I may not be a fanatic, but I am one of the more White Hat SEOs I know. So, I started thinking about the practice of asking friends or colleagues to give my content a little push in the social media arena. It begs the question… “Is this Ethical?”

Let be sure we are all on the same page before proceeding. I am speaking about the practice of asking your friends if they will promote one of your articles or blog posts in the social media arena. For Example, when I am done with this post, I shoot and email over to some of my close friends in the industry (or not) and asking them to Digg it, Sphinn it or add it to any number of social media sites. Is this practice wrong?

My first instinct was; it’s cheating so it should be wrong. That passed very quickly and I started to give the issue some real thought. Right away I zero’d in on the term “social”� in social media. While site producers claim they don’t like people manipulating their systems, in reality it is using the systems exactly as it was intended to be used. The basic idea in most cases is the sharing of content with one another and interacting in some form around that content. I would not call it manipulation at all, it’s more like “advanced usage”. But some won’t be convinced that easily so let’s break it down a bit.

The Reasoning for Unethical Social Behavior

1. It disregards a sites terms and conditions
   Counter: I would like someone to show me a T&C at a social media site that prohibits friends from sharing each other’s content. Here, I checked a couple of the bigger ones:
   • Digg.com Terms of Use – #9 under User Conduct has the text “participating in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg’s services”� If your friends like your content and they vote for it, the results are not “artificially altered”. Most of #9 deals with duplicate accounts and the buying of Diggs.
   • Del.icio.us Terms of Service – Nothing even close
   • Sphinn.com Terms – Yeah, can’t find it here either
   • StumbleUpon Terms of Service – It’s a rather long document, so I may have missed something but I couldn’t find it here either.

   So Digg has one that could be construed either way as it is rather vague. So to be safe, tell your friends if they do not like the content to disregard and do not Digg. There, you’re covered.

2. It can give an unfair advantage
   Counter: In a “social”� environment you can’t penalize someone for being the “most social”�. If a person didn’t have many friends this strategy would not work. It only becomes an advantage when a profile has many more friends than another. Unprompted, the more popular profile would still maintain more activity as a rule, so how is it unfair?
3. Manipulates the system and results
   Counter: I guess I don’t understand how it can truly be “manipulation” if you are only using the product as it was intended to be used. Yes, you are being more aggressive in your usage but does this mean it is wrong. If the developers of a site wanted to put restrictions on the activity levels of users they would and any attempt to override those restrictions would be “manipulation”�. Until then, it’s just aggression.
4. It’s an abuse of knowledge and relationships
   Counter: I see an argument which emphasizes the advantage one would have when you have the largest circle of friends and know how to leverage them. Again, I don’t think in a “social”� environment you can penalize someone for being the “most social”�. The knowledge portion of the argument does not have any merit either, it is common sense if your network is bigger and you use it, you have an advantage.

I was planning a similar list for the other side of the coin, but this post is too long already. Let’s just say that requesting a friend to promote your content socially is no different that asking a buddy to be added to his blogs’ link list. If you have a relationship with that person, it is not unethical to share your content with them and ask them to help spread the word.

I say this in full confidence that my White Hat is still clean.

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