Social Media and the increased levels of shameless self promotion

There is one aspect of social media that is the main reason that many of us in the SEM world are currently fuming at Shoemoney. It started by a simple post on his website on why he had a problem with SEO experts. This of course has lead to many responses and some have been very heated. There also been defenders of his cause. And to top it all off, Shoemoney is now holding his radio show and has called out the SEO experts to defend our honor and our trade.

I disagree with most of what he said and how he said it, the one point I can agree with there are many self proclaimed SEO experts out there who continue to give our industry a bad reputation. That is where my agreement ends. What would be even worse is if this was a calculated move to help out with some additional publicity for his upcoming season 3 of his radio show. Now lets just step back because this is why social media and I have a problem. What now makes the internet great, the giving anyone the opportunity to be part of a community. And being able to voice their opinion in the subject is a great thing. However purposefully putting together an article to cause a commotion and get people who are passionate and good at what they do to help further their cause is shameful.

Now this isn't going to stop anyone from doing this in the weeks ahead and this will happen again and again. It is one of the easiest ways to become known and a higher readership. One last item that makes my head spin is the fact that I would consider, as would many others, Jeremy Schoemaker aka Shoemoney to be an SEO expert. He knows how to manipulate a search engine to obtain a #1 placement. In fact he has won an SEO contest, you may recall the term "redscowl bluesingsky". And to give a really bad example Wikipedia even calls him an expert as well.