0 Black Hat Social Media: Are You Spamming Your Followers?

• Social Media Marketing
• by Seth Pollins
• 02.20.2020

In the world of digital marketing, the term "black hat" generally refers to the use of deceptive or manipulative practices to attract an audience. Black hat marketing is often intentional but many well-meaning marketers often inadvertently use black hat practices, too. Of course, "white hat" marketing practices like organic SEO will always trump the purported "value" of black hat practices. But this fact is often obscured by the nature of the online world: black Hat practices produce quick results, and we're conditioned to act quickly and to expect quick results. Perhaps this is why black hat practices persist: they give the semblance of quick results. Yet quick results do not necessarily translate to true value. Black Hat Social Media  The inadvertent use of black hat SEO explains why so many sites can be seemingly "hurt" by Google's algorithm changes. The changes are often Google's attempt to penalize bad players--and this is how many well-meaning sites discover their own SEO mistakes.  However, the inadvertent use of black hat practices is especially common on social media. Several years ago, Tina Courtney Brown over at SiteProNews wrote about black hat social media, and how so much of it amounts to "buying an audience" to artificially inflate followers:  "When you stop and consider this tactic, it’s borderline ridiculous, and clearly doesn’t work. Social media is not about the number of followers you have; it’s the level of engagement that audience has with your content. If you buy a list full of fake profiles, those 'people' will never buy, support, or even like one single product or post." The point here is often ignored by many prolific social media profiles--it's not the numbers that matter but the engagement. At SEO Sparta, we often encourage our local Philly-area social media marketing clients to post less often and engage more often. Too many profiles engage in low-effort posts that may attract a slew of comments and likes --yet these comments and likes often have no real value for anyone. Often these comments and likes are simply a result of a quid pro quo--seemingly "popular" profiles trading comments and likes without true engagement. This essentially amounts to a form of black hat social media as it encourages a false view of "popularity" entirely determined by follower counts and likes and comments. In a sense, this is akin to outright spam, what Tina Courtney Brown refers to as "the bane of the Internet":  "Spammers who comment en masse on articles and posts are the bane of the internet. They clutter up otherwise legitimate comments with horrible, lying posts like 'Oh, great content here, check out my stuff and buy something!' They pretend to care about the topics discussed, then quickly attempt to drive traffic to whatever horrendous site they represent." Of course, spam, by virtue of its sheer volume, manages to attract some attention. If you spam a million sites, you're bound to get a few clicks. Spammers play a numbers game, hoping for bare minimum conversions: 1% or less. Sounds inefficient? Well, it is, in a sense. Yet a 1% conversion for one million bits of spam is still 10,000." White Hat Marketing All of these black hat practices stand in stark contrast to "white hat" practices, like organic SEO. The true value of organic SEO is the very time and effort required to launch an effective campaign. Of course, the very word "guarantee" smacks of spammy promises, but the guarantee of organic SEO is evident in the work itself: if you take the time to craft a quality SEO campaign, you will likely succeed. Any quality marketing campaign will take some time to truly produce results. Marketing is like radioactivity in the soil--its effects are felt in the long term. This is why, if your goal is a successful and sustainable business, black hat SEO is not the answer. When you engage in these practices, your image is degraded. You might attract 10,000 customers, but you repel 990,000 others. This is why we prefer quality over quantity.  Do you fight Black Hat practices? Take a look at Tina Courtney Brown's article: "Black Hat Social Media: An In-Depth Look." You might just discover that you're inadvertently practicing Black Hat Social Media.