Righteous digg-splay of indignation
You’ve probably heard of social networking sites such as Myspace, Facebook and the almost defunct Friendster. You’ve heard of social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia that allow people to share their “favourites”. But have you heard of social news sites?
The idea that rather than allow a qualified, educated and trained editor to choose which stories are ‘fit for the press’ you rely on people with handles like OneManArmy, amgboy or Currawong1 to submit the stories they deem important to a social news site such as Digg.
You then place your time and reading pleasure in the hands of an editorial committee comprised of people like nizam, goatboy69 and goodbeershow to vote on each of the stories; the stories with the most votes (within a certain time period) are posted on the front page. Very democratic.
Apparently this rather haphazard way of sorting the news works. In recent years sites such as Slashdot, Digg, reddit, FARK, StumbleUpon and Netscape have become extremely popular. Popular enough to crush servers into submission by sending a few thousand people an hour to your site should you make it onto the front page.
So social news sites are powerful; so what? What does that mean to an Internet marketer? Apart from a huge volume of traffic they can send your way, the visitors are invariably there just for a quick fix; for your one piece of highlighted content.
They are unlikely to take a stroll through your site and engage with your content or your brand. You are also likely to be “flamed” in the comments section either on your own site (if you have a corporate blog) or in the social news site’s comments section. ‘Slashdot-ters’ can be especially nasty. If you have an RSS feed, you may get some extra subscribers but the increase is, for the most part, negligible. If you’re a blogger running adverts on your site, you’ll already know that your social news traffic won’t click on many ads either.
So no need to bother, right?
Well, it’s not that simple. While making the front page (or equivalent) of a social news site doesn’t bring any tangible benefits to a site (apart from a ton of traffic), it does provide an interesting benchmark of how often you’re creating remarkable, interesting and engaging content. If you’re writing a corporate blog or producing video content, it can be a nearly instantaneous feedback mechanism. If you’re pushing out articles or tips on your Web site, once your compelling content is highlighted a number of times, you become a trusted source.
It also provides some insight on the accessibility of your content, particularly with respect to how often people are checking it and judging it worthy of submission. Like I said, some of these pseudo-nonymous users can be brutally harsh; just submitting a story can often be akin to taking your life in your own hands.
To round things up, use the Digg effect as a measurement tool for your content, not an overarching goal. iStudio hasn’t been “Dugg” in the broader sense, but my personal blog has. While the traffic was a nice boost to the ego, there were very few comments or engagement with my other content.
By all means make your content findable, include applets to allow for easy submission and voting on certain sites, but don’t write your content with the sole purpose of being picked up. Who knows what these crazy social news-aholics want to read!
Additional Links:
- Tony Hung, my editor at the Blog Herald writes about Digg and other social news sites… a lot!
- David Kirk goes through the top 10 things Webmasters should know about the Digg effect.
- Some erratic wisdom and analysis of the Digg effect with lots of nice graphs.
- CyberNotes on pretty much the same.
- Performancing reminds us that being linked to by an A-list blogger (such as TechCrunch) would have the same effect.
- For all you Webmasters, here’s how to prepare yourself for the social news effect.
Tags: social news, digg, slashdot, reddit, fark, StumbleUpon, digg effect, tony hung, deep jive interests, david kirk, CyberNotes, Performancing, iStudio
