Open letter to bloggers & small businesses

Dear person who keeps posting your links on my blog’s Facebook wall,

To quote my friend Heidi, “Do you see Lowe’s posting deals on the Home Depot wall?”

No, no you don’t. Look, I’m going to assume that for the moment, some of you don’t know any better. You’re new to Facebook, or new to promoting your business via social media, and so of course, you want your content to be seen at places where you see similar content or the same target audience. I get that–we were all beginners once. And you know what? There are ways to get exposure, but you’re going about it all wrong. If we see your links or posts, we’re going to delete them. Haven’t you noticed that? If you want assistance, ask. Lots of bigger sites and bloggers will take newbies under their wing. I was helped by bigger sites than mine, and in turn I have helped others. But they asked, and they asked nicely. They didn’t just assume that it was ok to post stuff on my wall, to my followers. Followers that I’ve worked damn hard to attract and keep.

In the blogging world, we always hear the phrase “Content is king.” And I have no control over your content. If you have a particular post that you’re proud of, email it to me and ask for a shout out. If it fits with my audience, I’ll be happy to do it………occasionally, not every day. You can also contact me and I will be happy to show you to some blogging groups, maybe you can join some giveaways with us, do guest posts–there are lots of ways to gain followers without spamming walls.

But some of you, I repeatedly remove your stuff from my wall, and you keep coming back. Why? I want to keep my wall open to my faithful followers–they share deals with me, they have questions and they chat with each other. I’d hate to have to shut that off, all because you can’t stop spamming my wall. Do you just do drive-bys, dropping the link and then leaving? Because in case you haven’t noticed, I remove them every time. What if, say I left it up there–and my readers really liked it, or really hated it–but whatever the case, they had a big discussion over it. Don’t you want to know that? Don’t you even come back to check? To see if you’ve engaged anyone? And if you did come back to check, and didn’t find your link–didn’t it occur to you, to maybe not do that anymore?

Small business moms–the Avon reps and so on–I have a soft spot in my heart for you, really I do. I get it–that you are trying to earn extra income or find a wah job. Really, I understand. But putting your page on my wall isn’t the way to grow your business. Again, contact a blog you like, ask them–let’s set up a giveaway, a special promo or discount code, something. There are ways we can work together, promote your business and make it beneficial to all.

Here’s another thing you may not know–you might unintentionally spam-ban your own site or page from Facebook. See, if it’s just another blogger or small business, I politely remove it. That is, I just click “remove post.” I don’t click the report option. But, if enough people click “remove post” on the same link, Facebook automatically reads that as spam and will ban you. I did this the other day, I thought I was just removing it, but I guess I was the umpteenth person to remove that particular link from my wall, so I got the message “Thank you, this has been removed and reported as spam.” And it was just an Avon rep trying to get some exposure. Now the small following she had, it’s gone.

I still consider myself a small time blogger, so part of me is actually flattered that you think my wall is spam-worthy. But I’d be much more flattered if you just sent me a nice email, and asked me to work with you. The online wah-mom community is amazing and to be successful you do need to partner with other moms-so let’s start off on the right foot. And that foot isn’t spam. Thanks for reading.