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That's a sick list of tools. Now ONE app to rule them all where you could see your stumble account, propeller, digg, etc. all from one master control area - THAT would make someone "kind of a big deal" on the web!
If you run a real blog you care about you aren't going to let spam through moderation. The only thing people who spam can hope for is to get on blogs that are wide open, and thus, absolutely worthless to get links from anyway.
If someone who really wants to run a quality blog leaves their comments open to instant post without moderation, they aren't sane. And their site will suffer for it.
Legitimate link building through commenting is also called "joining in the conversation" and adding to it in a productive way. I encourage this with clients all the time. It is what blog comments were designed for - conversation and feedback - and it just so happens people can click on a link and come to your site if you have done a good job of being a part of the conversation.
Doing commenting just for engines is ignorant. It doesn't boost your SEO in any significant way that would justify the effort unless you were also adding comments to blogs for the right reasons in the first place.
Still, it does help to teach people about interlinking their stuff. But yeah, I also assumed it was outside links.
Brilliant. What a perfect example of linkbait i.e. an informative, creative, worth-reading post!
Before linkbait it was called good writing.
Excellent advice! And I didn't say that just because it mirrors my own. :)
Aren't 95% of all professionals in any market crap compared to the 5% who aren't?
Great link bait though - calling any industry with ties to social media "crap" seems to results in lots of links, lots of chatter, and inevitiably some fool who doesn't know it's a game taking it seriously.
Mine went up by 3000+ last week and still holding. Think Feedburner finally integrated Googe Reader?
I'd say don't show your boss the conference site. Once they find out how much fun is built into these things you're doomed.
I'm not sure what the value of cleaning up the image of SEO holds for anyone. Seems like a waste of time to me.
Is anyone going to lose business because of the this piece? I hardly think so. You are also missing the pint of Digg entirely.
If you think baiting Digg is used for the purpose of swaying Diggers and getting that short burst of traffic as the end goal, I can see why the reaction to the title of the piece is negative.
But if you think about it, the reason we bait digg is not to get a bunch of traffic fromDiggers or to care atall what they think. They are hands down the worst customer prospects on the face of the earth. Anyone who's tested the traffic conversion from Digg stories will back me up.
All you are after is the A-Listers who also read the front page of digg. You are baiting THEM. The incoming links from other powerful high ranking sites in your niche from one front page digg story can be massive.
THERE'S your traffic of quality. THERE'S your heavy duty link love. And THERE'S where you hit the people with your message who are open to understanding it and who are prospects for your services or to become regular readers.
Digg is nothing more than a waypoint on the road to getting massive attention in your market.
Considering Digg PART of your market, well, according to all the tests we've run, that's a terrible business plan. Diggers don't buy, but they break websites into the mainstream. And that's with positive (hardly ever) and negative takes on our stories.
It doesn't matter what they think or what they say. It matters whether or not they are saying anything at all.
You're not necessarily an anomaly. But you certainly aren't the most common Digg user. We've found it just doesn't pay dividends to focus on Digg users themselves for marketing.
For one, it would be a slippery slope to do a focused campaign because it kind of takes the spirit of sharing news with a community and puts the focus on manipulation of that community to get them to buy stuff by hiding behind "news."
That doesn't bother many people, and I might do it if there were any margin in it myself.
But the real issue with my markets is this: Digg traffic compared to all other forms of traffic to my sites and client sites performs so poorly that you start to regret the bandwidth they used visiting your site.
I don't know about other markets and haven't tested beyond my sphere. But for us it's just more valuable to focus on the discussion incubation process at Digg because we know influencers are watching and can pick up our stories at any moment because of the attention they get at Digg - good OR bad.
Thanks for your blender purchase by the way. I am sending along an extra set of blades as a bonus! :)
Dosh,
Yikes man! I was talking about the slant completely. And I wasn't necessarily responding to you personally. We know you're a maven around here - no need to feel defensive.
Everything I said has to do with the slant of the story being taken as bad juju. My position is that there's nothing to save in an industry that is so wildly diverse under the umbrella of SEO.
It's not an institution to protect. Because it's not an institution. It is too vague and has players from black to white hat, from amateur to pro in it. You'd have to have something more concrete to protect than "SEO" and the myriad definitions of that term, along with the scores of types of people who do "it."
"No harm? I suppose racist propaganda could be released and sanctioned by the government because some people already have the opinion within them? No, I don't think so. And I'm not exaggerating. Pull your notion far enough and it'll fit what I'm saying."
Pull any notion far enough and it ends up in Nazi Germany or a "whites only" water fountain.
Seriously man, I'm a fan of your writing, but you seem overly sensitive today.
I think we were all replying around the same time and my comment looked like a response to yours when it was directed somewhere else.
If only we had a "DoshDosh is replying to your last comment" kind of widget we'd be less likely to talk over each other and get the context wrong.
We're all just "loud" when it comes to this stuff and, if nothing else, the piece accomplished some heat in our dicussion!
Great post. I am wandering through some blockage right now and remembering our readers are largely open to the next great post, whenever it happens, is a picker upper.
Story: There Is A Crazy Belgian Guy In My Office! | Business Coaching For Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs
I loved it. That's Rich's office alright. The Mac running Windows comment was the best, lol.
Story: All Marketers Are Spammers
"Does contributing to a community only to better market your own sites really declassify you as spam?"
First off, I'm just the messenger! And yes, if you go to Newsvine and try to contribute anything leading back to yourself, they consider you a spammer. And it doesn't matter how much you over deliver. They hate marketers, period.
"Doesn't that mean that everyone on a social site is a spammer?"
I didn't mean for that line of reasoning to be drawn. The point, in context, is that these "purists" on social sites are marketers of something. It might not be a physical product or blog, but everyone has a commodity to sell at a social site.
I stated this to point out that their motives aren't pure and are actually hypocritical. If you are selling me on the fact that you are the big dog in a particular social site, you are marketing. Your profile and your "street cred" (and often enormous ego) are the commodities being traded.
I wouldn't go so far as to actually call anyone marketing something on a social site a spammer at all. Remember, I stole the title from Seth Godin's "All Marketers are Liars." He certainly doesn't mean that to be translated literally.
Story: Why Digg is Blocked
Sounds like someone is a little too dependent on certain kinds of advertising. Yeah they don't click as well from SOME social sites, especially Digg, but killing off all that traffic is something only someone who is totally dependent on Google would do.
Mighty fine advice there. We too easily give our hard-written content to the "wind" when there are specific and laser-targeted alternatives to mass distribution.
Great post!
Story: Newsvine Sucks
It wasn't central and wasn't shaping up to be too crucial from the look of it. But I didn't get a chance to really find out. I was mainly pissed because of the work I put into doing everything by the rules and being a real member of their little clique.
When you put in the time and get zapped by dillweeds with a screwed up sense of "news purity" it ticks you off for that reason alone.
My first experience with such clique-ish social site management was Plime.com, which sucks as well if you're keeping a list. :)
Great post and 100% true. You can get so sucked into social marketing tasks without organization and you definitely have to take breaks from it.
I'm still kicking myself for thinking their IPO stock price was ridiculously high lol.
Story: Tools For Engaging In Social Media