I’ve been using the web to promote projects and to help clients and causes since 1997. One of my first experiences work experiences was helping a client re-sell limited edition cars on a website. He bought up 35 of these cars across the country and resold them immediately for $3K over asking price, without ever having to physically move the cars.

How did he do this? He hired a self-taught ‘grey hat’ web designer, who figured out that if you think things through, create compelling content and utilize SEO strategically, you could win front page status on Google. I say grey hat because I didn’t mean to be unethical, but I did figure out how to game the SEO system and help my client get a big payday.

Now it is 20 years later, and there are millions of White Hat¹, Grey Hat, and Black Hat Operators on the web, and what they can do has exploded. (There are also Red Hats, but that’s for another day).

We all know: false, salacious, and compelling stories convulse across social platforms, trolls linger under every post of fact or falsehood, and web-operators wear all kinds of guises to push paid messages and agendas. 

Artful, positive content has great traction too,  propagated by good people with great intentions. Action is the aim of all: do or buy.

So, why explain something anyone can observe? Because, just like myths and super hero movies, only one kind of operator will ultimately prevail. And I know where I stand.

White Hat Operators (WHO) do the following:

• Focus on educating viewers, because informed people make better choices.
• Provide original, creative content.
• Promote messages in keeping with “goodness” (kindness, love, personal responsibility, tolerance, inclusion, growth, protection, joy)
• Consciously choose images that uplift, educate or inspire positive action in the real world.
• Respect science and empirical information, and employ rationality along with creativity.
• Spread messages within networks of real people, by packaging their content in appealing, honest ways.
• Innovate new ways to reach greater numbers of people: being web-based conceptual artists and peaceful activists.

White Hat Operators do not:

• Troll or attack others.
• Scare people for the sake of making people pay attention. For instance, a WHO may share scientific data about climate change (scary), yet only along with actionable steps to solve the problem.
• Employ troll farms, or propagate dishonest or false content, even for “good” (the end does not justify the means).
• Argue as a method of getting points across. WHO’s work in the direction of positive change, and listen deeply to successfully address unspoken beliefs. They focus on solutions, not one ups-man ship.
• Use hack-style SEO practices, link farms, or malware to achieve their aims. They don’t have to.

In contrast, one can guess what black hat operators do. They use techniques that include hacking their links and content into unsuspecting average users’ website and posts, overwhelming networks with false stories, utilizing fearsome or emotional imagery unrelated to topic, employing trolls, using argument and condescension as modes of communication, and paying for placement instead of winning it.

There is much money to be made by black hat operations, and there always has been. There are also smart people who have figured out how to get rich in the process of exploiting these practices. The question is, what long-term aim are the black hats aiming for? What’s the big goal?

A: There isn’t one.

Only WHOs can make big win, because they are working with principals that supersede just winning search engine results. They are fighting for causes, principles and ideals. Just like in timeless stories, heroes and heroines beat the bad guys because they are fighting for something higher and better. Win? Yup. Big Time.

So, more power to you White Hat Heroines and Heroes!  You are the people who make art, protest injustice, share new ways of sloughing off old problems. You uplift your kin, create positive direction and solutions, breed powerful actors, and fight negative forces head-on. You employ straight up, transparent methods, use analytics and stay clean in your ethics and messages, so your truth never gets diluted.

I hope you never give up and you may just win the world, not only the web.

 

 

¹ White Hat and Black Hat are terms long used to distinguish ethical web-based practices vs hacking. This article focuses on White Hat and Black Hat as employed in web marketing.