To Stumble Or To Digg … Is It Even A Question?One of the things that puts me in a tricky position as a consultant for PR Newswire is counseling (is that ironic or what?). As an Editor (I was an Editor and Senior Editor from 2002 - 2005), we were not able to counsel clients on what was or was not material to a news announcement. This had to be determined by the client and their legal team. More recently, as the Manager of Emerging Media and a Senior Account Supervisor, I am responsible for counseling clients on rules in Social Media. I'm not exactly sure yet, but this may be a lot trickier.
Much of my presentations focus on social media, social bookmarking and social networking (YES, there is a VERY big distinction between the three (or four)). I contend that the former consists of sites like Wikipedia, Citizendium, Digg, SocialMedian, Newsvine, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Marketwatch and even Reuters Buzz and TD Ameritrade. Social Bookmarking consists of sites like Delicious, Magnolia and Furl. Social Networking consists of sites like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo and newcomers like Corkd, Ning, and SocialGo. Maybe even there's room for a distinction between social media sites and social aggregators like FriendFeed, SocialThing, and others.
There is a very big difference between these four. Social Media relies on the wisdom of crowds and policing of its constituents. The users and community determine the story, definition, accuracy, popularity and trend of the data and/or information. Social Bookmarking sites allows users to store, organize, search, and manage information with other users. Social Networking consists of sites that allow its users to congregate, conversate and organize friends, events and information. Social Aggregators, which is still somewhat of a new term, allow users to stream their online lives and peer into the lives of others.
As far as PR, Marketing and Advertising is concerned, using many of these sites is off-limits. I don't necessarily mean abusing . Digg, StumbleUpon, Reuters Buzz, Yahoo Message Boards, Wikipedia, and many other of these kinds of sites should NOT be used to promote your product, company or blog post. As I say in all of my presentations, doing this is the same thing as patting yourself on the back on video. I don't even think that proactively requesting Diggs is appropriate. Most of these functions are supposed to be reactions by the community at large. The results are supposed to be organic... not contrived. While everyone agrees that the A-List consists of, and requires, shameless self-promotion, it should be done with the utmost integrity.
For the corporate bloggers and shareholders out there ... be aware that you are not an A-List blogger. They can get away with this ... you can't. The problem is their immunity, not their community.
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7 comments:
Great post. I like the division of social media, bookmarking, and networking.
I respectfully disagree about tweeting about blog posts, or sharing/asking for diggs.
My favorite thing about the internet is its empowerment of nobodies to be heard, and if no one know about your blog or blog post, it cannot be dugg... you have to do some seed promotion for the community to know about it so it has a chance to choose or reject it.
Brian,
Thanks for stopping by. I understand the place for requesting feedback, but open solicitation is completely different. Imagine if this was a corporation or brand doing it ... I just think that what's good for the goose should be good for the gander.
I don't need to ask you to digg or stumble my post by tweeting or friendfeeding it ... I already asked by ENABLING that functionality on my blog...
DW
Some excellent summary here. However, I also respectfully disagree on posting ones company blog etc to Digg et al.
That will happen. We all know it will.
It's OK; the crowd will decide if it isn't OK. that's the point I thunk.
Great post. I have been thinking about this very thing lately and I came to the conclusion that it would just be wrong. Self promotion in this manner is a total misuse of the services.
By placing the correct links around my content for sharing/stumbling/digging, I have already provided the tools for promotion. If people don't decide to use those tools, maybe my content just wasn't all that good :)
From my company's perspective, we enable content to get to these sites by placing the buttons on every release. Adding the releases to the sites themselves would get us banned, like it has some of our competitors. Though it's not PC to say, we're enablers. It's not social media if you do it yourself...
David - I’m with you on this one. Social media sites like Digg/Stumble Upon can literally transform an obscure blog post into a major media story overnight. So, I couldn't agree more that results should be achieved organically and not contrived by open solicitation of your peers/colleagues. Content should speak for itself - empower users, then let it fly.
As far as I know, it's not really possible to engineer a Digg front-page placement just by soliciting your friends. Maybe a few people can... but isn't part of the Digg algorithm set up to discount the people you are friends with from counting as much in the determination as to whether you go front-page?
David, you're assuming that people actually view the blog in order to vote it... what if it's a totally new blog by an unknown writer with no social networking connections? You're also assuming that newly Dugg posts by an unknown would be seen by anybody on Digg...
I think with the current signal:noise problem, this is much like real life- the people with the loudest voices and already big distribution channels have an unfair advantage against the newbie.
Barriers to entry in social media require seeding- much the way that people do guerrilla/clever/self-promotional PR offline.
It's inertia- if you have zero momentum, you have to give it a push.
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