I passionately hate Social Selling Porn.

You know porn when you see it.  

In the interest of full disclosure, I have had help in the past in keeping my social media strategy together (mostly Twitter and Facebook engagement), but in early February, that ended.  It just did not feel right.  It felt dirty and wrong.  

I solumnly swear:  

• My content is my content.  All of my posts with my name have always been written by me.  My blogs are my ideas.  The Tweets, updates to LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest are from me.    
• I am an expert in the areas that I write about.  
• My content is proofread for errors, clarity, and accountability.  
• I do not ask friends, family, nor business associates to pump my content.  All comments, Tweets, LinkedIn likes, Facebook likes, etc are free will.  
• I do not use artificial means to respond to others on Social Media. 

Content must be defensible.  

I am a seeker. I seek knowledge.

I endeavor to create strong value for those my company serves.

The level of content caca coming our way is becoming more and more impossible to wade through to get to the good stuff.  As the social media pundits scream, "Create more content!" there is a literal avalanche of content caca.

All of this content crap is sullying the brands of good companies.  A year ago I was excited to review LinkedIn articles. I used to enjoy reading Inc, Smartbrief, and Entreprenuer online. Today, I no longer can afford to wade.

Maybe I am old school, but content must be defensible.  When I was getting my masters in Economics in the 90's, everything I said and wrote was scrutinized. I had to be prepared to defend my thinking. The result was quality. This resulted in new ideas becasue the bullshit was quickly flushed out. I was held accountable for my work. I did not want to disappoint my colleagues. Credit was given to others for their ideas.

Today, we have followers stroking their colleagues or friend's egos with, "This is spot on," when a post is intellectually shallow or amounting to nothing more than a sales pitch.  

Social Selling Porn is not real.  It is not artisan.  It is hype. 

Speaking of not real, I recently saw a LinkedIn Influencer who has written over 300 "articles" over the last 12 months.  How the hell do you do that and maintain quality and integrity?  I read some of his crap.  

You cannot.  

Notice the following gratuitous cute baby and adorable puppy photo. This is Social Selling Porn. This post is not about cute babies nor adorable puppies.

Let's end Social Selling Porn.

I propose that you join me in enforcing our own personal eight commandments of Social Selling. Let's end the Social Selling Porn by committing to the following:

1. No gratuituous use of attractive females, puppies, babies, or pictures of food (bourbon is acceptable) - Unless you are talking about female modeling, dogs, babies, or food do not use pictures as eye candy to draw in eyeballs.  It is morally corrupt. Use a picture that is appropriate to the content.
2. Credit is given - Ideas of others are shared as their ideas.
3. Be an expert - Experts write about what they are experts in.  Freelance writers must disclose that they are freelancers which means they are experts only at writing crap.
4. Ghostwritten content is declared.
5. No artificial pumping - No artificial promotion via friends, family, nor business associates.  
6. No content title baiting - The title must reflect the content in the article.
7. No use of auto-responders.
8. Be transparent -  Disclose if someone other than the person represented is publishing content via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ content.  

Disagree with me?  I want to hear it.  

What is missing from the Social Selling Porn commandments?

Leave your recommendations in the comments section below.