What Kind of Communication is Spam?

What kind of communication is spam? You might consider this a ridiculous question, but unfortunately many people do not recognize good communication from spam. Recently, a colleague told me her husband was taking a course on Internet marketing. The gist of the course was how to purchase lists of thousands for little money and then how to spam these people. I was shocked. My colleague thought this was a fine idea. What do you think?

Perhaps most of us are savvy enough to recognize that my colleague’s husband was learning the techniques for spamming. But, how many of you have posted a LinkedIn discussion topic that does nothing but share information about your latest service? How many of you have auto-responders on Twitter that say, “Thanks for following me. Check out my whatever?” This, too, is spamming and bad communication.

What is good communication and what is spam? Here are some general guidelines:

• Spam happens when you provide something to someone that they haven’t asked for. Good communication happens when you answer someone’s question and share valuable information, either yours or someone else’s.

• Spam happens when you post content to a Discussion in order to give yourself visibility. Good communication happens when you post a genuine question on a Discussion board and enter the conversation with others.

• Spam is one-way. Good communication is two-way.

• Spam offends us because it assumes we don’t know what we need. Good communication includes us and listens to our needs.

• Spam talks. Good communication listens.

• Spam gets deleted and marked as spam. Good communication creates trust, a relationship and finally some kind of conversion.

The next time you start to post on a discussion on LinkedIn or as a status update on Facebook, ask yourself, is this spam or is this good communication?