Should You Submit Your Own Content to Social Networking Sites
Recently I published a very popular post on 20 Social Networking Sites that are good for building links. I put a lot of work into the research behind that project and isolated 20 great Social Sites that actually were useful for good old fashioned link building in the true SEO sense of the terms. Of course it was submitted it to some Social Sites and it did well, so far in fact as of right now it has
Now that is a good mix of social sites and not a bad result for an SEO type post especially on Digg and Propeller. The comments were mostly good too, however, one poster took a big exception to my suggestion to self submit to these sites and just basically said it was all spam.
Part of his comment was,
“It’s best to use your brain and not try to exploit community sites in this way. It’s bad for the internet and generally unethical. You’ll accumulate a net negative of goodwill from the internet’s population in the long run.”
If you want to read my direct response just go to the original post and read it there. My question for people today though is, is he right in any way? Is it some how wrong to self submit? I personally do not think so but would like to hear others opinions on this.
My view is as follows considering that if I have that young lady on the left do my submissions I will get great results. As that is the case I think we can agree all things are not “fair and democratic” in the land of social media utopia the way some hard core users seem to claim. In some of these sites you are honestly forced to either get someone to submit for you which I have done on more then one occasion or to submit under a fake name, I am also guilty of that at times. If that is the way of the community just adapting to it makes sense.
That said I do not see why we should see self submission or client submission to a Social Site as being some sort of “evil”. The problem with that is we are judging intent vs. judging content. This is the same moronic logic behind “hate crime laws”. When you submit to these sites it would make sense for the content rather then the intent to be judged.
In many sites that is the case. No one gets bent when you self submit to Sphinn or BiggItUp, of course they are almost 100% internet marketers. Yet look how fast Mixx is taking off, I get great results self submitting to Mixx and no haters are bashing me there. They judge my content and love it or hate it and simply vote as they feel they should. Mixx is not now full of viagra postings and such on the popular pages but my posts have several times made popular there. I self submit to Stumble too, no anger, no bashing and Stumble has great content.
To me social networking has a greater future if we judge the content rather then intent. Who cares if someone wants exposure the “real news” is so driven by PR Firms anyway much of the “pure content” many members are trying to protect is every bit if not more promotional then that of a small business or typical blogger.
So what do you think? Is it OK to self submit or is it evil? I am not asking what works better but only is it right or wrong to do it? Does it pollute the web in some evil way or are a bunch of 16 year olds just hateful of anything with the dirty word “profit” associated with it?
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March 28th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I do not believe self-submitting is a bad thing unless it is abused. I personally submit articles from my site (blueworkhorse.com - self promoting not being a bad thing either), but I don’t submit every article. Sometimes I throw up an article and I know it’s not likely to be of interest to many people so I save my self the time and effort to submit.
Without self-submitting, as a new blog, we wouldn’t be able to get our content out to any new readers. If we are able to one day (hopefully sooner than later) get a strong regular readership, then I will turn over the reins of submitting, but until then it is one of the only ways to get our content out to the masses.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
For me. it’s ok to self submit your work on different social networking sites…but just submit..also make sure that you interact with other members, as well….try to look at their postings, post comments, and make suggestions..that way they will not think that you are only there for your own personal reasons..^^
March 28th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
… That’s actually an extremely bad typing position … Seating position is crap, chair is too high, wearing high heels instead of flat-soled shoes, notebook sat on her lap thus arms are at the wrong angle and monitor FAR far far too low for her neck - woo … her back surely won’t last for long if *THAT* is how she spends her office hours …
mind you … having said that, that miniskirt sure leaves little for the imagination …
March 28th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
@Xekk, best comment ever on our blog!
March 31st, 2008 at 2:07 am
As for Stumble, if you read their ToS, you’d notice that they say “no using account to promote your sites”. If they hadn’t caught up with you, it means they are busy.
Also, I recall hearing about the SU algo to reduce the effect of stumbling the same pages (which is your site). So it still makes sense for someone else to stumble your page.
As for making others social vote on your pages, yeah it’s a 22. But if you socialize well in the industry and have top social users as your readers, you’ll be in a good shape.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:27 am
I have never had a problem with Stumble. Jack
April 1st, 2008 at 12:21 am
I don’t think also that submitting your own content to social Networking sites is not a good idea. As long as you do it correctly and you follow the rules.
April 1st, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I have never had a problem with Stumble either, since I can’t even manage to figure out how to submit an article! lol
I don’t mind submitting my own articles, however Jack if you assistant needs a part time job, we are actually hiring.
April 4th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
I have no problem with self submitting articles, but I have a problem with some bloggers submitting everything they write. I self submit, but articles that I think might be of interest to others. The ones were I am just talking more about myself, they are for my regular subscribers.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Everything in moderation, self submitting articles balance with actually helping the social networking sites display useful content for others.