Talkback: What’s the difference between marketing and spam?

A) Marketing is building a relationship such that the marketing message is perceived to have come from a source that a person considers to have some sort of credibility.

B) Spam is comprised of messages that are sent with no regards as to building a credible relationship between the sender and receiver before hand.

Examples of (B) are: TV Infomercials, Junk snail Mail, Billboards, Magazine Inserts, Radio “robo” commercials (no human personality), Telemarketing phone calls, ALL unrequested junk e-mail.

Examples of (A) are: High quality TV commercials that affect the viewer emotionally (usually some sort of funny or similar hook), Magazine adverts that are witty, Radio personalities (Disk Jockeys), web sites that have a privacy policy and truly honor it.

Twitter feeds are not spam since it requires people to choose to follow. If the Twi-Marketer tries to tweet without building some sort of funny or useful or similar hook (personality), then they will be punished by simply being un-followed.

On social media, the key to marketing is conversation building and audience engagement. If you produce content that is interesting to your audience, even if it is just linking to your blog posts, than it is not SPAM. If it ceases to be interesting to readers and becomes a burden and/or an annoyance, than it is Spam. As Guy Kawasaki pointed out, however, one man’s SPAM is another man’s golden tip.