3 Signs You’re a Social Media Spammer
Social media spam. We’ve all seen it, and most of us probably know people who are social media spammers. It’s annoying, and it totally ruins the social media experience for people connected to the spammer.
The thing I don’t get about social media spam is the entire concept is so anti-social media that it’s amazing people just don’t get that what they’re doing is stupid and ineffective. But maybe they just don’t realize they’re spamming. It’s possible, right?
If that’s the case, I’ve come up with a brief list of 3 signs you’re a social media spammer. If any of these sounds like you, it’s time to take a hard look at the way you use social media.
1. You only submit your own content. Social media spammers love submitting their content on Digg, ReddIt, Stumbleupon, etc. Unfortunately for them, they don’t realize this is a bad strategy for a couple of reasons. First, if you only submit your own content, these networks will catch on to what you’re doing, and they’ll immediately flag you and your domain as spam. This means your content will never gain much traction on these sites. It’s better to have other people submit your content.
But even if they don’t catch on, your peers will. No one is going to help push your content if you don’t return the favor. If you’re only interested in promoting your own content, you’ll never be able to build a powerful promotional network.
2. You leave meaningless comments on other blogs. This is probably my least favorite type of spam. It’s just so annoying to see people leaving short, meaningless comments for the sake of getting their name out there and dropping a link back to their website. If your comment says “Great post” or “I agree”, you’re going to be seen as a spammer.
Another form of comment spam is to put a keyword in the name field. Your name isn’t “Honda car repair.” This is a cheap way to try to build keyword-rich backlinks, and it reeks of spam.
3. You bombard your followers with direct message advertisements. This type of spam comes in many forms. First, you have the people who send out auto-DMs on Twitter as soon as someone follows them. The auto-DM may welcome the new follower, but it usually has some sort of promotional element to it (e.g. Download my new eBook by clicking this link!).
On Facebook, event spam has started to get out of control. Companies are abusing these e-vites by sending them far too often and using them like traditional advertisements. If you insist on sending out event notifications, make sure you send it to people who are truly interested in the event, and don’t abuse the e-vite by sending it far too often.
What are some other things social media spammers do that drive you nuts?
May 17th, 2010 at 9:50 am
reading this post was great.. I thank you for It Many marketers should read this. It will help them be better marketers in the long run.? even pointed a few things I was doing wrong. thanks for this.?
May 19th, 2010 at 5:15 am
This is one of the best articles i ever read. An online marketer should know all these information so that he can prevent his website from spammers.
May 25th, 2010 at 5:19 am
Hey, I stumbled upon this site from Bing and just wanted to take some time to say thank you for your marketing tips.
June 7th, 2010 at 8:24 am
That’s insightful and I think some of us will need this kind of information as we go out there to aggressively market ourselves.
June 7th, 2010 at 11:12 am
Hey, I stumbled upon this site from Yahoo and just wanted to take some time to say thank you for your marketing tips.
June 7th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Direct messages are the most annoying thing in the world I guess.
June 7th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
I'm not sure where you've been, but 99.99% of the content on the Internet is self promotion.
June 7th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
My latest pet peeve is Twitter SPAM targeted at particular #hashtags that are sent via the Twitter API and repeat ever few hours.
August 12th, 2010 at 10:00 am
Excellent post! I am just starting out in community management/marketing media and trying to learn how to do it nicely – resources like this post are incredibly helpful. As our company is based in the US, it?s all a bit new to us. The example above is something that I worry about as nicely, how to show your personal genuine enthusiasm and write about the fact that your product is useful in that situation.
April 29th, 2011 at 1:26 am
While surfing, I hit your blog…and indeed you give a clear vision to Internet Marketers for "to do and not to do." Even before i also used this meaningless tricks to increase my links. I supposed that if i do this, my traffic will increase, and indeed it increases a bit , but it could not convert the traffic into the real customer. Thank you so much for sharing useful and helpful information regarding SEO tips. Online marketers should now know what and how they use Social Medias legally