Our most recent spam comment was from a chiropractic clinic. We didn’t publish it, as a comment, but here it is for your reference:
A chiropractic doctor offers a breadth of services to various patients that involve physical rehabilitation and physical training. (The name of the chiropractic clinic was inserted here, along with a link to their website and blogger profile.)
For the non-bloggers in the audience, the reason this comment is considered spam, is that rather than adding value to the article, it uses the comment functionality as an opportunity to self promote and generate links for the purpose of search engines (that said, many blogs are set up with ‘no follow’ code, which disables such links from having the intended impact on search engines).
While I won’t share the clinic name with our readers, I have notified one of the chiropractors that this has occurred, as I would be really surprised if they knew. Despite how unprofessional these comments present, unfortunately, this is not an anomalous occurrence among professionals.
The question is, would you know if you were being marketed in this fashion?
Marketing is still relatively new to most professional designations and, as such, best practices are still under study. Here are some guidelines, to help avoid such a situation:
- Choose a partner that demonstrates sensitivity to your professional ethical responsibilities
- Look for a transparent process that provides you with information regarding anything that is being communicated on your behalf, down to the detailed level of comments
- Get involved in the work that is being done to market your practice to ensure that it reflects your true identity
Given the time consuming nature and complexity of social media and SEO strategies, more professional practices are choosing to outsource some or all of this work. At the end of the day, however, it’s still your brand. Even if you’re not doing the work yourself, you can still take steps to ensure that it is being presented in its best light.
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