I recently heard that a Social Media Optimization competitor is selling blog comments and questions/answers online, masking who he is and who he’s working for. I almost fell over from shock….
He’s going in, on behalf of a paying client, and making up a comment at a prominent blog, with a link back to the client’s site. And he’s going to big sites like Yahoo! Answers and fabricating a “question” then “answering” it with a promotion of his client’s product/service, again with a link to the client’s site.
The motive: The more your company is mentioned on prominent social media sites (the bigger blogs, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, Delicious, Yahoo! Answers, etc.) the more likely you will make Page 1 of Google search results, and therefore generate more site traffic and more leads. It’s SEO-driven Social Media.
(For an interesting, different perspective on link building via Q&A sites, see this article at Vertical Measures.)
The Code of Ethics
So, what’s wrong with that? Nothing is wrong with the goal of Search Results as ONE outcome of social media participation. Of course, SEO and Social Media go very well together…
But what my competitor is doing by FAKING comments/questions/answers online goes completely against the Code of Ethics in the Blogosphere - Transparency, Authenticity, Honesty at all times! It’s understood by everyone worth their salt online that you always full disclose who you are, who you work for, and any conflicts of interest.
Online Reputation Damage is a Steep Price to Pay
My competitor’s SMO practices will very likely damage the online reputation of his clients. The social media scene is full of savvy, cynical users who can smell a fake a mile away. (Remember the Walmart ’shoppers’ blog that was outed by the blogopshere as the company posing as Mr/Mrs. Average America?) That kind of rep damage can be extremely difficult to change, or indeed, irreversible). Ouch!
Google: “Beware Social Media Schemes”
Google warns against social media “schemes” to get good Google results in their Nov. ‘08 “Google-search-engine-optimization-starter-guide” (PDF), Google writes, on page 20:
Know about Social Media Sites… Avoid involving your sites in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the top of these services.
Sounds like the local sham-SMO practitioner. Of course, he is inadvertently, helping me sell social media strategy and implementation; PROsocialmedia makes ethics an integral part of our services… really, it’s the only way to sell the real value of Social Media: gain the TRUST of your customers and prospects online.
‘Cause everyone knows that once trust is lost, it’s darn hard to regain…in any relationship, including those you forge online.
2 comments ↓
Nice article !
Do you think Google is really working against social media abusers ?
I was on Friendster today and looked Groups and Jobs sections. Both sections are full of SPAM, Groups are posting irrelevant content, promoting personal web sites and jobs sections are full of SURVEYS and Work from Home jobs who offer you 2000$ a day.
Do you think it is possible to check honesty/authenticity of any post/article/question made on social media ?
I see the same thing in my LinkedIn groups and it is discouraging. I think it is very difficult to check all those spam-postings, you are right. I have faith (naive?) that the user communities will ‘out’ these offenders who are only interested in pushing products on social media sites.
And on the Google front, there was a time, not that long ago, when entire sites were “fake” - ie. no value-add content for users, just keyword-stuffed crap to push products, and Google shut down many of those sites. Its algorithm keeps getting more and more sophisticated, so who knows what they will come up with to crawl the social media sites to measure “authenticity”?
Google and other players are working on ’sentiment monitoring’ right now, in order to deliver search results that include whether it is a positive or negative review, for example, and that strikes me as a pretty sophisticated measuring device, so… could an “honesty” check be next in line for Google? I wouldn’t rule it out. Checking the IP server who posted the comment, checking patterns of posting by individuals, and other cyber-detective work… I am definitely not a software engineer, just a writer/strategist, so these are my sci-fi guesses!
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