Annoyed By Biznik Spammers?

Ken at first I didn't understand what you were talking about, then I went and read your article and saw the canned comments. I now know why your frustrated. This stuff rains on me all the time. We are here to stay they come and go

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Thanks for bringing this up and starting this conversation, Ken. It's definitely a fine line, isn't it.

On one hand Biznik is a social network - and the same 80/20 rule for social media applies here as it does on all social networks: 80% of your posts should be helpful, relevant and add value - and not self promotional. (Biznik extends that to 95/5 when it comes to event hosts - 95% of Biznik events need to add value; self promotion must be limited to 5%.)

On the other hand, Biznik is a community of independent business people. Their number one challenge is getting noticed and finding their next client/job. It's natural for them to want to promote themselves - many argue that it's why they're here.

So when does promoting your own service/product in the vein of offering a helpful and valuable solution cross the line into spam?

I'd love to hear others weigh in their thoughts...

I have received notices in my mail that I can split into 2 categories:

First are members I have met or know from past meetings or Events who want to alert me to a new Event or such. That's not really a problem.

As for the second group, these are members I do not recognize and the messages are about them or their services or both acting like Spam or a cold call. I usually delete these, but it would be nice not to get these at all.

Remember I have to do this twice - once for my e-mail which include the message and then on my Biznik mail. Would there be a way to check something that alerts us to a message and allows us to select how we want to receive the message and whether it can check it off for deletion or as read? Just a thought.

The spammers are an annoyance.

Because of how they think they're networking, they won't get any business or leads or even any response.

I'm afraid they'll end up telling people, "Biznik sucks. I've been a member for xx months and it hasn't done a thing for my business."

I would say that overall I've been receiving a lot more emails from both groups of folks that David describes above. Whether I've met folks or not, getting a barrage of emails from them about upcoming events, articles, and such is starting to feel like spam to me. I've actually begun to retreat and considered de-connecting from some folks, and that's not my style, especially in BizNik! When I get an email from a BizNik that isn't connecting with me on some kind of personal level, I turn off . And I'm seeing more and more of these impersonal emails, which is a shame.

I agree with Sue. I am considering "unjoining" some of the groups I was invited into for just that reason. Sometimes I get multiple messages in one day to advertise this or that event. And, belonging to 6-8 groups, it adds up.

Yesterday, I actually had someone send me by Biznik the first issue of "my newsletter" that I never signed up for!

I am the administrator of Savvy Blogging and, because I understand the time it takes to go through and delete messages (as David said, not only in my Biznik mailbox, but the duplicate that arrives in my business email's inbox), I just send out a weekly group update every Friday with news, event announcements, etc.

I understand the value of groups and still think they are a good idea, but wish people would just stop and think before they send all those emails.

Biznk has so many great features. I wonder how hard it would be to build in more filtering options. I agree. I find myself deleting the same message multiple times. I also take the time to read at least the first one because a good opportunity may be in there somewhere. I hate to leave a entire group because of a few pests.

You know I have to say that I've been a member of Biznik for three years now and overall I'ld say the amount of spam I have gotten is low. The real problem to me is people logging on and posting comments with the intent to upgrade their SEO and not really contribute. Their is an etiquette to Biznik and other online networking communities that you don't high jack someone else's article just to promote yourself. That's what I would want enforced. Other wise we're trading contributors for non contributors

I agree, Arthur.

To respond to the request for more filtering to Group messaging.

The only person who has permission to send a message to everyone in a Group is the person who owns the Group ("Admin") and anyone they appointed as a Group Moderator, IF they explicitly turned on the ability for Moderators to send messages to the entire group.

The owner of the group should show respect to their members and not inundate them with too many messages. If you feel like you're getting too many messages from a group, tell the Admin to cut back, or speak with your feet - simply quit the group.

A new groups feature was added a couple weeks ago - a 'Daily Digest.'

If you subscribe to the Daily Digest, you'll receive a single email once a day with a list of all your Groups, and a summary of each group's activity - but only if something actually happened.

Each of your groups can be controlled independently. So, if you are really interested in the action in 2 or 3 of your groups, but only occasionally check in on the rest, you can enable the Daily Digest for just those you want to keep up to speed with.

You'll find the control for the Daily Digest in the left sidebar on your group page. To turn on the digest, click the 'Enable activity digest' link. To turn it off, the link will be 'Disable activity digest.'

The default for the Daily Digest is turned off. You need to proactively enable turn it on for groups you'd like to follow closely.

The Daily Digest does not replace the email notification members receive if the Admin sends a message to the group, nor does it replace the immediate notification an Admin receives when an event or article is published to their group.

Perhaps we should include the option of adding a summary of messages sent by the Group Admin to the Daily Digest as well?

@Ken

re: "I also think links like the one you have at the bottom of your reply are perfectly acceptable."

The links that appear at the bottom of members posts (if they appear under a hashed line) belong to ProVIP members. An outbound link in a signature line is one of the many benefits of the gold-star status.

It's not exactly SPAM, let's call it GORE. You may remember the frequently used line, "I do have a position on that issue and you can find it on my web site."

If you have an opinion on Biz Talk, spit it out and put your URL on your signature, don't reference your web site in the body.

I think it's perfectly all right to have a link if you have something USEFUL that ADDS TO THE CONVERSATION and provides value.

And thanks, Lara, for clarifying the signature line issue. It's one of the things paid members get with their membership fees.

There is an important distinction to be made here between an actual spammer, and someone who just doesn't add valuable content to a conversation.

Ineptitude, gracelessness, and crass salesmanship are being casually labeled as "spam", but that simply isn't spam.

The distinction must be made between someone who is clueless and someone who is malicious.

The tacky salesman is just clueless. He can be educated about the etiquette within this community. And (to my everlasting surprise) some of these people that I have talked to have become valuable community members, once they get that this place is different than other sites.

The overseas SEO whore who just posts their canned SEO content in every single thread is being malicious, has no intent on becoming a member of the community, cannot be reformed, and needs to just be banned.

The distinction between maliciousness and cluelessness is an important one, and we do ourselves a favor by taking care to only label one of them a spammer.

On Biznik, social media, and the internet in general - this medium of words - it is important that we use our words carefully and with intent.

The SEO whore is a spammer.

The sleazy salesdude is just clueless.

I encourage everyone to make this distinction, and to engage themselves in helping the clueless get a clue, and flagging the malicious when you see them.

Ken, I agree, they should be contributing to the conversation, that is the point of the original post.

@christian- I hadn't heard the term "seo whore" before. Like it!

Actually, I've heard from a couple of 'networking experts' or "SEO experts", that you are supposed to write a couple sentances about the topic and somehow link it to your services in the next paragraph. (I should mention that none of these people are affiliated with Biznik, as far as I know.)

It's supposed to function in somewhat the way politicians do when they are on the Sunday Morning talk shows. When asked a question, make brief mention of it, then go on to say the 'talking points' of your main message.

At this point, I should probably post my website address, but I think I'll go get another cup of coffee instead.

@Laura: I don't know if I coined the term "SEO whore" or whether I heard it elsewhere first... it just seemed the appropriate phraseology...

And the example you mention is a little different than what I would term an SEO Whore.

In my book, if someone adds materially to the conversation, (the "first paragraph" you describe above), and then posts links to themselves, I don't have a huge problem with that... I probably won't choose to do business with that person, because they are a bit like a bull in a china shop, but if they bring some value to the conversation, then great!

Sometimes I'll send along a note thanking them for their input and mentioning they don't have to include all the self-promotional stuff because their profile is linked to every post they make... and sometimes they get the gentle hint, other times they don't. But I try. This is a "community" after all, and it takes all kinds...

The real nasty spammers you probably won't run into here on Biznik. I used to work for Biznik and the team is pretty diligent about deleting the real spam. If someone joins Biznik and suddenly 15 minutes later they have posted 25 times in different threads, that gets the Biznik Administrator's attention and they deal with it.

This is just one part of what makes this community so valuable: very high Signal To Noise Ratio!

Good stuff! It's nice that this conversation is taking place and hopefully sheds light and awareness for all of us, especially anyone that could use the help.

This conversation is a pretty good example of how you can't please all the people all the time, and... at all levels there will be those who operate in the gray area between violation and compliance. Hard to stop. When you try you inflict hardship on the rest of the players in one way or the other.

Biznik is full of dozens of features. Yesterday I found the "Sponsor this member" feature. How cool is that? Another feature is "Flag this member." Would that help in identifying behavior that you find offensive - if it got to the point where you felt you had to do something?

I am getting ready to send invitations to the Everett Happy Hour to as many Biznik (and non-Biznik) members in the local area as I have the time and energy to send. Some will likely consider my invitation spam. Others will be glad to get the invite and attend. Still others will care less.

And some may think that this doesn't add much to the conversation. Good thing I am too lazy to leave a link to my website:-)

Dennis brings up a good point. We can't please all the people all the time.

As Biznik grows, more an more people are trying to get recognized. Rather than taking the time to write articles and provide positive contributions though postings, etc, they think that they can promote their business by commenting on articles and posts in a self-promoting way. Maybe they don't know any way else to do it.

As Christian said, the Biznik team does a pretty good job of weeding out the blatant ones. Maybe discussions like this one with comments from Lara and others about proper posting etiquette will help educate those who are ignorant.

Bill