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You may have heard about Digg’s recent change in algorithm, an effort to limit the “gaming” of Digg’s system of voting a story up or down. If you’re really in the know, you may even be aware that scribd.com has put a halt to html uploads. The express purpose, as stated on the scribd blog, is to put a stop to “abuse by Internet marketers”. More to the point, to stop the practise of embedding links in a document that lead back to the spammer’s site.
Both of these examples are reactions to an all too common situation: Internet Marketers who have no understanding of the medium in which they are operating, or worse, marketers who don’t care about the medium. Web 2.0 is a social, community driven medium, and as such can present powerful opportunities for the marketer to expand his customer base. But that is not the best use of this medium. Rather, we should be striving to use the internet to establish a system of better contact with customers. Quality contact over quantity contact.
Let me explain what I mean. To date, the vast majority of internet marketing practises have been centered around the concept of pushing your message in front of as many people as possible. This attitude has resulted in an overabundance of banner ads, popups, popunders, spam, and free programs with bundled spyware and the like. All designed to shove the marketer’s message in front of as many sets of eyes as possible, in the hopes that a small percentage will actually be interested. This is the “quantity contact” aspect that I referred to.
The new internet is putting power back where it belongs: in the hands of the user. This means that they have the ability to ignore you, should you annoy them too much. Herein comes the concept of “quality contact”. Web 2.0 is about user contribution, and as marketers, if we are not contributing something, then we are by default spamming. Instead of trying to get a sales page voted up on Digg, the web savvy marketer will instead submit a genuinely useful how-to article. Something that a reader can take away and use to solve a problem immediately, without having to buy your e-book. If your solution works, some of them will want the whole package. They will become your customer, no spamming required.
This is an organic approach, and one that will build trust between you and your customer. More importantly, by using social media you become an adviser, or perhaps even a friend. Results may not happen as quickly as with other methods, but they will grow much bigger, and last longer, because they will be genuine.
In so far as Digg’s algorithm change and scibd’s policy change go, they are reasonable reactions to a problem that is having a negative impact on their user base, and as such I can’t say that I blame them for taking these actions. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that they will be as effective as they hope, particularly in Digg’s case. Digg’s new system favours diversity in voting, which is to say that the more random Diggs a story gets, the better. On the flip side, if a story or site gets dugg by the same group of friends on a regular basis, those diggs won’t count as much toward pushing the story onto the front page.
Scott Carp of Publishing 2.0 has written a better explanation of the digg’s new algorithm, and makes some good points as to what may work, and what may not. If you want to better understand this particular situation, I highly recommend his article.
For myself, as an internet marketer who hates spam, I see one potential flaw here, one that affects me (and marketers like me) directly. Let us suppose that I write a brilliant article, and post it here. I submit it to Digg, and my friends read it, and agree with me: it’s freaking brilliant. So they digg it, too. Under this new system, my ethical friends are actually working against me. Now this is a problem, for me at least. Again, I can’t blame digg, because I know that as far as marketers go, my friends and I are in the minority. So in this instance, the innocent are punished alongside the guilty. And it’s not just marketers who are going to get hit by this: it’s anybody who’s friends regularly digg their blog. That’s a lot of people, most of whom are not marketers in any way, shape, or form.
Side note: a short review will show that I have pushed (and voted on) my share of crap, and not that long ago. I freely admit it, and as such am aware that I was part of the problem. Without going into the whole story, I simply decided that this was not how I wanted to operate my business, and have since stopped. The reason is simple: first, I have at least some small understanding of the medium in which I have chosen to operate, and second, I decided to put integrity over dollars. ‘Nuff said.
These motions from digg and scribd are just the beginning of the story. Other sites and companies will try different strategies to deal with gaming, ranging from a shrug of the shoulders (what can I do about it?) to draconian measures that will ruin that site’s user experience across the board. Over time, the market will level itself out, and the net will have changed again, just like it did for email spam.
The spammers and gamers will find new ways to abuse the system, and the ethical marketers will continue to build lasting relationships with their customers. In the end, the internet will be a better place for it all, but the only ones who will benefit over the long term will be the users, and those marketers who choose organic growth over the promise of instant riches.
Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 6:44 pmand is filed under Link Love, Strategy, Uncategorized, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Pushing a message, driving people to a web page…as you say, that\'s all passe. The opposite is pulling people through affinity and leadership. We could call it Attractor Marketing. Just the opposite of Mass Marketing.
Well done!
Thanks for dropping by Elan
\"Attractor Marketing\"… I like that, at least on the conceptual level, as it certainly embodies the ideals that I am striving for. It\'s certainly a concept that I am ardently exploring right now. but, as I am still exploring, Cheers, Marc
As you know, many of the Social Networking sites have been purchased by larger companies that are experienced in monitoring their demographics and enforcing their TOS. I for one am glad to see the shift away from what was becoming a downright nasty environment. I can only hope that the profanity and futile anonymous raging becomes a thing of the past, right along with the SPAMMING and other nuisances of people trying to game the system.
It has taken me months of persistence, trying to supply quality content and inform my readers on my issues to actually get a PageRank, but it was worth the work. Receiving intelligent comments from regular readers makes sifting through all the spammers and would-be-linkers well worth the effort.
Brennan Kingsland, RN
http://setourteachersfree.com
Pushing a message, driving people to a web page…as you say, that’s all passe. The opposite is pulling people through affinity and leadership. We could call it Attractor Marketing. Just the opposite of Mass Marketing.
Well done!
Unfortunately, I don\'t think that we have seen, nor will ever see the end of the raging, gaming or spamming, it will simply adapt to the new environment. I wish that it weren\'t so, but people are people, and some of them aren\'t terribly good. Sad but true… I went through something similar here with my PageRank. It took about a year and a half to get to PR 3, with the understanding that I didn\'t know what I was doing, and spent some months just messing around in a more or less aimless fashion. I wonder where I would be at, if I had put some focused effort into it? There lies the trap, though: focus too much on results (PR, traffic, money), and we can all too easily find ourselves drifting towards the dark side. Without the support of friends and community, we can lose focus on the important things, those attitudes and behaviours that define us a human beings, rather than greedy \"marketers\". Thanks for dropping by, Brennan
Thanks for dropping by Elan
“Attractor Marketing”… I like that, at least on the conceptual level, as it certainly embodies the ideals that I am striving for. It’s certainly a concept that I am ardently exploring right now. but, as I am still exploring,
Cheers, Marc
As you know, many of the Social Networking sites have been purchased by larger companies that are experienced in monitoring their demographics and enforcing their TOS. I for one am glad to see the shift away from what was becoming a downright nasty environment. I can only hope that the profanity and futile anonymous raging becomes a thing of the past, right along with the SPAMMING and other nuisances of people trying to game the system.
It has taken me months of persistence, trying to supply quality content and inform my readers on my issues to actually get a PageRank, but it was worth the work. Receiving intelligent comments from regular readers makes sifting through all the spammers and would-be-linkers well worth the effort.
Brennan Kingsland, RN
http://setourteachersfree.com
Unfortunately, I don’t think that we have seen, nor will ever see the end of the raging, gaming or spamming, it will simply adapt to the new environment. I wish that it weren’t so, but people are people, and some of them aren’t terribly good. Sad but true…
I went through something similar here with my PageRank. It took about a year and a half to get to PR 3, with the understanding that I didn’t know what I was doing, and spent some months just messing around in a more or less aimless fashion. I wonder where I would be at, if I had put some focused effort into it?
There lies the trap, though: focus too much on results (PR, traffic, money), and we can all too easily find ourselves drifting towards the dark side. Without the support of friends and community, we can lose focus on the important things, those attitudes and behaviours that define us a human beings, rather than greedy “marketers”.
Thanks for dropping by, Brennan
I totally agree with you. I too am guilty of voting on a lot of crap to help some friends out. However in the last couple of months I have come to many new conclusions on social marketing,and the larger picture.
As always content is king. It always has been and always will be. Quality information is way more important than the number of diggs, or votes.
Also if you are not reading, and commenting on the article and just voting then I personally think you are not….a good social networking friend. I want people to vote on my work but, I also want them to read what I have to say. We put a lot of time, and effort into not only our blog, or sites to give good information. If people think they are doing me a favor by voting for it without reading what I have to say, I would rather they didn\'t vote on it in the first place. We have seen this happen a few times now by greedy marketers, that are more interested in teaching people how to abuse the system, rather than to use it to the benefit of all.
I suspect that virtually anybody who is active in social networks is guilty of it, at least to some degree. If you have an active network, the sheer amount of submissions can be overwhelming, so the temptation to just vote and run can be irresistible. For myself, I have scaled back my social activities for just this reason. If I don\'t have the time to actually read an article, I don\'t vote on it. We each must make our own choices for how much is too much, and set the example that (hopefully) will show the greedy that their \"strategies\" are short term, and will ultimately end up causing more harm to them than anything else. Well, I can hope, anyway…
Thanks for dropping by, Sarah
I totally agree with you. I too am guilty of voting on a lot of crap to help some friends out. However in the last couple of months I have come to many new conclusions on social marketing,and the larger picture.
As always content is king. It always has been and always will be. Quality information is way more important than the number of diggs, or votes.
Also if you are not reading, and commenting on the article and just voting then I personally think you are not….a good social networking friend. I want people to vote on my work but, I also want them to read what I have to say. We put a lot of time, and effort into not only our blog, or sites to give good information. If people think they are doing me a favor by voting for it without reading what I have to say, I would rather they didn’t vote on it in the first place. We have seen this happen a few times now by greedy marketers, that are more interested in teaching people how to abuse the system, rather than to use it to the benefit of all.
I suspect that virtually anybody who is active in social networks is guilty of it, at least to some degree. If you have an active network, the sheer amount of submissions can be overwhelming, so the temptation to just vote and run can be irresistible. For myself, I have scaled back my social activities for just this reason. If I don’t have the time to actually read an article, I don’t vote on it.
We each must make our own choices for how much is too much, and set the example that (hopefully) will show the greedy that their “strategies” are short term, and will ultimately end up causing more harm to them than anything else. Well, I can hope, anyway…
Thanks for dropping by, Sarah