Why Spamming Competitors’ Online Communities to Get Members (Nearly) Always Backfires
I have a new online community. I am going to go to other, similar online communities and tell them about my community and they will join! I’ll post threads about it or, if I want to be really sneaky, I’ll send private messages to the members there, telling them about it. The community manager will never know!
So said far too many people. It’s a tactic of the inexperienced, the naive, the lazy and/or the unethical. People justify it in ridiculous ways. It’s better to ask for forgiveness than to get permission! No, it’s not. It’s embarrassing and it fails to pass a basic test of humanity: treat people as you want to be treated.
If you don’t care about those reasons, you don’t care about your own credibility or self-respect, let me give you one more and this one you ought to really care about. It’s a waste of time. Efforts like these tend to fall on deaf ears. Here’s why.
You Aren’t That Clever
When you spam people via private message, yes, it is technically private in that it is likely only going to be seen by you and the person you sent it to. But, inevitably, a member will report it to me and then what happens? Well…
- I delete all of the private messages that you sent, likely before most of them were even viewed by the intended recipients.
- I ban you.
- I blocked your website from ever being mentioned on my community again – by anyone, in any context.
- Optional: often, community managers talk about things like this and share notes. So your reputation takes a hit not just on my community, but in others.
You may wonder, why will members report this to me? I’m glad that you asked.
Members Are Loyal
When you are an active member of an online community – the type of member you likely hope to recruit to yours – you often are loyal to that community. You enjoy it. You know other communities exist, you know you could spend your time elsewhere, but you spend your time here by choice. You like the community, the people in it, maybe even the community manager.
If that is your position, you don’t take kindly to someone coming in and telling you to go somewhere else. You don’t want to leave, you like it here. Not only do you not want to go to their community, but you don’t like the person who sent it. Why is that?
They Don’t Like Spammers
Online community members might more familiar with spam than anyone else. They know it when they see it and they don’t like it. So why would they be receptive to your spam? It’s just another message for them to ignore, report or publicly criticize.
End to end, this type of tactic is a no win situation. I think people often decide to simply not care about the reputation and ethical side of this and just do it because they think it’ll get them traffic. But even that aspiration is rarely realized, because the current members of the community you are spamming just don’t want to hear it.
While I DO think it’s unethical to poach people from similar communities and spam them, it’s not wrong to talk to them about why they love that community so you can research how to make yours better. Hopefully your community isn’t exactly the same anyway. If it were an exact match, why would someone duplicate it anyway?
Also, I think it’s a little unfair to ban the other company from ever being mentioned on your site. Why bother? Let people talk about that other lazy community. Make yours better and they’ll continue to be loyal and not leave.
Communities themselves should collaborate with one another. We don’t “own” community members, so a culture of collaboration is better than one of isolation. If there’s an overlap in interest, I highly suggest working with that other CM to create a win-win situation, but just talking to other community members for feedback is not wrong.
Thank you for your comment, Carrie. My post is about poaching and spamming, not about positive collaboration that can occur, which is what your comment primarily speaks to. So it is important to look at what I wrote in that light.
Positive collaboration is possible, but it must always go through the community manager or owner of the other community. Everyone has to be on board. If the first that the community manager hears of you and your “collaboration” is they see you on their community polling their members in an effort to do research to improve your community, that is not going to end well, nor should it. That’s not an ethical move and a community manager who does that is assuming too much.
But if it is part of a larger effort where it is welcomed and accepted, in collaboration with the manager of that community, great. As long as they are happy, and you are happy, excellent. If, on the other hand, they decline the collaboration you are seeking, that should always be respected and understood.
Thanks again,
Patrick
Hi Patrick,
I agree! I hope I never come across anyone who would do anything like that. That’s a pretty low thing to do when building a community.
Thanks for the reply!
Carrie