With over 400 million active users on Facebook, you know there’s a lot of spamming going on. A lot of Facebook spammers are looking for that small percentage of people who will fall for whatever sales pitch they put out. There are others though, who are making a real effort to use Facebook to market their business, make friends, or just learn their way around the most popular social networking website around. Unfortunately, they may not be aware of the fact that what they’re doing is getting them labeled as a Facebook spammer by the very people they’re trying to reach out to.

These five Facebook activities just might get you a big bad spammer label. If you’re guilty of any of them, you might want to rethink your Facebook strategy.

1. Your only activity is Friends, Groups, and Pages

Chances are, you’re trying to build up your friends list so you can blast people with your message – whatever that might be. As a result, the majority of the updates on your profile looks like this:

• Joe and Mary are now friends
• Joe and Andy are now friends
• Joe joined the group We be spammers
• Joe and Frank are now friends
• Joe likes Marketers and Spammers
• Joe and Michael are now friends
• Joe likes I Love Spam!
• Joe and Susan are now friends
• Joe likes I’m going to sell you all sorts of stuff
• Joe and Angela are now friends
• Joe and Steven are now friends
• . . . and the list goes on . . .

2. You should LIKE THIS!

You’re constantly sending page suggestions to all your friends – sometimes for the same pages over and over again. It’s fine to send a suggestion now and then, but when you send your friends suggestions constantly they’re likely to get tired of it.

3. You send friend requests to people you have absolutely no connection with.

You send a friend request to somebody you don’t know, and have no common friends. When the person you want to be friends with sends a message back asking if you know each other, you either don’t respond or you send a snotty reply.

If you really want to be friends with someone you don’t know, and have a good reason for wanting to do so, include a short note with the friend request. Just click the “add a personal message” and let the person know why you’re sending the friend request.

4. Using other Fan Pages and Groups to sell your stuff

You join Facebook Groups and Like Facebook Pages so you can post messages about your business. Recently someone became a fan of the PetsitUSA Fan Page and promptly posted a message that said

“PetsitUSA is now a favorite page of @my-facebook-page. Please make our page a favorite of yours.”

When I went to the Facebook Fan Page mentioned, I saw about 40 favorite fan pages listed, and each one of them had the very same message posted that was posted on the PetsitUSA Fan Page. Spammer.

5. It’s all about YOU! YOU! YOU!

Everything on your business page is all about you or your business. “Buy this!” “Look at me!” “Our company is wonderful!” Blah … blah . . . blah . . .

Sure, we all know Fan Pages are quite often set up to help sell a product or service, but rather than giving a constant sales pitch, interact with the people who like your page. Remember, it’s called social media for a reason.

Doing some of these things may seem like the right thing to do to get business, but think about how you feel when someone is constantly trying to sell you something. It gets old real fast and tends to backfire! There are lots of people who will go out of their way to avoid companies that are use the “in your face” approach to selling their products or services.

Imagine you’re hanging out with some friends and along comes this person you don’t know, who gets right in your face and blurts out . . .

“HEY YOU! My widgets are on sale today. When you buy two, you’ll get one free. Go to my website right now and buy some!”

If you’re like me, you’re probably going to say something like . . .

“Uhh, ok. I’ll keep that in mind. And if I need some Widgets I’ll call Widgets R Us, not you!”

Interacting with people online works much the same way. The fact that the word social is the first word in the phrase “social media” isn’t an accident. These days, if you want to be part of social media, one of the keys is to actually be social. Sure, old time advertising still works, but it’s important to know when to do that and when it’s not appropriate. Blurting out a sale on widgets is quite often considered spammy. If, on the other hand someone starts a discussion, and things lead to a point where it makes sense to mention a widget sale, that’s great. People are interacting and having a discussion, which is way different than sticking a widget in someone’s face and shouting “BUY MY WIDGETS!”

I have a group on LinkedIn for people who work in the pet industry, which I set it up so that I, and others, could network with like-minded professionals. I’ve been on many forums over the years, and have seen some very good ones go downhill fast once the “widgets for sale” folks took over. Because of that, I decided right from the get go to limit the amount of advertising that would be acceptable. So I wrote up a short list of guidelines for posting, including some info about advertising. Here’s the blurb about advertising . . .

Whether it’s on a personal or business level, the idea behind LinkedIn is to make connections that might be beneficial in a variety of ways. One of the many tools LinkedIn provides to do this is the discussion area. This area serves a way to interact with each other, talk about new ideas, get advice etc. With that in mind, I’d like to ask that everyone refrain from advertising in the discussion area. Feel free to introduce your company, product, etc. when you join the group and introduce yourself. Following that, include a signature line that includes your business name and a link to your website. Posts that are strictly advertising in nature will be removed.

If you have news about your business such as sales, press releases, special events, etc. please post it in the news area.

I think it’s pretty clear, to the point, and explains what the discussion area is all about. When people join the group, the advertising guidelines are brought to their attention, so it’s no secret. And, as the last sentence says, they can post some of their advertising stuff in the news area, which is set apart from the discussion area.

Thankfully, I haven’t had to delete very many advertising posts. Most people tend to understand why I don’t allow a lot of advertising and have emailed to thank me for keeping things on track. They aren’t interested in having widgets in their faces either, and appreciate having a place to network with each other without having to wade through advertisements.

There are plenty of websites where people can advertise for free – many are set up just for that purpose. Before posting advertising though it’s a good idea to find out if it fits in with the general theme of the website you want to post to. If it’s a discussion forum, like you’ll find on LinkedIn and other websites, going with the flow and trying to stick to the guidelines may get you farther than trying to set your own rules.

It’s not just advertising though. Regardless of what social media website you’re on, whether it’s a discussion forum, photo sharing site, video sharing, or other type of social media site it’s a good idea to get an feel for the written and unwritten rules.

Sure, there are places where it may be totally appropriate to shout “BUY MY WIDGETS,” but just be sure it makes sense!

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