Being a Good Social Media Friend and Finding Other Good Ones
In the real world, we pick our friends based upon certain traits and conditions. We want people we can like who have shared interests and who have a certain proximity to us. The Internet has changed the proximity aspect of friendship, but we still need to be able to interact with our friends in some way to truly be friends.
In social media, “friendship” is more of a way to get votes for your submissions than to interact with others. There are certainly those who make real friends through social media. Some of the people I interact with on a daily basis were people I met on social media sites. Still, the bottom line in social media friendship is “vote for my submissions and I’ll vote for yours.”
There is something skewed about this concept, but we’ll ignore it for this article. Instead, we’ll accept the fact that most social media friends aren’t really friends and focus on how to be a good one, as well as finding other good ones. Read more
Stop Clicking Banners and Maybe They’ll Go Away
Is it you? Are you the one who clicks on the banner ads on social media and social networking sites like Digg, MySpace, Reddit, Facebook, Propeller, and everywhere else (except Mixx, where I haven’t really seen them yet)? I’ve been looking for whoever it is that still thinks they’re the 9,999th visitor or that they really just won a free Xbox 360. When I find this person, I have one word.
Stop.
It’s 2008. Banner advertisements, as wonderful and beautiful as they were before the turn of the millenium, are now worthless. Or are they? They still seem to be on just about every website (this one included, though I don’t know why I bother since nobody clicks on them). I would think that most people, especially the astute, tech-saavy readers of social media and users of social networks, are immune to them and barely register that they’re even there. Read more
Linkjacking is Good, Bad, and Ugly
Linkjacking means different things to different people. Many see it as using the content on one site as the bait to get viewers to pass through your site, or even stay there and explore without going on to the primary content. Most of the time, there will be tidbits or summary information about the primary story accompanied by an interesting image or bit of photoshop magic that takes up most of the page.
To many, including Urban Dictionary, a true “linkjacking” requires that a person from the website doing the linkjacking also submits the story to an aggregator such as Reddit or Digg to drive traffic. I believe that websites and blogs that have a strong enough following to be able to “assume” someone will submit the story are also linkjacking, even if they are not the one’s doing the submitting.
The idea is to generate traffic from social media sites and even the search engines without having to write a ton of original content or do the research. Here is an example of a website that I like a lot, Engadget, which is notorious for linkjacking: Read more
12 Signs that You May Be a Social Media Addict
There are many social media addicts in this world. You see it every day on Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon. Even Propeller, Mixx, and Newsvine have their share. What you may or may not know is whether or not you are one of them.
It’s often tough to recognize. Perhaps the joy of seeing your first story on the front page of the site was enough to set you off. Maybe it’s a desire to promote your point of view, a political candidate, even your own blog or business. For some, it’s something that passes the time (until too much time has passed). Read these signs below and seek immediate help if 3 or more apply to you. Read more
Building a Better Reddit, One SubReddit at a Time
New Feature Offers First Major Improvement to Reddit (possibly ever) and Not a Lot of People Cared (yet)
When Reddit posted information about new features on its blog, the buzz results were ho-hum. The post itself was bland, starting off with the nonchalant statement, “We added a handful of new features last night.” There was brief coverage at some quality sources, including Wired (which is owned by the same company as Reddit), ParisLemon, and MarketingPilgrim, and only a handful of blog posts, but for the most part, this short private beta has snuck in while Digg revolts, makes peace, and makes headlines.
Upon a close examination, this may be a huge leap forward that infuses more of a social aspect into Reddit. For present and future users, it should be the toy that gets played with for a long, long time. Read more
How to be a Part-Timer and Still Hit the Front Page
Most people who submit content to social media websites like Digg, Reddit, Mixx, or Propeller do so because they believe what they are submitting is worthy of making it to the front page where it can be viewed by a gazillion people. It could be something that interests them from the news. Perhaps it’s a story they worked exceptionally hard on from their blog. Maybe it’s a hilarious video they found.
So, new to the world of social media, they submit it and wait for their name to appear in the popular section. It’s a great story, afterall. However, in most cases, it does not make the front page. Undaunted, they try again. And again. Eventually they start to look at what hits the front page and they see a discouraging trend — the same names keep popping up, and it isn’t theirs.
What do they do? They click on a profile. At Digg, they might click on Suxmonkey, a front page regular. They scan down to the stats and their eyes pop out of their head. 34,000 Diggs! Oh ____! Perhaps they check out Reddit next and click on QGYH2 to see a karma score over 100K. Moving right along to Propeller, they check the Top Contributors section to find that they’ve all submitted hundreds, even thousands of stories and comments.
If you are one of these people, don’t give up! You don’t have to spend hours a day, every day, to become a regular to the front page of social media websites. You simply need a strategy that fits your schedule. Read more
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