I am a no nonsense person so I will address your statements factually. At this point, I recognize that I am a guest in your home - I joined this community 2 days ago and I imagine some of you have been on here for years. A colleague that I met ironically on linkedin told me about the site and that it had just launched a forum related to ORM. I always like a bit of a friendly argument so I will be straight forward and I will not back down.
First off, I find it ironic that someone on this thread would assume that I am here to self promote more than contribute when this person has a banner underneath your profile because apparently you have made that donation that I am talking about. Time will tell if I am here to just promote my product or join in a useful dialogue. I am opinionated, I do like to get down and dirty, I do not back away from my ideas and I do believe I have something to contribute and plenty to learn. At the end of the day, I am here to make money, I think that is why we are all here. Some to educate themselves some to sell products, either way it is away to grow out your business through ORM.
That being said, my primary intent in joining this community is to build relationships with 'influencers' within the ORM community. In that sense yes it is self serving. My experience is it is the best way to help grow out my business by using content marketing techniques and helping establish myself as a qualified and useful member of a small community. I think I have something to share and I think I can learn alot from you. I try to be informative and share my ideas and experience with others because I can help people and it helps me build a stronger reputation and build great relationships within communities that you can find better relationships. It is also why I try and write unique and useful blogs. I find that many people with a strong following will help sell my vision through backlinks and vice versa - I help you, you help me. I try and educate others to my thoughts because it is my belief that when you become useful you build a larger audience. I want to meet you, I want to build a dialogue with you because you are the people that have access to the people who are most likely going to buy my product. NO BS. And some of you are going to potentially hire me because you believe that I have some knowledge within the world of ORM. Of course, I think I have a lot to give, but I know I still have a lot to learn. We are in a market that did not exist 5 years ago - its the wild west and I intend to get my land.
In my experience the relationships I have built on sites like Quora and linkedin have been monumentally important in growing out my business. I spend a great deal of time within social media communities and have been fortunate enough to hopefully have built a decent reputation. Yes, I have made some money through this strategy, but I am not here to create a bunch of backlinks that have no context. I find that if anything google sees it and they kick you in the balls. I am here to make money and the best way to do it is by building lasting and strong relationships with influential people.
The specific post I wrote that I could not get approved, I was very detail oriented in looking over the community guidelines - I expect that others do abuse them - I looked through the guidelines and must have edited up my post 3 or 4 times. I had no backlinks, I was not selling a product in anyway. In fact, I was not even selling myself in my mind all I was doing was trying to actually give some useful information in order to establish my credibility attempting to walk in your home and hopefully let you know that I can help as much as you help me.
The fact of the matter is (and I wish I could republish it) I do not believe that I in anyway was trying to link juice or self promote. When not getting the statement approved above the 'community standards' was a statement that said something like 'if you donate you will have a better chance of getting approval'. I dont know the exact wording, but that is what it sounded like it said. Does anyone else know what I am talking about?
So, perhaps blackhat is just that 'blackhat', but establishing community guidelines and asking for donations to get approval in my mind does create a potential reputation management issue. I understand the need to make money. I am here to do the same, but I can not build relationships by trying bully others around. ORM was a 1.2 BILLION dollar industry last year, heck yeah I wanna fish in that pond, but I think it would be bad business for a reputation consultant to build a bad reputation. It is just not good for business.
