aimClear Search Marketing Blog

In parts one and two we discussed the meaning of “avatar” and outlined a monitor & report approach savvy PR firms undertake: The “Walled Garden Forum Rat.” This post focuses on another common participatory profile: The “DoFollow Link Builder.”

This avatar profile is much more common than one might think. It’s also a fuzzy role, in terms of intent and ethics. Anonymous DoFollow link building avatars line the underbelly of social media link-juice mining, spooging points ostensibly awarded for participation.

Do a gut check. Have you ever sought out threads that pass link juice for comments and participated only to link build? Did you always participate using your own name and email, etc…? Are these really blog communities you care about? Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part 2 of our ongoing series, “Avatar Theory, Common Social Media Participation Models.” We’ve been gathering information confidentially for weeks from marketing peers regarding methods, objectives, risk, ROI and anecdotes as they relate to their social media activity on behalf of clients.

There’s a remarkable lack of agreement as to what’s cool and what’s not. We’ll be sharing commonalities in what we discover, leading up to my SMX East NYC presentation on the “What Is Ethical in Social Media Marketing” panel. It is not our intent to endorse or dismiss anyone’s practices, merely to present information which supports forming your own opinions as to best practices and ethics.

The Walled Garden Forum Rat Avatar is a social media persona designed to monitor the chatter stream of community corners not indexed by search engines. Usually flying below the radar by not revealing a corporate affiliation, this avatar model is only a reporter and does no selling whatsoever.  The hallmark is intelligence gathering. Read the rest of this entry »