The growth of social media marketing has opened a wealth of opportunity for businesses small and large. However, it also opens up a lot of questions, many of which don’t have a definable answer. One of these is the inconclusive ‘what is spam?’

The problem is that we all, as businesses, consumers and networkers, have different opinions as to what constitutes spam. For instance, we may be receptive to advertising when in business or consumer mode, but see it as spamtastic when using Facebook to talk to our friends.

So how can we know what is and isn’t appropriate, with who, and when?

To get you started, ‘So What Is Spam‘ details precisely what a number of the biggest social networks think is, and isn’t spam.

Featuring social monopolies Facebook and Twitter, along with Google+, Quora, Reddit and professional network LinkedIn, ‘So What Is Spam’ makes it apparent that it’s not just us in the dark when it comes to spam.

Although the rules seem pretty clear-cut when it comes to unsolicited email and the distribution of commercial or promotional content, elsewhere the lines seem to blur.

For example, Quora say that when it comes to self-promotion ‘some’ is acceptable ‘so long as you’re still useful to the community’; but how useful is ‘useful’? And how much is ‘some’?

Reddit state that if you spend more time sharing than reading you’re engaging in ‘aggressive sharing’, but how do they quantify this? Do they know exactly how much time you spend reading and how long you take posting links?

It seems that in many cases, if we want to stay on the right side of the spam police, we can’t just rely on formal guidelines. We need to rely more on our own judgement and the hope that the wrong person doesn’t catch us doing the ‘wrong’ thing.

The infographic is courtesy of MyBlogGuest Infographics Gallery.