This occurs mostly in Twitter. You\u2019ve seen it. The daily Tweet circus of users sharing reciprocal social\u00a0links to each other\u2019s sites in an automated fashion, usually without even reading what they are sharing.<\/p>\n
They pollute the social stream in the same way a factory thoughtlessly\u00a0leaks chemicals into a nearby river. To try to benefit themselves by sharing links of others, as those others share their links. There\u2019s nothing \u2018social\u2019 about this, and it is not really different in my eyes than using software to create automated spam links\u00a0on the open web. It\u2019s not good for users or your community and is in fact\u00a0disingenuous and selfish.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not talking about tactics like using RSS to auto-import headlines from sites you find valuable. This can be really useful. I am talking about the systemization of sharing links in the social web, a social traffic\u00a0pyramid\u00a0scheme if you will. People engage in this sort of behavior using software because their content is not worth sharing on its own.\u00a0If content is truly worth sharing and you have an organic, opt-in community, you do not need to game the system to have your ideas spread.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m not calling out any specific users or software packages because I don\u2019t think either party deserves additional attention. And you\u2019re right, I can unfollow these people. For the most part I have. But as I recently pruned my social followings, it became very apparent who on stream-based platforms like Twitter simply exist to take and not give. These users don\u2019t realize that sharing links by itself without any thought is not actually a good thing, and\u00a0you are<\/em>\u00a0what you share. As more users will focus on pruning their networks to\u00a0focus on signal and kill the noise, the spammers will (hopefully) leave.<\/p>\n What bothers me about this is I\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0want to follow some of these people. Several I know personally and would prefer to stay connected with in social. But their sharing of useless links has turned them into\u00a0social media zombies\u00a0and our time is too valuable to be subjected to\u00a0traffic schemes in a subversive attempt at our attention. If you\u2019re someone involved in these types of tactics simply looking for traffic,\u00a0stop. Build\u00a0influence, authority and trust\u00a0instead, but realize that right now you\u2019re\u00a0hemorrhaging\u00a0those things.<\/p>\n Reciprocal social sharing is a short term play for attention that hurts your reputation and sacrifices valuable, long-term results you should be focused on. It\u2019s two-steps backwards from a marketing perspective (a return to spam) and smart users see right through it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This occurs mostly in Twitter. You\u2019ve seen it. The daily Tweet circus of users sharing reciprocal social\u00a0links to each other\u2019s … <\/p>\n