Thank you for the great post,

Sante

I agree that excellent content is the key, I’m just wondering if a social network is the key-chain (so to speak). I have not taken the time to research this, but through casual observation I notice that many popular sites seem to do very well on digg and other social media sites. Of course, these sites are usually popular because they put out good content, but they also have other things going for them, such as a loyal user base and quality industry contacts. It’s kind of like the adage (sp?) that it takes money to make money. Perhpas it takes popularity to make popularity. What I am wondering is how often do small sites which are relatively unknown get dugg. I imagine if their content is tops then it happens, but what about when it is only very good, or really solid. I imagine in those cases the social network provides a nice advantage.

While we are on the topic, I think that niche social media sites can compensate for this problem. For instance, recently I had an article which did relatively well on SearchMob, but not so well on digg itself. I think one of the reasons is that SearchMob is a popular site in general, but doesn’t get a ton of submissions (thus allowing for some decent exposure for my article). Digg, on the other hand, is much larger and it is harder for my target audience to even see my article at all, let alone evaluate it.

My guess is that the nature of the larger social media sites gives a boost to the more established sites which have extra tools at their disposal, whereas niche sites can help bring exposure to start-ups and the like who don’t have those tools. At least it’s a theory…

Be well,

Moshe

To get a story “Dugg” you must also pay attention to a well written post title and description. Short, sweet and compelling are important characteristics.

Another thing you can do is to add a Digg badge to your website or blog post. Once someone “Diggs” the page once, it will show the count and a link to allow anyone else (who is registered with Digg) to vote for the article.

There is no one solution to getting traction out of social news and bookmarking sites. But make not mistake, excellent content is #1 whether you have a network or not.

“I took the initiative to then use the form Digg provides on it

“..to stop learning is to stop living.”
Talk about hitting the nail on the head!

This is my experience as well, albeit confined to one community: MySpace.

As I detail in my How-To Guide on using MySpace for promotion, some of my inappropriate group forum postings were removed fairly quickly

As long as there is the myth of the quick fix or shortcut, yes I do agree that new services will attract no-good doers with visions of over manipulation returning free and easy benefits.

However, I still think that the social media communities will do a good job at self policing. Otherwise, their communities will die.

[...but it will be noise hanging at the bottom]

Remember the tale “Villiage Wine”, where nobody
thought their little bit of wine would be missed
from the town festival? Social spam is a similar
thing in reverse. My few social self-diggs etc.
wont affect things, so why not..?

My position on this topic may be misunderstood.
I have no problem with making it easier via chicklets
to encourage socializing. But what I see is a lack
of discretion as to what should and shouldn’t be
socialized to any given social venue. If someone socializes
a press release about a new dry cleaners web site in Duluth, it’s sort of silly, and nobody gets hurt (or dugg , but if this is a fictitious example (today) of noise at the bottom, to me it’s the pollution of the commons, noticed or not.

I’ve been guilty in the past of silly socializing, and I do understand that one man’s spam is another man’s headline news
(Hey, I’ve been looking for a dry cleaners in Duluth!!!)

My position today is social spam is not going to kill the social golden goose, but the goose does bring out the worst of the spammers, and for me that’s like people who toss “only one” cigarette butt out their car window and think it doesn’t make a difference..:)

Eric