12 Apr How Do You Avoid Social Spam?

Does your company avoid joining the social web for fear of witnessing or being a victim of spammers? Or, conversely, do you just accept that social networks come with spammers and do nothing about it?

Neither is the solution for maintaining a smart social presence, so here are some tips to face the spamming miscreants head-on. Or, at the very least, avoid them.

Analyze your audience. We don’t accept any Twitter followers that have no bio, offer only links in their tweets, or only talk about themselves. Also important is the ratio of following to followers – if either side is too inflated you most likely are dealing with a spammer (or celebrity, but you’d know right away!).

Take the time to follow real people. Don’t get fooled into buying followers. Even corporations should have someone real tweeting on their behalf. It may be slow going, but this technique will foster steady growth of your target market rather than an inflation of numbers to show off.

Perform regular reviews of your audience. Every couple of weeks you should go through your followers and either follow them back or flush ‘em. We don’t recommend deleting everyone who isn’t following you back like some sites swear by, but take the extra few minutes to make sure you know who is following you.

You can’t avoid spam in its entirety – remember fax chain letters? As long as you know how to navigate and engage with the right users your company will not be marred by the spam experience.

How do you handle Twitter and Facebook spammers? Tell us by commenting below or posting your thoughts on our Facebook page. Just don’t spam us! 🙂