your Internet providers, they tend to pass along some of that cost to their customers. Namely You! This is nothing more than normal businesspractises. Pass along the cost to the customer. So every time someone sends spam to your email, it cost YOU money for it to be there.

Yikes!

How do we spam Social Media Sites?

So, how do we spam social media sites? By abusing the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule is that only 20% of your Tweets or messages are for promotion of your own product or service (includes Affiliate Products). 80% of the time you should be using the services for what it was intended. Also, think about your friends or followers, share with them things that will truly benefit them.

Here are three things to be doing 80% of the time 

1) Share relevant and useful articles/videos from 3rd party sources

 2) Promote your friends/follower’s stuff

3) Build relationships with your friends/followers

The ironic thing is that if you do those things, when you do promote your stuff, PEOPLE LISTEN!

There so much noise on the Internet and on these social media sites. Most people are just shouting “buy my goods here” just like in those markets places you saw on Aladdin or Indiana Jones.  Those market places is what these social media sites sound like.

You actually start to stand out when you spend 80% of your time getting their attention by giving away free content. Then when they are satisfied and happy with “You”, they start to trust you and will do what you ask.

Most people spend 80% of their time promoting affiliate programs or opportunities.  Any one that has studied Internet or Network Marketing knows you have to give before you receive but when they get on social media sites, they have such a easy and free source of traffic available, they get excited and just start spamming. They forget the 80/20 rule.

We spam on social media sites by not providing free, relevant and quality content before trying to place a person in front of our products or services.

I will do a more in depth post about how we should use social media because this is by no means an all inclusive way we abuse social media sites. 

Are you a unknowing Spammer?

As I stated above, I realized that I was participating in abusive behavior on Facebook, Twitter and every other social media site I participated on.  However, the mistakes I made are very easy to fix and most people are doing the same things I was doing.

Just go to your Facebook or Twitter account and pay attention to the ratio of real sharing to spam on your feeds. You will find it is really noisy and unless you now how to use the list features on both sites, its hard to keep up with the people who are sharing and not spamming.

So you have to ask yourself this question….. Are you a Unknowing spammer?

Please share your opinion in the comments area. This subject is not going away and we all need to try to get on the same page so that we monitor each other on these sites.

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