Authentic Marketing Or Spam - What Makes The Difference?

No one can be online for any length of time without experiencing spam. It comes into our email boxes, gives us eyestrain with flashing banners or may come in the form of general tackiness on Facebook. With all of this online spam, it can be difficult to see what's genuine online.

Not all spam has malicious intent. Often it is the result of ignorance. It only takes a few missteps for someone new to marketing to miss the mark and end up cranking out spam. One problem with all of this spam is that it makes it easier for the general public to see all online marketing as spam.

That's the reason for this article. I wanted to take a good look at spam and use knowledge of what makes it spam to help marketers make their already good marketing better.

My definition of spam is:

A piece of content that has an agenda and provides no value or benefit to the reader.

Content of this variety lacks depth. The only way it will impact the reader is if they take the action that the marketer wants them to take. The content itself lacks content of any depth.

What makes authentic marketing?

First and foremost, it must be great content shared with no strings attached. It should either entertain, impart knowledge or help someone solve a problem. In some rare cases it can even be a combination of the three. More and more businesses are using social media and some way of marketing through content, such as blogging, to get their message out. One thing that's great about social media is that it tends to reward great content. If it is good, it might get shared a little bit, but if it is especially relevant useful or really funny it can get a massive amount of exposure through others sharing it. This is exactly what has always happened when someone saw a great movie or read an amazing book, they share it.

I feel that the reason why people who produce low quality content resort to spamming everyone with it is that they are the only ones who will. No one else would ever want to spread it.

In this way, the ways that people spam others is just imitating what happens naturally with great content.

I generally look at content marketing this way. It's all about depth and span. The more depth, or quality to the content, the greater the chances that it will be spread by word of mouth. If the content lacks depth, the only way for it to get span is for the person who made it to spam it everywhere.

I'm not saying that depth alone will make a piece of content go viral. It's important to study the ways that content can be spread ethically as well as creating something worthy of being syndicated by others. I love Seth Godin's stuff. He says that marketing is just the spreading of ideas. If you are in the process of spreading an idea, you are a marketer! He noted that there are a lot of great ideas that never catch on because of bad marketing.

So what is a simple principle to keep in mind to get our content seen initially and shared?

It's all about span and depth. Great content as we mentioned earlier has depth and quality. This will help it to be shared by others which will naturally create span.

"The greatest depth over the greatest span."

Keeping this in mind will help to balance the three aspects of content based marketing.

1. Produce good solid content that has depth and quality

2. Put it in front of a good number of people.

3. Make it easy for them to share it with others - via social media syndication buttons.

Balance is important in many areas of life. With online marketing, it's essential to balance depth and span for the greatest success.