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Bruce Simmons asks:

Social Network sites like Digg and StumbleUpon and what not seem to have unspoken rules about who can promote a blog. What I mean to say or ask is: OK, with Digg, one cannot submit their own blog. But Twitter, you can chest thump all day long.

Do have a list of what sites you can ‘chest thump’ on and other sites that you are reader dependent on?

What are social networking sites?

This is an interesting topic, and I feel that we should start with some very basic information. Contrary to what some people might think, social networks were not born online with Friendster and MySpace. Social network, in fact, is a very old term used to describe any social group where individuals and/or organizations form a specific structure with nodes and connections. Here is the Wikipedia definition:

A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes. The resulting structures are often very complex.

The Internet completely changed the way people used to communicate and interact, so it was a natural step to create virtual social networks, or social networking websites. Back in 1979 Usenet, a global Internet discussion system, was already attempting to accomplish this.

Then in 1995 you had perhaps the first online social network as we known them today, ClassMates.com, which the purpose was to allow school mates to connect.

What about social bookmarking sites?

While websites like Digg and StumbleUpon do have a social factor, I don’t think we can classify them on the same level as MySpace or Friendster. Mainly because they have different scopes: the first two aim to let people share and discover new websites and online stories; the second two aim to let people with similar interests connect online.

You could consider Digg and StumbleUpon a sub-category of social networking sites, for example. Social bookmarking sites is what I would call them, but you have many other definitions floating around, including community bookmarking sites and social news aggregators.

Centralized vs. Decentralized Social Networks

Now that we have a clear understanding of social networks and social bookmarking sites, let’s get back to the central question. What are the unspoken rules of these websites? When someone can promote his own content directly, and when one should refrain from doing so?

In order to draw the line that divides the accepted and unaccepted behaviors, I think that we need to classify those social networking sites under two different groups: centralized social networks and decentralized social networks.

Note: That is a classification that I came up with, so I am not sure if it has being used in the past or not, and if with the same meaning. Feel free to suggest other interpretations or to disagree with my theory in the comments below.

Centralized social networks are those where the actions of the single elements will inevitably affect the whole community. That is, all the actions flow to the center.

Digg is an example of a centralized social network. Every time you submit a story, digg or bury a story submitted from another user, ask for votes or try to manipulate the system in your favor, your actions are inevitably affecting the whole community.

That is because all members of Digg use the front page of the different sections to stay updated with the hot stories around the website.

The same principle applies to StumbleUpon. The central part of their system is the “Stumble!” button on the toolbar. Virtually all the members use that button to discover new and interesting websites. As a consequence, whenever you give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to a particular story, and whenever you share the stories you liked with friends, you are affecting the experience of all the other members of the community.

Twitter, on the other, is a decentralized social network. There is no central or core location where the actions of the single elements flow to. The system allows you to create you own micro communities, and your actions inside those communities will not affect people outside of them.

That is, you can decide who you follow, and other people in turn will decide if they want to follow you back or not. Suppose someone starts using Twitter solely to promote his own website. Users that are not following that person will not even notice what he is doing, and the ones that are following him can simply remove the follow to stop receiving his messages if they find them annoying. Finally, if someone likes to receive the promotional messages about the website of this person, he can keep following him.

Now you might ask me: so are all social bookmarking sites like Digg or Reddit centralized, and all standard social networks like MySpace and Facebook decentralized?

That is a good rule of thumb, but it is not always the case. Most social bookmarking sites are centralized, including Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Mixx and Propeller. Some, however, are not. Del.icio.us is an example of a decentralized social bookmarking site. Provided you use the service to save your own bookmarks or to share them with friends, the actions of other users will not affect your experience.

As for standard social networking sites, I would say that most of them are indeed decentralized. Of course you have people trying to spam and manipulate those websites nonetheless, so the action of abusive users can end up affecting the whole community. But that is the exception and not the rule.

Conclusion

By now you should already know the answer to the original question. Whenever we talk about decentralized social networks, you can use them in whatever way you desire (well, excerpt for spamming). You can promote your website, yourself, express your opinions and what not. You will create your own micro community on those sites, and your actions there should not affect the other members, so they will hardly care.

Consider Twitter again. There are people who use it as a micro blogging tool. Others use it as an instant messaging utility. Others yet use the tool to promote their websites, and some people are even trying to sell their Twitter accounts on eBay! It is all good though, because each user has the autonomy to decide who he will follow, who will be able to follow him, and what micro communities he will join.

As for centralized networks like Digg or StumbleUpon, you will need to play under the rules of the community. Usually these rules will encourage you to be active in the community and to actually help it grow. Self promotion and system manipulation are frowned upon.

Practically speaking, can you get away with the occasional submission of your own stories? Yes. Can you use it over and over again solely to promote your own stuff? No.

Over to you

Do you agree that some social networks are centralized, while others are not? Do you think people should avoid completely promoting their own content, or there are exceptions?

You, as the content builder, have the responsibility to give people the reason to be interested in your website through the things that you write.

Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media shares that “great content DOES not market itself”. Since you have the whole world to compete for, you also need to PROMOTE YOUR CONTENT.

Here are the four step process she gave for promoting good content:

1. Identify and Chart “Your People”

This is actually a bit more complicated than it sounds and goes far deeper than the trite “find your influencers” pitch you’re probably used to receiving. There’s a difference between “knowing” who you’re supposed to be feeding content and actually creating a strategy that incorporates it. This step is about mapping out that strategy, putting names on faces, and creating points of contact.

• Who are your people?

They are the people on the Web capable of and pre-disposed to linking to and passing around content they like. This include those on Twitter and social media already submitting and talking about your content, the high authority bloggers/reporters in your niche who haven’t yet found you, the familiar names commenting on your blog, and even the loud folks who sit a layer or two outside of the community you’re trying to target. They are everyone in, around, and just outside your bubble.

• How do you find your people?

You go to them. Search Digg, Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Mixx for articles from your domain and find out who is responsible for submitting them. You set up a listening station to track where your mentions are already coming from and who’s doing the mentioning. You search Technorati to locate the most authoritative blogs in your niche and the bloggers you want to be talking about. You repeat that process using Google News. You study your blog activity to understand which posts get the highest success rate and who comments on those types of posts most often.

• How do you chart them?

You turn usernames into real people. Take those users/bloggers/reporters you just found and map them out. Some traits you’ll want to note:

o The name of the blogger responsible for the blog or your category
o Their direct email address
o Their Twitter handle
o The angle they take on stories
o The topics they like to write about

Create an informal database to keep track of when you’ve last contacted them, the piece that you sent them, and whether the response was positive (a mention) or negative (no mention). Rank bloggers and categorize them into A, B and C importance groups so that you’re prioritizing your list of people (sorry. Some people are prettier than others).

It seems like a lot of work, and really, it is, but it’s the best way to keep tabs on who’ve reached out to, who likes what and what’s already been pitched. I know most SEOs have no respect for bloggers and reports, but pissing them off is typically not in your best interest. Paying them some respect and not pitching them pieces they have no interest in or have already turned down is not going to be good for your online reputation management strategy. Trust me, blogger relations is important.

2. Get On Their Radar

Once you’ve successfully stalked your new 200 or so friends, start forming relationships by reaching out to them on a personal level and getting on their radar.

People who already know you: When you notice someone is spending a lot of time submitting your pieces to social media or bookmarking them, drop a note to say thank you. Do NOT give tips on how they can optimize their titles, descriptions or get more votes. Just email to let them know that, hey, you noticed their support and you really appreciate it. Do the same thing for blog commenters who are also powerful social media members. Chances are that person is going to email you back to say thank you and further build out the relationship.

• People you want to know:

The best way to get on someone’s radar? Promote them. Not in a stalker way, but in a genuine way. When they publish something especially kickass, tweet it. Submit it to social media for them. Drop them an email to say kudos and a virtual high five. Participate in the same communities that they do. The same way you semi-stalk people IRL that you want to get close to and make notice you, do it online. Just say hi, be helpful and make them feel good about themselves. Do not promote yourself. Just get on their radar. People love people who tell them they’re pretty.

3. Create Your Content

Not all of your content will be designed to get you massive amounts of traffic and attention. But when you do create a piece that you want to see take off, craft it around an identified audience. Not a vague audience, but one where you’ve already matched the piece to a selection of the names, faces and emails collected on your press list. Know what they’re inclined to want to read. Some groups will like big resource or directory-type posts, others will like sexier pieces or media-filled content. Make sure you know where it’s going and build it accordingly.

I like to group my press list into different angle categories so I know who I’m going to go to for the different kinds of content pieces. I’m a bit OCD so this helps me ensure that I’m hitting people at appropriate intervals and covering all interests. It also gives me an idea of who I want to link out to in the post, which blogs I’ll want to mention, and how much vanity bait I can apply to the piece to maximize attention.

4. Know When to Publish & Promote the Content

Know when it’s the right time to publish and promote your content so it doesn’t suck. Because most of the world works on an East Coast publishing schedule, do NOT start promoting your awesome link magnet at 7pm on a Thursday evening. Even if you’re on the West Coast, no one cares. You’re going to miss your audience. You want to publish when your community is most active and when you’ll get the most attention. That may mean sitting on a post for a day or, you know, actually planning ahead.

If it’s possible for you to seed your content before alerting the masses that it’s live, do it. If not, don’t worry too much about it and start the promotion process. Go through your press list and start contacting people who you think would be interested in what you’ve just created. Do NOT ask them to submit it to social media, to link to it, to comment on it, etc. Just drop a quick email or tweet in their direction to let them know that you wrote something their audience may be interested in. If you mentioned someone in your article or used a photo with permission, let them know. The more targeted you’ve made your press list, the better you’ll be able to match content to bloggers.

If you feel slimy about alerting someone to the content piece you created, STOP. It means the piece isn’t very good. If it was good, you’d be excited to share. People like hearing about content that is unique/interesting/informative. They like getting the scoop and being among the first to tweet it out. As long as you’ve written something that is worth the interest, you’re not wasting their time. If you DON’T feel good about emailing people about what you just created, then you haven’t created something worth their time. People won’t share content that doesn’t excite them. If you’re not excited by it, then you need to go back to the drawing board and fix your article.

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The important thing about content promotion is being successful in making your content reach its target. This way, you are able to find home for your good content.

Here is an excerpt from an article I read on this site. Read below:

The first and most obvious potential benefit is to gain new customers by exposing your business in another online venue. But to do this you need to be creative and interesting in a social setting. Think of it like going to a party with the aim of picking up business vs. picking up business at a business conference – you will need to act differently in the “social media” arena than on your business’ website. You need to stand out and say something of interest to the people in your arena.

Blogging about the benefits of your products/services is not going to attract viral marketing (i.e. friends telling friends about a web page) – you can leave your product/service information to your standard web site. To attract interest and any sort of following you need to offer opinions, advice and stories of interest or humor.

The second and less obvious benefit from blogging and “tweeting” can come from links you place on these social websites back to your company website. While there are a number of aspects that go into increasing traffic to your website, links remain one very important aspect. This is because every link to your site that exists on the web counts as a vote towards your Google page rank.

The more links that you have on the web, the higher your ranking will be in the search engines – which means more people will discover your website. You can place links in the body of your messages and you can leave them in your message “signature” as well. In time, the search engines will deep scan the web and find those forum links.

Content is (still) King

Read our previous article on why content is important.

Whatever social medium you choose to utilize – DO NOT SPAM! Have something to say and do not just attempt to blatantly ask people to click on your link. This will of course not work with any legitimate potential customers – but possibly more damaging could be blacklisting by the social website. When posting to forums and blogs stick to areas which are relevant to your business – this is obvious for a few reasons but not least in that it will keep you interested and provoke ideas from you.

If you contribute to online social networks with quality and interesting posts (and tweets!) then your presence will be appreciated and your efforts should go rewarded with new inquiries for your business.

Links to Popular Social Websites:

Twitter – www.twitter.com
Facebook – www.facebook.com
Linked In – www.linkedin.com
Orkut – www.orkut.com
Digg- www.digg.com