Guerrilla marketing

There has been discussion on a few sites (all gaming) I go to about companies that hire people specifically for the purposes of guerrilla marketing on online forums.

These employees are expected to develop and maintain between 50 and 100 active identities across any forums that involve their clients products. They maintain these to actually develop the accounts as recognized individuals. That way rather than new poster X making their first post stating some product is really great, GoodBuddy42 with 150 posts is saying it and people are more likely to believe them. If your first and only post is a link its spam. If your 50th post is a link asking are company Y any good it looks like a legitimate post. The objective is achieved though, people click the link, see the product.

Just makes you wonder though, all the examples I found were gaming related but it would be strange if it was just limited to that. It'll certainly make me wonder next time I see someone talking up a product, or offering links to somewhere.

So who do we think is getting paid to visit our forum?

We're pretty diligent about weeding them out..
But your right,. it's a lot easier when it's a first post.

For while waaay back when I thought Condyk was working for Sigma

Likewise,. if we had a bunch of Canon schills on the forum,. we'd never notice!

There have been a few posts in the past here, that seem like that, none I can find right off, but I remember seeing some that made me think spam.

Anytime you see what you think is Spam and wish to see it dealt with in some way feel free to report it.

To do so,. just click the little red triangle thing that's under the avatar.. next to the "dot"

I'm not going to mention any names. ----> Rushprintingservices.c​om <---- did such attempt few weeks ago with about 20 fake members. All of them have been banned and messages deleted. They are very easy to deal with once you find one such post.

If you see more of similar attempts of any posts mentioning rushprintingservices.c​om please notify us.

Will report, sir.

Hey,. isn't Pekka spamming?

CyberDyneSystems wrote:
Hey,. isn't Pekka spamming?

Who can I report Pekka to?

Iv seen this done in the Auto Industry, I know a parts company that got all its staff to spend an hour or two a day creating identities and gaining a reputation so they could try and pass of recomendations.

But, once you have seen enough spam you soon know what to look for, the members are soon spotted and banned, and posts cleaned up.
They tried it again of course, but a quick email to the company mentioning legal issues soon put a stop to it.


I think the biggest problem with it, and the reason it will never work is as a general rule the people who become mods and forum admins tend to be on the Intelligent side, and generaly have lots of experiance dealing with differnt people.
They tend to be a little older and wiser than most, which is how they became a mod in the fisrt place (there are always exceptions though ).

Spammers on the other hand, especialy any hired speficily for the job, will tend to be on the lower end of the pay scale and have a level of experiance, and often intelligence, that reflects that.

So no matter how many ways they try, and no matter how smart the person giving them advice and telling them what to do is, they will never really be able to out smart the mods and admin who keep then in check.
There will always be exceptions, but they will not keep a low level spamming job for very long, and so don't pose much of a threat.


besides which I can think of many, cheaper, and far more insideous ways of spreading your company name in a forum than simple Spam.

edit, I really want to know how I ended up with CDS's key board at work as well as home.....?

CyberDyneSystems wrote:
We're pretty diligent about weeding them out..
But your right,. it's a lot easier when it's a first post.

For while waaay back when I thought Condyk was working for Sigma

Likewise,. if we had a bunch of Canon schills on the forum,. we'd never notice!

I was a MOD one of the sites Condyk (Dave) used to Frequent. He's always been evangelical with his new lenses (not to mention fickle) as you can see by his current posts on his new lenses

As for spammers

The site i got to know Dave on was was a very large commerical AV related site. They were/are the offical forums for many leading UK based, AV related Magazines. Digital photo user being one of them

As a Mod on the photography section and knowing the site pretty well as a five year member, i saw it all. As i'm sure long term mods here have.

Posts counts mean nothing to me, that's what my time on a commercial forum taught me. Best AV forum in the world, but i left on a matter of principle, regarding sponsors

People are idiots no matter where you go. Being able to hide behind a monitor only intensifies it for most of them.

Jon.

CyberDyneSystems wrote:
We're pretty diligent about weeding them out..
But your right,. it's a lot easier when it's a first post.

For while waaay back when I thought Condyk was working for Sigma

I think he works undercover for Zeiss/Jena.

Likewise,. if we had a bunch of Canon schills on the forum,. we'd never notice!

I can spot them a mile away - they're the ones with the "L" in their signature. Some of them. Others have other things in their signature. But they're around.

Within the Stock market on a the popular baords, Yahoo, CNN money, Forbes, paid posters are rampant and have just about made all the boards useless

I used to be a moderator for the guitar forum on America Online. We used to get them there, too.

I'm glad I don't have to deal with them anymore.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go change out of my boot-cut Lee jeans which I got for only $21.99 at Sears and put on my comfortable new fleece sweats from Old Navy before I heat up some yummy Hot Pockets...

Steve