An online acquaintance of mine sent me a personal email, courteously asking if I would mind digging his post.
Here was my reply to him:
I don’t mind at all. Dugg. You know, I received all manner of automated shouts and whatnot today and I ignored every one of them. I dugg yours because you don’t bug the shit out of me, you personally ask, you ask nicely, and if I did ask you to return the favor, I know you would.
Social media is a great sidekick to blogging (or is it the other way around?). I mention Digg in the headline because it’s specific to the event that inspired this post, but you can apply this to any other social media or voting site. There’s nothing wrong with asking other people to vote for your stuff. But there’s worse and there’s better ways to do it.
Worse
- Any automated request feature of a social network
- Asking everyone on the social networks constantly
- Asking for votes/submissions right in the post
- Inappropriate matches between content and audience
Better
- Personal, infrequent emails
- Very infrequent requests on social networks
- Form a blog pack for this
Clearly, this is all just my opinion, and you’re welcome to disagree with it. We’re all busy people, and I don’t even get as many emails or have as active of a social media presence as some others do. But I know what gets me to pay attention to a social media voting request, and what turns me off, and I’m sharing that with you hoping it may benefit you.
Vent
Do social media voting requests bug you? Feel like you want to spout off about it? Have a different point of view? Comments are below, have at it…
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Hi Michael – I’m banned from SU, which is a tad annoying, as I barely every asked others to Stumble anything. I’d really like to get the hang of Digg though – so this is useful info.
There were 2 or 3 people on SU who used to send me requests everyday. It annoyed me when it was for the same site or blog each time. Also, I didn’t like doing it if it was for one of those brochurefolder type pages you mentioned yesterday, as opposed to an interesting read.
The other thing I didn’t like was when people asked me for a review when I had just voted something they’d sent me. I liked giving reviews for posts that were really good and wasn’t keen on being pressurised into reviewing mediocre stuff.
Anecdote: some time ago I sent a few messages to, made a few mentions online of a guy (not naming him), but never heard anything from him once; no big deal; recently received a canned digg request from same guy … ummm, my digger’s in the shop
If someone whose blog I visit and comment on regularly thinks they have a great blog post with a high probability of hitting the front page of digg and they ask for my help, I’m more than happy to help. More and more I’m ignoring those automated “digg” shouts and repeated requests from the same person. In other words, I agree with what you’ve written here.
Great post, and I agree completely. I get notifications that somebody has sent out a shout to me on Digg- and I completely ignore it. However, a personal email politely asking me to digg an article will definitely be noticed, and action will be taken if its a great article!
I really like the stumbleupon “send to a friend” feature. Because its a manual process (if you want to send a page to all your friends, you have to do it one by one), I don’t get as much crap as I do with Digg. I’ve built some great relationships with some fellow stumblers through that tool.
Good stuff, mate. I do respond to the odd shout. BUT these shouts are from people who I know well, and who digg my stuff back. Mutually beneficial, real, personal relationships. Though I don’t take ‘real’ to mean I’ve met them in person. Plenty of online-only friends fall into this category.
The rest of the time, shouts don’t work for me. I can see who sent the shout when they arrive in my inbox and ignore them liberally. A quick personal email is always much preferred.
I hate the notices of Here’s my post, please Digg it! Maybe your post isn’t that good, maybe after I read it, I dont think its worth a digg. Isnt Digg supposed to be the choice of the people.
Everyone is consumed with getting on the front page of digg. If they worked that hard to create a good post instead of bugging people and gaming the system, they would get there easily.
If you ASK me to digg, I wont, period.
I dont mind people letting me know about a new blog post I can read. Especially on Twitter. If I follow you, I like reading your stuff. But no one is brilliant EVERYDAY!
Dr. Wright
The Wright Place TV Show
http://www.wrightplacetv.com
http://www.twitter.com/drwright1
@Cath – Sorry to hear you are banned from StumbleUpon! How did that happen?
@Dan – Thanks for sharing that story. In the end, treating people with respect wins more for everyone.
@Marelisa – Yup, when the signal-to-noise ratio gets skewed towards noise, people tune out the source entirely.
@Erica – Thanks for mentioning that manual StumbleUpon tool. I often don’t notice people have contacted me on it until long afterwards, so if you really want to reach me, email is the way to go.
@Joel – When you have a genuine relationship with someone, and you’re all out to mutually benefit each other, it works. Often in that case, like with a blog pack, no requests are needed: friends take the initiative.
@Dr Wright – I hear you. I think I may ask for stumbles/diggs about once a month, any more. I focus creating the most kick-ass content I can, and I know people will submit it and vote on it.
These sites pay attention to when you’re submitting your own material, so that’s another no-no. Thankfully, if you have others who will do it for you, you never have to worry about it.
I turned off Digg shouts because it was driving me crazy, especially when I was getting shouts from multiple people for the same post.
Like you Michael, I greatly prefer a personal email. When I email people, I only email those I know, and who are an obvious match for that particular post. I send separate emails personalized for each recipient, and only rarely.
Unfortunately though, I think this is a case where the Sith method gets much better results. Yes, you’ll piss off some people by sending out mass emails asking for a Digg and stumble on every post, but you’ll also get a lot more Diggs and stumbles than someone who doesn’t do that.
@Hunter – that’s true, you might get more votes, etc., but the bounce on those posts will be higher and less likely to convert, and to me, that’s really what it’s all about. Jedi for the win, my friend!
OK, new blogger here. Trying to get my feet wet and am overwhelmed by all the information. What will getting “diggs” or “stumbled upon” do for my blog? Do you already have a beginner level post on this that you can direct me to?
Also, on another blogging site, I read a lot about blogrolls. What is your opinion on those? Beneficial? Pros/cons? I have concerns about whether it will alienate some readers if they aren’t part of my blogroll.
Any insights from those clearly more experienced in blogging?
@Theresa – You get traffic and readers. You make new friends and network with people.
I don’t do a blogroll, I link to sites in my posts. I don’t think they hurt or help, but they do take up space. Might be better to have a dedicated links page.
Here are some posts I’ve written that may help you out:
How Social Media Helps Grow Your Blog
What Twitter Does for Me
Video Tutorial: Basics of How to Use Twitter
Hi Michael – sorry I missed your question. Basically, I blogged about those freaks who deliberately go round thumbing down people’s posts. One of my commenters pointed out they were actually blackhat SEO’ers and I think he hit a nerve.
So, they used a bot to make it look like I’d voted up my own post several times. So the anti-spam group began voting it down, tagging me as a spammer etc.
Then they removed the positive votes created by the bot to make it looks as though they’d done nothing wrong. I tried complaining to SU but they didn’t get back to me.
@Cath – Wow, that’s pretty insane! People are such jerks, sometimes.
Hi nice post, i read your blog from time to time but i was wondering something. I also run a blog on a similar topic, but i get 1,000’s of spam comments and emails every day does that happen to you.. Any ideas to stop it? I currently have commenting disabled but i want to turn it back on.. Thanks!