Social Media Blog: Conversational MarketingA blog that disects conversational marketing via social media.

It’s no secret that user generated content is now flooding the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) of Yahoo, MSN and Google. So, I wonder why spammers continue to bombard this channel with their spamerati like behavior. You would think they have learned their lesson by now and realized how important their online reputation is; especially if they are trying to sell a product/service and no, I am not talking about the Levitra and Cialis emails and blog posts that I get daily.

A few months ago, a man by the name of Randy Swanston (not sure if it’s his real name or not) was spamming the hell out of this blog. I was literally getting 5 & 6 spam comments a day; and it was getting really irritating.  After the fifth day, I went to his site and tried to contact him directly. Unfortunately, there was no easy way to get a message to him no email or contact form. I couldn’t even leave him a comment on it was blog. So, I decided to write a blog about it and titled it Randy Swanston, Please Stop Spamming my Blog; and I of course linked directly to his blog. My hope was that he would realize that I was linking to his blog and somehow correct the situation. About a week later, I get an email from Randy himself apologizing saying that there was a server/database malfunction. Hmmm … what the hell is my blog doing in his database anyway?

To make a long story short, over the last 2 months, I have received about 65 referrals from natural search from users who typed in Randy Swanston. So, I searched Yahoo and Google for Randy Swanston and this is what I found:

Of course, my intention is not to hurt the growth of his business. I was merely trying to send a message to him so the nonsense would stop.

The point of this is simple. Marketers really need to take a step back and take inventory of their marketing practices before they go out engage in such ridiculous behavior like spamming blog comments. The last thing you want happening is negative user generated content making its way to the top of the search engines when someone searches for your product and/or brand name.

Technorati Tags: spam, spamerati, randy swanston, irritated