The problem with Social Media are ads and spam
Social Media marketing becomes multifaceted billboard
The concept of the long tail has driven marketers and even sales people to Social Media websites in order to influence, market or to search for leads.
The problem with Social Media is that is soon becomes cluttered with marketing, advertising and spam messages:
- Often the people posting on Social Media have an agenda: to promote their products on industry specific Social Media as this allows to reach their target market rather directly at no cost.
- Companies will put advertising on interest-specific Social Media to reach target groups.
- Brand fanatics will keep on shouting about a certain brand downgrading the value of messages
These three types of messages won’t help the purity and originality content of the Social Media website – it will just spoil the content.
The more popular a certain Social Media becomes, the more it starts to look like a like multifaceted billboard with more commercial messages than original statements, experiences or advices. From that very moment on the interest group will lose interest and move on to another Social Media website.
Previously this has happened with many websites (Yahoo! Groups, MySpace,…) and is currently happening with Facebook and LinkedIn.
Sustainability of Social Media websites
The business owners of Social media websites should be careful about this evolution of their website.
a) The CEO should limit the amount of advertising space that can be sold.
b) The webmaster has the important function to monitor discussions and the remove certain messages in order to keep the information interesting and not to let the website become a billboard.
Avoid the short haul on the long tail
As a vendor or reseller instead of promoting your products directly on Social Media, which is like the short haul on the long tail, it is more important to get recognition, grow respect, get authority and even get followers by posting interesting and insightful information. It is then that you can make honest statements about your products.
Of course your competitors probably won’t take the time and spam the message boards which will lead to the decay in popularity of the Social Media website.
How is your approach to Social Media websites: to spam or not to spam ?
