Recently I’ve had some Social Media practitioners attempting to use the community I manage to promote their client’s products/websites, and when I’ve tackled them they’ve tried to explain it away by telling me that they aren’t spammers, but are in fact involved in social media, and therefore want to engage with our members.
Bottom line – Attempting to join a community, under the guise of social media, in order to use said community to interrupt conversations, post links and create promotional posts to promote a client’s services/products/websites is spamming pure and simple. And any such action does the client a disservice.
Which leads me to my next point, how many clients actually realize the damage some of these inexperienced Social Media peeps are doing to their reputation? Being branded as spammers is, I’m sure, not what they had in mind when they hired the company in the first place. After one recent “spamming” incident I actually contacted the client and told them what had been occurring. To say they were shocked and upset was an understatement.
I am not suggesting this is widespread, but I’ve had this issue come up three times in the last six weeks, so it’s certainly something that needs addressing. I’m also sure I’m not the only Community Manager who has seen this scene playing out.
So whilst I am unsure as to what the solution is, I can only hope that as we navigate this ever-changing social landscape that people new to the social media profession, at the ground level, will learn the difference between engaging and spamming.
(Image:”Conversation Piece by Juan Munoz (1999)” by Gavin Lynn, via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution.)
I had a conversation about a similar topic just yesterday – from the posters perspective… in that case their intent was to post relevant content which seemed like they were, in fact, doing but the community manager perceived it as promotional and deleted it. The extenuating circumstance was that it was a LinkedIn group that is more dedicated to sharing information than conversing but it brought up the question of what is useful content to share vs. fly-by spamming content. It’s not always clear to either party but it is where a good deal of judgment is needed by both parties.
There are a couple of groups that I’m involved with were I am really more of a lurker than a participant but a lot of people are interested in the topic of community. I typically do not proactively post but will occasionally reply to questions when I can add a helpful answer or have content that explicitly responds to the request.
Like you say, however, unless you are familiar with the ongoing vibe of the community it is hard to know what will be seen as acceptable vs. not so the best course is to lurk and participate a bit before posting content.
Rachel
That’s it exactly Rachel, adding to the conversation and sharing information is the way to go, and we have professional people who do that within our community. That can be a win-win for both them and the members.
What i have a gripe with are the ones who basically drop in, don’t add to the conversations, but rather make promotional posts that are bordering on spamming. Last week I had a company who attempted to use our community to post such things on behalf of two of their clients. They didn’t want to interact at all they just wanted to get their clients name out, but gave no thought to relationship/community building. Our members just view that type of thing as spam.
It’s really not that hard (I know this is the kiss of death because “common sense” is only “common” if you have it). Simple rule: If you are linking to yourself or directing people away from the community to something you are affiliated with in any way (even if you don’t link to it directly), do not do it unless you are absolutely 100% sure that it is OK.
Their “intent” is always to share relevant content and useful information. It’s like prison. It’s a stereotype that everyone in prison says they’re innocent. Sure, some are. The majority aren’t. And, regardless, it doesn’t matter. There’s no excuse for a “professional” not to read the guidelines and be cautious – there’s no excuse for someone who professes to be “involved in social media” not to read the guidelines and be cautious. Either you are a professional, or not. Either you are involved, or not.
But, being “involved in social media” also doesn’t mean you’re perfect, either. People make mistakes – that includes me, obviously – and, as long as they are not repetitive, it’s how you handle them that counts. Which is why saying that you were only trying to post “relevant” content, especially without sincerely apologizing first for abusing the space, is a cop out. Take responsibility for your lack of understanding of the space you are in.
Example: I run a community about Photoshop. Once in a while, you get someone who joins and posts links to their tutorials, even though it says clearly in our guidelines to never, ever post links to your own tutorials in any context. Post is removed, they are contacted and some of them respond with: “Well, what is this site for then?” … Heh.
Well, it’s for people to help each other with the software, share what they have created, chat about off topic issues, get some design work, talk about design in general and… . It’s not for you to post links to your tutorials. You aren’t the victim here. This community is 7 years old and existed long before you wanted to take advantage of it – don’t enter it and act like it’s without purpose because I removed your post.
Anyway, the solution is education. It’ll continually, and slowly, get better. But, more people will also enter the fray and there will always be people who do this sort of thing, as long as there are people to sell to, there will be communities to try to take advantage of. That’s part of the reason that strong, structured communities will always need management.
Patrick
Thanks Patrick, I appreciate you sharing your insights.
Spent years having to put up with this. It’s always interesting to meet people who feel what they are doing isn’t advertising, but that usually just demonstrates a real lack of understanding about what advertising really is.
I’ve tended to use the term ‘unsolicited’ a lot in rules and policies – to try and make it watertight that no matter what is being discussed or why it’s being shared has to have permission in advance.
All that pales next to the activities of some social media promotion teams though. I’ve seen sock puppets set up just to promote specific Universal movies, posting whole discussions between themselves just to eventually produce a link.
The amount of effort was staggering – especially when you think of how an official, legit, prize giveaway would actually have a really positive impact. But it seems lots of social media promoters consider it old hat to just work cheaply and openly with online spaces for promotion.
And if things go on this way I can imagine a time where you’ve got two continually opposed fields of online work (Community managers and Social Media Marketers) in constant opposition to each other.
Oh yes the sock puppets, always amazes me the time it must take them to set up a conversation and then answer themselves. I had a SM agency yesterday I caught “planting” positive comments about a company by pretending they were a satisfied customer, when in fact said company was a client. At least they owned up and admitted when I tacked them over it.