Social Media is NOT a Pyramid Scheme

I’m going to use this post to congratulate the people who use social media thoughtfully and to call out the posers.

There’s a certain type of person who thinks the social Web is their playground for spamming and using people — and that gives the rest of us a bad name.

Social Media Rules of the Road

Here’s a partial list of infractions that will get you put in the penalty box:

• Request a LinkedIn connection, only to turnaround and spam my trusted connections
• Steal people’s intellectual copyright (blog posts) without attribution
• Tweet one message numerous times (across multiple accounts)
• Convince businesses follower count equals success
• Try to sell me something useless because it makes you a quick buck

It’s up to you how you manage a social media and search marketing campaign. Just remember that it’s incredibly hard to build a positive reputation Online — it takes lots of time and effort — but it only takes a second to erase that good reputation.

Don’t waste your time trying to sell useless crap to people. Build something that will last over the long haul that you can be proud of.

There’s people who teach everyday on the social Web that deserve a hearty pat on the back. And that’s how I’d like to leave things. There’s lots of posers out there, but there’s even more good, honest teachers who just want to build something wonderful and new.

Cheers to the good ones.

Tagged as: Search Marketing, Social Media