Hey, You're New Here! We love new people.

It would be great seeing you back again, so please subscribe by RSS feed, or get updates by email, before you forget!

… is the word Social in there for a Reason?

I was reading a post on Sphinn just now. Kind of ironic that I chose to write a blog post about it, as you’ll soon see. When the content of my comments go over three paragraphs, I tend to extend them into posts.

That way that site gets a premium link and traffic in addition to my brain power.

The title of the post is If You Show Me Yours I’ll Show You Mine - The Backrub Effect.

It makes a complaint I’m hearing more often, one which I find largely invalid but needs to be addressed because it deals with a key component to unlocking your social media traffic.

Here’s a quote - it’s very passionate blogging, which makes for a good read.

I feel disappointed …
I started using Digg a few months ago and I had several posts in the Programming section. Quality free stuff done so nicely that a few 100s of lines could be reused in just 3. As easy as it gets. I had great hopes as, compared to the rest of the content, mine was quality.

I received a few visits and that’s it. I said to myself I was posting in the wrong place as my stuff should have appealed to web developers and I do hope I’m not the only one.

I stopped using Digg.
Assuming this was my fault, I didn’t use Digg anymore and, with a bitter taste, I just did with it what it does best: get pages indexed fast!

And then there was light …
I started noticing many posts on blogs about Social Bookmarking and how to game with it. I was getting more and more digggusted and I finally understood the thing I could not figure out first. « No matter how good your content is, they don’t give a funk! »

I understood that quality is not an issue there and to get Dugg or Stumbled you need connections. These connections, improperly called friends, are supposed to make your site get popular if … if you make theirs! It’s the back rub thing. U2ME ME2U!

… and disappointment.

The writer is disillusioned, because he feels that votes on content in Digg or Sphinn are based on reciprocal favoring. I completely understand how he got that impression on Digg, where it’s harder (though not impossible) to get to the front page without established connections.

However, I believe the fallacy in his thinking is that he seems to believe hat

1. it only takes connections, and you can’t make the front page without them.
2. Friendship comes before quality content on social media sites
3. Quality doesn’t matter as much as friendship.
4. Particularly on Sphinn, you’re getting votes because people know/like you, not because they found your content useful, funny, informative, relevant, etc., if not enjoyable as well.

If that last one were true, I’d be on the front page of Digg every day. However, my content is not targeted to the typical Digg reader, which I think is probably the most important lesson most who covet Digg traffic should learn. That, and the fact that getting on the front page of Digg still requires a targeted post of some level of quality or at least interest.

Back to the point though - if getting on the front page of Digg was based on influence/connections alone, why aren’t all the well connected people always on the front page of Digg, exclusively? The socialsphere isn’t perfect, but it’s at least as fair as the blogosphere, or we’d never have new A-listeres. Nor would the current and past A-listers ever decline in relevance, traffic, influence or interest.

You wouldn’t even have to BE an A-lister to enjoy the traffic levels of the Technorati top 100 if that were true.

Think about it.

I have 10K email subscribers on my newsletter list. If it’s free and takes only a minute, most of them would do that for me, whether to curry favor with me or just because they like me.

At least 100 of the connections I’ve made in the last 5 years have lists over 100K, a few over a million. I could waste a favor on that one time at a site like Sphinn and the momentum would keep me permanently on the front page with each new story - if social bookmarking or social news sites worked like that.

If this logic is true, this very post should be on the front page of the technology section of Digg based on name recognition alone.

And I’m not even bragging when I say that… on some weekends you can get on the front page of the technology section with a few hundred well timed Diggs.

Sidebar: For the love of God please don’t Digg this story, or anything at my site, ever, or at least until I upgrade to a dedicated server. Thanks.

Now, I won’t say that an idea like that has NO merit. There are smart things you can do with your connections that can help you get the initial push you need to get noticed at social media sites.

However, in the real world, it just doesn’t work like that.

One simple reason is that no one has time to vote for all their friends blog posts each day. Another is that none of us has time to ask for that particular favor all the time. Imagine how much time it would take a person who does four blog posts a day to also send a private message to 100 friends asking them to Digg/Stumble/Sphinn/Plug/Bump/Stirr/Mark?

And even if you had time like that on your hands, not everyone would do it, every time. In fact, after a while, your daily request would fade into background noise.

I will grant the author the fact that Digg may be about the connections, but with Sphinn or StumbleUpon, that’s only enough to get the cart rolling - the gravity of your submission has to take you the rest of the way.

Sure, it’s great to have momentum and smart to make connections to other people. But it’s not about you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. That model of social media just isn’t sustainable.

That’s not even a good example of friendship or smart networking with a connection.

I can BUY that kind of favor - why waste it on a vote when they could help me build my list directly instead? If you’re cashing in your favors only on social media, you’re not that bright.

That’s right. I said it.

And I mean it. If you’re doing that, stop it, and give me your money, even though I just insulted you. Because logically you know I’m right and I’ll come up with a much better plan.

Seriously though, if you’re only connecting to people for what they can do for you in social media, and you know enough people that this exercise would be worthwhile, it’s smarter just to buy traffic, and save those favors for something smart like joint ventures, list building, or links.

Oh I almost forgot the irony part I was talking about earlier.

I found his post on Sphinn.

I Sphunn it and I don’t know him. I’ve read five articles there that I did not like, and thus, did not Sphinn. All five were by people I knew. And yes, not everyone uses Sphinn or other bookmarking/news sites the way I do. But the software itself defeats a great deal of the potential fraud.

I’ll close with an edited part of the comment I left him yesterday. I don’t know if he’ll publish it, because he has comment moderation turned on, and I wanted to save the most important part of my comment.

…you’re right. SB sites aren’t “for” making friends and socializing, but as part of SOCIAL media, SOCIAL, is, in fact, part of the idea. And though your votes shouldn’t come as a direct result of that, [the social aspect] is going to factor in at some point. However if your major point were correct, every single one of my posts would have the same number of votes as I do friends on each site, and no more.

Also, people vote for different reasons. I’m Sphinning you not because I think you wrote a great article, not because I think you’ll publish my comment, but because I think you brought up as issue that while misguided, does shed light on important issues.

I don’t know you, nor do I think your post is entirely correct or even in line with the way I think. And yet I voted for you. Happens to me all the time….

It’s true that I tend to take special note of my friends content on each site - but I don’t vote for all their content, and I don’t vote every time. Hell, whether or not the button is on their page makes more of a difference than whether they’re my friends.

I’ll give you that I tend to read all my pals contributions.

But it would screw up my Own rep to be a voting whore. So, if for no other reason than self interest, your theory on SB sites is seriously flawed. The friendships come as a Result of good community work on SB sites. Not the other way around.

If you think this is an important issue, Sphinn his article. Let’s start a dialogue about the issue.

And, since everything in the whole world is ultimately about me, , as a reward for reading this long ranty post on the issue, you should know that I’m going to be releasing a very cheap guide that covers how to leverage your social media activitie into more traffic without bucking the system.

It will include an explanation of why leveraging your connections is only good for the initial momentum (and why that’s okay.) I’ll announce it on the blog when it’s ready.

Photo linked to original on Flickr.

Popularity: 22% [?]

convert this post to pdf.