Posted 4/14/08 - Kellex
Daily Blog Tips wrote an article today detailing the 8 Addicting Habits of Bloggers and they hit it right on the head with every single one. I find myself falling into these from time to time and have struggled to break some of them like a damn addiction! There was one that really stuck out to me though and that was Chasing Social Media Traffic.
I think we all know how great of a thing social media traffic can be especially if you have a story really take off and get a bunch of Hypes, Diggs or points. The traffic can flow and you can grab a ton of new readers that may stick with you for the long haul. The problem I have though is the excessive spam I’ve been noticing lately on every single one of them. It seems like every post someone writes these days, they feel needs to be thrown up and “shouted” on Digg or IM’d on BallHype. What’s the deal?
Do you all really think that the garbage you just wrote is going to blow up? It takes a really special piece of work to make the front page of Digg and quite a few linkbacks on BallHype to get anywhere. I know you may have just written something YOU feel is really great, but maybe you should ask another blogger to read it to see how they feel. Not everything is a winner!
Only your best work should be submitted to these sites and not just any old “link post” you just put together in 15 minutes. I myself used to post just about anything to these sites and found myself checking religiously to see if anyone had Dugg or Hyped my articles. It really became an obsession and then I started seeing my content lose quality and then the frustrations started to kick in. I also felt a little odd within the sports blogging community and realized it looks pretty lousy when you are constantly submitting your own stories even if it’s not all that great.
In recent weeks I’ve started focusing more on writing and only submitting if I really feel good about. Well sure enough, those articles I truly took time on have been pretty successful on many of the social media sites.
Make sure you are continuing to write quality articles! Your readers came to you because you wrote something that interested them; please don’t let early success distract you from the big picture.
And there is one last little rant I need to get out. For those of you who are submitting everything to Digg, BallHype, and YardBarker just to have your page indexed by Google, you are absolutely pathetic. You are basically telling us all that you are a horrible writer, have no interesting ideas and no one reads your work.
amen to this. i was starting to fall into this as well. just recently started taking a step back from it all, as my social bookmarking hits were dying down anyways. the readers themselves tend to weed out the good writing from the bad, but it definitely doesnt help when you submit crap and have your name associated with it. quality not quantity, i suppose?
George
http://sportstsar.com/
Lets take it a step further. If you are writing crap, forget about the submiting spam. Those people should consider why they are even blogging at all?
Sports bloggers fall into this social media obsession because many of us write about a specific team and therefore do a lot of game recaps on the blog. I don't think you should ever submit a game recap unless you were at the game and have some cool orginal photos. Otherwise your just duplicating ESPN - slower.
Completely agree on the game recap thing. But how often do you see it?
Or the guy that quoted the ESPN breaking news but submits it on his own blog to try and generate traffic? I love those blogs...
When I first started up my blog, I submitted most of my articles to YB/Digg/Ballhype, but once I started submitting just certain things here and there, the results were much better.
It's one of those things that you learn over time, and it doesn't take long either...if someone thinks you're spamming, they aren't afraid to let you know.
another great tip, i submit articles to all 3 daily, on average 4-5 depending on how much i write. but only 1 (if even that) gets shouted to friends on digg.
ballhype i rarely ever send out IMs to friends, just post and let them go where they go. might also be my dislike of ballhype
on yardbarker thou, i dont send out to friends not even sure how to do that. but i have noticed by commenting on other ppls articles has helped mine get on the front page more frequently. 3 of my last 5 articles have all hit the front page.
but i agree, dont shout everything on digg, or IM every article, its also a waste of time that u can put into another article
Dude, you are a total asshole. I am not a spammer, I am just reading the bullshit you are writing on this blog and you are either insane or smoking crack !
Fuck You !
Just started adding stories to these sites recently. Oddly enough, the stories I thought would get the least attention are the ones that blew up!
Funny how that works isn't it? People on those sites tend to have some odd habits and will like the most random stuff.