No one can be online for any length of time without experiencing spam. It comes into our email boxes, gives us eyestrain with flashing banners or may come in the form of general tackiness on Facebook. With all of this online spam, it can be difficult to see what's genuine online.

The internet is a perfect breeding ground for spam. Some of the people who are responsible for this do it out of ignorance. They can have the basic concepts of online marketing right but with a few missteps create a veritable buffet of spam! One of the problems with this is that it becomes easy for the general public to lump even good online marketing in with all things spam.

That's the reason for this article. I wanted to take a good look at spam and use knowledge of what makes it spam to help marketers make their already good marketing better.

My definition of spam is:

A piece of content that has an agenda and provides no value or benefit to the reader.

This type of marketing lacks depth. The only impact it will have on the reader is if they decide to do or buy whatever is being promoted. The content lacks...well, content.

Now, what makes marketing that is authentic?

It must provide value with no strings attached. The piece of content should impart some knowledge, solve a problem or be entertaining. It's popular now to promote a business through content marketing combined with social media. The content that is shared upfront is free and if it is of high quality, it will encourage readers to go back to their site. Another side benefit to high quality content is that it encourages sharing and syndication through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. This sharing aspect of social media facilitates what normally happens when a person experiences a great piece of content, be it a book, movie or song...they tell someone about it.

The reason why low quality content is spammed all over the place by the producer of it is that they are the only one who will spread it. No one else would ever want to share it.

In this way, the ways that people spam others is just imitating what happens naturally with great content.

I like to think of it this way. It's a matter of depth and span. The more depth or quality there is in a piece of content, the more it has the potential to spread through word of mouth. However, if there is no depth to the material the only way for there to be span is for the producer of it to wall paper the web through any means at their disposal.

Depth alone isn't the answer, at least not the complete answer. It's crucial to study marketing and seek out ways to spread your message ethically as well as sharing content that deserves being passed around by others. I am a big fan of Seth Godin. He says that marketing is nothing more than the spreading of ideas. If you have something that you want to say and have it spread, then you are a marketer! He stressed that a lot of great ideas have never taken off due to bad marketing.

So what is a simple principle to keep in mind to get our content seen initially and shared?

It's all about span and depth. Great content as we mentioned earlier has depth and quality. This will help it to be shared by others which will naturally create span.

"The greatest depth over the greatest span."

Focusing on this will help you to balance three areas of content marketing.

1. Create great content that has depth

2. Get it in front of a large audience

3. Make it very easy for them to share it with others - via social media syndication buttons/ plugins

Balance is essential in many different areas of life. In online marketing, it's important to balance depth and span to have success.