Corruption on social web
Are there any ethical bloggers left out there?
Oct 20th
With your kind support, {grow} has become a fairly popular blog. With this distinction, I’m deluged with requests to do sponsored posts (companies offering to pay for their promotional content to show up as a blog post).
The scams seem to be getting more aggressive and extreme and I recently pointed out the example of a guy who flat-out lied to me just to get a back-link on this blog. It makes me wonder … if there are so many people trying to pay me to turn {grow} into their advertisement, they must be having enough success to make it worth their while, right?
There must be a critical mass of influential bloggers out there accepting money for blog posts, otherwise these people would go away!
What follows is a word-for-word transcript of messages exchanged between myself and an actual company seeking a paid placement on {grow}. I’ve only changed the real name of the writer and her company because I don’t need to embarass this person …
Hello Mark!
I am interested in content advertising opportunities on your site, Schaefer Marketing Solutions,because of its great pool of write-ups.
By the way, this is Susan Rafstein and I work for Synchristic Hosting.com.
Our company is one of the most reliable guides for webmasters and website development in the market. We offer in-depth reviews of various hosting providers and other web-related tutorials.
Are you interested?
Susan
Susan,
Thanks for connecting with me.
If I am reading your inquiry correctly, you are looking to advertise on my blog. Specifically, what do you have in mind?
Mark
Hi Mark!
You got that right. Actually, I’m looking for a possibility if you can do a review of our company, Synchristic Hosting.com. Tell me how much would it cost us for you to publish the review in the blog area of your website.
Hoping you’ll consider.
Susan
Susan,
Maybe this appears old-fashioned but I think being paid to do a positive review is unethical.
Mark
Mark,
I’m sorry if that didn’t sound right to you Mark. That was just merely a suggestion–didn’t say that the review is gonna lean towards the positive side. But I bet that incase you do you it, we will do good.
Anyway, what about we do a guest post?
Susan
Susan,
In all due respect, you are approaching this “pitch” in a disastrous way.
If I am unwilling to be paid to promote your company through a blog post, why would I do it for free? And how does one “review” a hosting company any way?
I have built my blog and my community on excellent content and I’ve built trust, in part, by not allowing outside companies to convert these great people into sales leads.
Occasionally I do have guest posts from individuals who are active members in the community. I invite them to do posts because they have great ideas or to help them get some exposure for their own work.
However, I’ve never heard of you or your company before so it’s unlikely that I would unleash you on a community of people who have also become my friends.
I would invite you to read my blog, get to know the folks around here, and show up through comments before asking me to promote your content.
This is probably the same reaction you will receive from other trustworthy bloggers, or at least I hope so! If you do a search on “how to pitch to bloggers” I think you will get much of the same advice I’m providing here.
Best wishes, Mark
Hi Mark!
Again, my apologies if I’m sounding a bit off in your standards. Thanks for the advice and I will take note of that.
I’ve been doing this for quite some time now and honestly, you’re the only one who had that reaction. But there’s a first time for everything, right?
Anyway, I’m concluding this as a negative response from you. Thanks for your time.
Susan
P.S.: Just in case you change your mind, you can send me an email anytime.
Another variation on paid content is paying for backlinks. I am routinely being offered $100 per link, even if I sneak them into old blog posts. And while it’s unlikely that many people would ever know about this, I would know about it and it seems … unethical. Or is it? Does anybody out there really care any more or are most bloggers link whores?
I’m also seeing a growing number of bloggers routinely featuring their customer in blog posts. Are they directly or indirectly being paid for these posts and links, or simply being polite? Do blog readers notice this like I do? Do they care? Are we just getting numb to it? Or is it smart business?
When I get inquiries like the one above, I wonder if I am that much out of step with the times compared to other bloggers. Am I simply idealistic? Stupid? Surely I can’t be the only one taking a stand on this kind of graft, right? What do you think? Would you take the money?
Now connecting with the sexiest bloggers is easy
Oct 16th
Klout just got sexy. And I called this one … Unfortunately.
A year ago in the first article I wrote about Klout (Get Ready. Social Scoring Will Change Your Life), I predicted that social scoring systems would fragment along different demographic lines:
“Forget about Klout scores, there will be competitive rating systems for everything and it will be available to anybody at a push of a button. Wouldn’t it make sense to assign numbers for single people on the dating scene based on user ratings?”
Well, it is happening. I spit coffee on my computer keyboard when I read this announcement:
CrushBlvd, a startup based in Silicon Valley and purveyor of eye candy, launches a new social networking site for beautiful people. CEO Tina Lee points out the highlights of her new venture, “Looking at and connecting with beautiful people is fun, but it’s hard to find and socialize with them on an everyday basis. CrushBlvd solves this problem by creating a beautiful community that encourages social interaction.”
CrushBlvd uses a Crush score, which combines a Klout score and social networking features into a unique measuring tool, to determine members’ level of influence according to their looks and their ability to engage others. The higher the score represents the higher the popularity and attractiveness of the member.
Lee believes that the best way to connect with beautiful people online is not by another agonizing dating site, but through a pain free social networking site. “We are proud to have created this wonderful niche, so users can have easier access to connecting with our attractive members regardless of their relationship status,” she said.
Purveryor of eye candy? Excuse me. I am going to be sick now.
Congratulations to Tina Lee, who has just cornered the market on vacuity.
And this is just the beginning folks.
Here are my next business model predictions:
PolitiK — Merging Klout scores with political activities. Wouldn’t finding people via influencer topics be an outstanding way to connect with supporters and potential donors? So much easier than recruiting at rallies and you could find backers in every community.
UKlout — Connecting topic influencers on college campuses. Why not do semantic analysis to find people who are like you on your college campus? A useful tool, especially for freshman trying to find friends.
Teenie Tweetie — Teen agers are civilization’s greatest raters and comparers. When wil they have their own Klout-style rating system?
BOUNCE* – Bloggers: Overweight, Under-paid, Neglected, Cuddly, and Erudite. I am the charter member. I’m developing my top secret algorithm that accounts for girth, income and the number of infographics per tweet. Very complicated. I am also working on Bounce Perks. For my Bounciest members, I will send weekly graft from all my rich advertisers. Once I get them.
Who among you will start these companies? Who is going to join CrushBlvd and admit it? Bounce on {grow} community. Bounce on.
*This is a joke. I know humor doesn’t translate across cultures sometimes. So to be clear, I’m not really doing this!
When social media destroys a career — The business case for being a fake
Oct 4th
A guest post by {grow} community member Leslie Lewis
Leslie Lewis is not my real name. You don’t need to know my real name, and you may never know it. Here’s why.
I’ve worked in social media since 2005, and I knew I needed a tightly controlled message and presence online. You could Google my real name and find my blog, or find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, or Facebook.
Like you, I used my real name, shared real stories, photos, and details from my life. I was as transparent and authentic as I preached to my clients that they needed to be.
All of that ended in early 2010 when someone launched an online smear campaign against me, with allegations that were wholly baseless and untrue but were professionally damaging.
I contacted law enforcement officials, but they were helpless to stop the flow of fake accounts being created in my name due to issues of state, federal and international jurisdiction complications.
After consulting with several lawyers I was told that civil action would be a long, disruptive, and expensive process. In the end I was advised that my best option would be to directly contact Google or LinkedIn every time a new one appeared. Not very practical.
The end of my brand
My career nearly ground to a halt. After several months, I consulted with friends, family and people in the social media community, and I decided I needed to go “underground.” I locked down, and in several cases deleted, my social media presence.
Five years of community building and establishing a brand behind my name were gone. For nine months I had virtually no social media footprint, but at least the attacks finally stopped.
The transparency that we all advocate to our clients was what was used to harm me. While going underground brought an end to the attacks, it has hurt me professionally. Social media strategy is a practical discipline: We show that we are able to do for our clients by doing for ourselves.
In December of 2010 I inched back online, using Twitter with a pseudonym. As I began making and rebuilding connections the pushback I have received from social media professionals on Twitter has been unexpected.
When my email address and Twitter name don’t correspond, I am frequently met with stark skepticism of my intentions or the implication that I am “doing social media wrong.”
As social media professionals we tend to conflate the concepts of “transparency” and “authenticity.” Frequently they are used as synonyms, or, that if one is not present it invalidates the other.
Transparency is not the same as authenticity and authenticity is not dependent on transparency.
Moving forward
In the real world we meet people every day and accept them at face value, rarely stopping to question their identity. In real life we don’t demand the type of immediate transparency of each other that we do online. The neighbor with the unlisted phone number, the friend who goes by his middle name or the parent with a different last name than their child; we don’t (or at least the polite among us don’t) demand explanations of them.
We shrug our shoulders at these incongruities and don’t allow them to take away from our enjoyment of, or the credibility of these individuals. Why then, don’t we do this online? I could just as easily be an SEO mole as the neighbor with the unlisted phone number could be a bank robber. Why don’t we explain away similar incongruities in online identity that we do offline?
These are issues that are not new to online communication, yet they seem to linger. We have all seen social media go wrong and unfortunately we have all seen it used as a weapon of destruction. My situation is, sadly, not all that uncommon. As a profession we need to move towards a framework wherein privacy and security concerns are not trumped by demands for transparency and authenticity.
Don’t we?
Leslie Lewis is a digital media strategist working in public health, social marketing and behavior change at a Washington, DC based
NGO. She’s still trying to get this pseudonym thing worked out and is accepting suggestions
Illustration: citypeoplefashion.com
Has BP learned NOTHING about PR and communications?
Sep 27th
I saw some beautiful ads on TV promoting tourism for the U.S. Gulf Coast. But after the heart strings were sufficiently plucked, who is identified as the sponsor? BP — the company that caused the mess in the first place! This really pissed me off.
Luckily I was in Memphis at the time and had the chance to have PR Expert Amy Howell calm me down, as you will see in this short video discussion.
Did BP do the right thing with these ads? What were the alternatives? Am I right to be venting over this?
I think you’ll enjoy the conversation and hope you’ll add your views on the subject in the comment section! Thanks!
P.S. You know what else pisses me off? If you “Google” BP tourism ads, all you get is BP PR fluffy stuff. They have their SEO machine working overtime, don’t they?
P.P.S. Grrrrr.
Subscribe
Welcome to {grow}
You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
Groups We Believe In
