Social media spam is not a new phenomenon. Back in the 90s and early 00s forum days, I moderated several music \/ geek boards and had to deal with marketers who tried to comment or link spam conversations.<\/p>\n
I noticed something interesting for the ones we didn\u2019t catch: not\u00a0sometimes,<\/em>\u00a0they were\u00a0always<\/em>\u00a0hung out to dry by the community. Ruthlessly.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t matter who the company was. Or if it was only\u00a0mildly<\/em>\u00a0spammy. Even if it was from a brand the community liked there was little tolerance for spam. Social was never was meant for direct marketing.<\/p>\n This is still true on the web today, as noted by the most recent example\u00a0we shared. Web communities are always self-policing. And while mistakes\u00a0from well-meaning brands are generally forgiven, spam is named and shamed.<\/p>\n But I actually think the reasons behind this have nothing to do with the web or technology at all. My sense is this is simply how a cultural issue we\u2019re all affected by plays out on the web.<\/p>\n Consider the following two scenarios:<\/p>\n Scenario 1:<\/strong>\u00a0image you\u2019re with a friend walking through a city, having a pleasant conversation about a book you just read. All of a sudden someone blocks your path, interrupts your conversation and\u00a0desperately\u00a0insists you check out their new sandwich shop.<\/p>\n Scenario 2:\u00a0<\/strong>you check your snail mail and in the mix for that day is a a menu for said sandwich shop.<\/p>\n Social web spam is, in essence, no different from\u00a0scenario\u00a01. It\u2019s easy to think the web is somehow a \u201cdifferent\u201d place from the physical world. It\u2019s not, it\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0the real world: our ideas, personalities and interactions expressed through technology. And with it, our societal conditioning still applies.<\/p>\n Going with that, imagine what you might do after scenario 1. We\u2019re social creatures: after you passed the interruption you would likely chat with your friend about what just happened. Your personality, mood and who you were with at the time would dictate your response. It\u2019s not any different online as the social web is real-time.<\/p>\n As for scenario 2, snail-mail spam: if you\u2019re new to the area and the menu looks interesting, you might keep it to try later. Or you might recycle it (being 100% paperless, my mailbox routine basically consists of emptying the mail into the recycling bin). But no matter what you did with the menu, you probably wouldn\u2019t share what happened at the water cooler the next day at the office.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the difference? Yes, they\u2019re both interrupting you, but one is doing so in a social context: it\u2019s in public. And as social creatures we\u2019re hard-wired to communicate about things that happen in our surroundings \u2014 perhaps even more attuned to share events in the public sphere. It\u2019s how we survived in a pre-technology society and how we do today.<\/p>\n As a digital native I am too young to remember much, if anything about a pre-internet world, so I never felt a need to put down the above thoughts. They seemed obvious.\u00a0But as I look around at what a lot of brands are (still) doing in 2011, I think it\u2019s a point worth highlighting.<\/p>\n Reactions to any company\u2019s communications have nothing to do with technology and everything to do with a lack of understanding of our culture. And as marketers it is an integral part of our job to both understand culture as well as embrace new technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Social media spam is not a new phenomenon. Back in the 90s and early 00s forum days, I moderated several … <\/p>\n