There Is No BlackHat Love In Louisville SMO
Went to the SMO event last night at Ramsi’s and meet some interesting people.
Todd Earwood was there along with Rob May. I also noticed Joe Wheeler, but didn’t get to talk to him.
Jason Falls was heading it up and I got to meet Brian Wallace from NowSourcing as well.
Ben was taking some pictures and Aaron Marshall was there as well.
It was cool to see Scott Clark from Lexington too.
Me and James sat with Ben most of the night and talked about Volodex and how to improve some things based on what the presenters talked about in regards to people adapting to social media. We have some good plans in the works. I think overall the SMC is a good idea and one that me and James would like to fund with a sponsorship actually.
I did find it funny that each of the presenters had at least one comment about blackhat “stuff” and how it does not work in social media. I hate to be the one to go against the grain, but it does work if done correctly.
One thing to keep in mind when it comes to blackhat is that true blackhat is not about spamming or gaming the system, it is about automation. Anyone that says different is a someone that doesn’t know their head from a hole in the ground. If I can automate the process of submitting a Digg story, automate the process of signing up for a Gmail account, or automate the task of finding my competitors link from search engine result pages.. then I am doing blackhat stuff. Matter of fact, we all do it daily to some degree.
Ask yourself if you use any tools at all to help automate anything you do online. Do you use a RSS feed reader? Do you use your Blackberry to connect to Twitter? Anything that helps automate a task for you can be considered blackhat to some level. Just because you chose to use blackhat for chatting on Twitter or reading your mounds of RSS feeds on Netvibes and I chose to use blackhat to help me create 20-30 gmail accounts a day doesn’t mean I am doing something wrong. I simply created a service of my own that helps me automate a specific task.
I like how Rob May put it, which in summary was something about risk takers and non-risk takers and how you have to take risk sometimes to get a bigger reward.
You can game Digg and social media outlets. Just because the wannabe script kiddies decide to create 30 Digg accounts on the same IP and then submit a story from one of their sock puppets and vote up their story from all their digg accounts at the same time with all the accounts only having the same exact stories in them does not mean a real blackhat can not game the system. Its these people that make blackhat look bad. They lack the education and desire to do things correctly and this is why they make blackhat seem so “wrong” and “bad” to many people.
Like with any automation, there are good automatic process and bad ones. To be good at blackhat means to be good at whitehat, but make it a lot easier to go from beginning to end.
Many of us have tons of whitehat sites and blackhat sites.. if done correctly, you would never be able to tell one from the other.
February 21st, 2008 at 11:15 am
[…] Wallace’s Wisdom & PowerPoint (Lots of folks asking for this after his presentation!) Jason Brown’s Reaction & Discussion Of Black Hat Principles (Very Interesting Perspective) « Brian Wallace Featured On […]
February 21st, 2008 at 11:31 am
If I recall, there were only two people wearing hats in the room. I’ll leave it to the pictures to describe what color they were. ;)
February 21st, 2008 at 11:55 am
Perhaps for a future meeting you could do a presentation on what “BlackHat” means to you. How it works, why you think it’s good in general and why you think it’s good for the social media community. I don’t know much about “BlackHat” activities but the phrase and the behaviors I associate with it have a negative connotation to me. So I for one would be interested in hearing about it from another perspective.
February 21st, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Hey, Jason - I’m one of those guys that mentioned black hat approaches but I didn’t intend in any way to indicate they didn’t work. Of course they work! While most ‘viral’ successes are the exception rather than the rule, i’d leave it up to the discretion of the marketer on whether or not they want to break through the clutter by using tactics that are a shade less than innocent or interesting enough to make a splash on solely the merit of the content they want to spread organically.
As a handful of marketers have already discovered (typically on behalf of their agencies employing questionable tactics), there might be repercussions. Once someone or some company is outed for black hat tendencies, future forays into social media placement might be met with resistance by the communities they’re trying to target.
Again, I’d leave it up to the discretion of the individual or company on the tactics they choose to use propagate their messages with the understanding there may be unintended, irrevocable consequences.
February 21st, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Whoa… man I didn’t expect any replies at all to this, but I must say I am surprised!
Besides the comments, I actually got a ton of email and IM’s about this one post and people may think this was a “negative” style post.
I didn’t intend to make it sound negative in any way. Everyone that presented did an outstanding job and really explained the process of selling social media. My post was mainly about the reaction to the term “blackhat” each time it was said it was said to the audience.
It was always in a kind of “shady” or “don’t do blackhat” type of tone and as I looked around people seemed kind of “scared” of it. Ha.
Each time it was brought up, me and James ( along with Todd and Rob ) had a nice little chuckle about it actually.
I’m not defending blackhat and I am not saying that anyone did a bad job at their presentation because they put “blackhat” in a negative tone. I simply wanted to clarify and make a stand on it myself.
@ Ben - Yeah, I was one of the guys wearing a hat and it was black ;)
@ Michelle - I’m not great at presentation, which is also why I don’t do sales. Maybe I will one day, but best to just read this blog for updates.
@ Nick - Hey Nick… I guess this post came off with the wrong tone. For sure there are risk involved with everything and blackhat is something that if not done properly can destroy a campaign or company.
Funny enough, this post seemed to create a lot of buzz on my blog/in my email. I guess that can count as “link bait” to some degree. See, blackhat does work!
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:02 am
[…] and angles of selling social media to execs and clients, as well as some best practices and caveats. Honestly, I don’t really have anything to sell since my ‘vendor’ days are […]
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Yeah, I wasn’t offended at all - great insights! I just wanted to clarify that I think blackhat is definitely a valuable weapon in the arsenal of [social media] marketers, though it may not be the right solution for everyone every time.
I think SMC folks would love to hear the good, the bad and the ugly of SEO and SMO too. I encounter so many people / companies that don’t understand the level of effort and investment it takes to achieve SEO/SMO success. Your expertise is both an art and a science. …And one that requires more than a single effort to drive results!
Would love to hear your perspective at a future mtg. Hope to run into you soon!
February 28th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Jason,
I hate that I missed the meeting. I’m enjoying reading all the reviews though.
I agree with you on the automation aspect and freely admit that I use quite a bit of automation to achieve repetitive SEO type tasks. I’ve never viewed them as “blackhat” in the truest sense though.
To me, blackhat is doing something that you know is dishonest, under the table, or shows a blatant disregard for the rules that we’re all expected to play by. For example, using a site such as SocialMarker might be viewed as blackhat by some “traditionalists” because it automates tedious work, but I’d politely disagree. It simplifies things, but abusing it would make it a blackhat technique.
Anyway, I enjoyed the review and hope to join you guys at the next meeting if that’s feasible.
Roger
PS–If you want someone to present your blackhat “nuggets,” hit me up. We can work on it together.