Spam. Everyone hates it. At least that’s what we hear all the time. Look at the proliferation of anti-spam software for email, blogs and forums.
But is that true? Does everyone hate spam?
Why is Spam Here?
The fact is that spam is more pervasive than ever and people spend countless hours (and dollars) coming up with ways to make it get past all the filters and techniques designed to prevent it. Why do they do that?
Spam works. That’s the bottom line.
If I can send out 1,000,000 emails and get a 1% conversion rate then that is 10,000 clicks to my web site. If that site converts 1% then I’ve sold 100 products just by sending out a single email. Suppose I send out 10,000,000? What if I send out 20 different emails to the same 10,000,000 addresses over the next month?
And spam in blogs or forums is no different. If I have an automated system that can post comments on blog posts and forums (related to my product or not) then I’m building backlinks to my own site, increasing my page rankings on the search engines and building my traffic. All without really lifting a finger — except for a single mouse click.
What About the Good Guys?
But look at the legitimate internet marketer. They write quality blog articles that take time to research and write. They spend time reading other blogs and forums and posting relevant comments in order to build a few backlinks. They are actually interactive and helpful on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. They hand craft articles for distribution on EzineArticles, etc.
And what is the return? Unless you’re a major player in your niche then you’re left with peanuts. Hours of hard work, doing things the right way and your reward is obscurity.
So it isn’t any wonder that desperate marketers turn to grey or black hat techniques to turn a quick buck. They offer traffic (and hence money) without the great effort. And we end up with spam.
How Can We Encourage Value and Discourage Spam?
So next time you’re complaining about spam, think about this: Why don’t the honest, hardworking marketers who provide quality, helpful resources online get the rewards that the spammers do? Do you think that maybe you have something to do with it?
Here are a couple of suggestions:
- Next time you read a helpful article, don’t just say to yourself “That was nice.” Leave a constructive comment to start a conversation. Tweet it or post the link on Facebook or LinkedIn. Stumble it, Delicious it or Digg it. Email it to your friends and family. Link to it on your own blog if you have one.
- Teach your friends and family how to avoid spam and why they shouldn’t click on the links in spam emails, tweets, etc. Teach them not to feed the tiger and it will die.
The more effort we spend supporting the hard working guy or gal online the fewer of us will resort to the spammy techniques.
What ways can you be part of the solution?
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Its a case of education I suppose. The more that we fellow Bloggers/Marketers talk about it the more educated people will become – its as simple as that.
The bottom line as we all accept, SPAM is here to stay we can only educate ourselves and others in order to mitigate it.
peter recently posted…Finding And Commenting On Other Blogs
I learned early from people who have been on the internet longer than I have. I got tired of just “surfing” so I became involved through usenet, forums and commenting on blogs. Education is the key to getting less spam. But, you won’t get rid of it completely. As long as we are a selling society (billboards, commercials, advertising etc.) we are going to be sold to. That includes being spammed.
Ryan, I think that you have a point about there always being spam, but I don’t believe that spam is inevitable as a result of selling. As long as it works, then it will be there. It will take educating people to get them to stop using these tactics so that there is no ROI. As long as they can spam 100,000 blogs or 10,000,000 emails with no effort or cost then a single sale is an amazing ROI. The trick is to get people educated enough that they can’t get blog links or people clicking on their emails.
There will still be those who use spam-like techniques that technically aren’t spam because you opted in to their list if it’s email or you’ve followed them on Twitter, etc. They are overusing poor sales techniques which is annoying but the solution there is to unsubscribe/unfollow them.