Submitting Your Own Articles to Social Networking Sites?

I've submitted a few of my own articles to Digg, Reddit, etc. with mixed results. They were all unique content, legit articles, but I can't help but be concerned that I'm flirting with being banned.

What do the SN sites consider spamming? Is submitting your own articles really bad, or just another way to get your site out there, like submitting to directories?

 

I'm wondering the same thing

 

There are a few social sites that frown on submitting your own content. I submitted regular content from one of my sites and they accused me of spamming and self-promotion. Simpy never sent much traffic anyway, but they index well. I believe your karma on Reddit suffers if you continuously submit pages from the same domain. For Digg, I have others submit my posts to avoid any red flags that may exist.

I submit my own to Netscape.com all the time and never had a problem.

This is just observations from my personal experience. Take it with a grain of salt.

 

uh oh

I've done this on many non-blogger sites (like squidoo, blinklist, etc) by putting press releases with lots of keyword-rich links. I hope it doesn't create a problem...

 

I've been submitting mostly my own and some other of my favorite blogs. I hope they don't think it's spamming, since they are real articles!

 

As long as you submit unique, interesting content I don't see the harm. You won't be benefiting that much anyway unless you get a good response from the other users, which will only happen if the article you submitted is good, in which case you're supporting the SN site IMO.

 

I've dugg my own articles that were already dugg by someone else...

 

Looking forward to the opportunity to do the same, but it hasn't presented itself yet.

 

I have submitted a few of my sites articles at digg, but no longer really do it. I don't see the point as the traffic is not that much anyway and people will only slate you for submitting your own articles and they can easily find out that you have been doing that by looking at a members submission history or probably by something else and once they find out they will probably report you to the sites management team anyway.

 

It really depends on the site. Sites like Netscape and Stumbleupon do have penalties for people who submit too many articles from one domain. Netscape will ban you. Stumbleupon will just make it impossible for you to submit anything from that site for a while.
Sites like delicio.us and furl will just let you submit whatever you want - no penalties. Still, it is only useful to submit things that are reasonably likely to get popular.

 

I've bookmarked my own site on del.icio.us and have yet to get even 1 hit. I don't understand what you're supposed to do to get noticed on that site (don't hate me, but I don't have the time or patience to meet strangers and swap links with them) - there must be another way...?

 

It can actually work to your advantage.

As far a social networking sites go...

Take for example the recent crack-down on MySpace spam and promotions. Depending on what you're promoting, it can be risky posting links to outside material.

BUT - if you post your article (with your outgoing links etc) on your MySpace BLOG space, you can then point other users to your MySpace blog post. Your working within TOS and helping to build the community - and still get to brand yourself or your product. Win-Win.

And for social bookmarking sites...

The ones where the traffic comes from ratings - like Netscape and Digg - will often catch on if you're promoting your own stuff over and over. I learned this lesson the hard way with Netscape a while back

(If you're creating decent content and getting it out there, others should be finding it and bookmarking it for you anyways.)

As mentioned above - social bookmarking sites that are created as a service mainly for the single user to keep track of his/her links (like delicious and furl) should have no reason to care how many of your own links you add to your own account - that's the whole point.

Those types of social bookmarking sites are VERY useful!

Hope this helps.

 

I'm doing much better than you then, I have had a total of 2 uniques from del.icio.us in about the last 6 months I believe. I'm also like you in that I have not got time to meet strangers and swap links with them.

If you are in business, then time costs money, even if you are not in business time still costs money really.

 

hah...good to know someone else is experiencing the same thing, I thought I was alone there.

I have a "bookmark us" plugin that lists all of the major ones in icon format, it's on all 680+ of my pages, and I don't think I've had a single visitor use it yet.

 

Same experience, but I actually think this is okay for now. If you are like me, every time you hear about something new and cool you feel like you should have known about it a long time ago, mostly because you found out about it through some other techie-ish person (we hate not being up on the latest and greatest).

However, if you look at the big picture, we are usually waaaaaaay out in front of the general public when it comes to new and cool stuff.

I don't think social bookmarking/networking has really caught on with the general public yet. It will...just stick with it. WE already know that it is a good and fresh idea. Others will eventually see the light.

 

that's a good point. I spend 8 hours a day on the internet, and actually have found out about social bookmarking for the very first time, 2 months ago!

 

I don't have any icons to social networks on my site. I didn't see the point in adding them as most people probably wouldn't click on them anyway, but I guess if you don't try then you will never know.

 

I couldn't believe what I just saw. I had started using Google Analytics on one of my sites yesturday and it has pulled in a total of 2000 pageviews so far. I have only put it on one of my sites just to try it. This site is not entertainment based. There is no entertainment on it what so ever.

Stats so far are:

Stumbleupon: 4 visits, 4.5 pageviews per visit
del.icio.us: 2 visits, 7 pageviews per visit

OK, I know they are not much to go by, but I am very shocked by that amount of pageviews on average per visit. Unless these stats that Google gives are very inaccurate, but I would doubt it very much as it is giving the direct source of the traffic so it is definately nothing to do with robot's here. lol

So, from looking at this site I do get some traffic from del.icio.us. 2 visits and the stats have been up for only a day and half. I have quite a few people that have bookmarked it though. I guess the more bookmarks you get per url the more traffic you receive.

 

I think part of the issue is that delicio is so big now, it is going to be hard to get your one link noticed.
My Buddhism site recently crossed a threshold of some sort on there. It used to not be bookmarked by very many people at all - one before me, months later a third etc. But now there are suddenly 15 people linking to that site. In other words: it's starting to amount to something. But compared to the main Buddhist sites out there, it's still a small player and likely to stay that way.

Given that it's easier to be a big fish in a small pond then a small fish in a big pond - it's a good idea to target out of the way keywords. And if you are operating in some language other then English: do get in on social bookmarking in that language now, it's likely still a wide open space where you can seem like a big player (and be one).