I\u2019ve made it no secret how much of a fan I am of\u00a0Digg and Reddit\u00a0and how much there is we can learn from these networks.\u00a0 In terms of horizontal sharing communities, they\u2019re especially interesting because the entire community gathers around the same content.\u00a0 What this creates is a tribal culture due to the normalized experience everyone has.\u00a0 Whether I\u2019m into business or technology, I\u2019ll see all the stories that go popular if I\u2019m subscribed to Digg\u2019s main feed.\u00a0 Reddit is not exactly like this due to subreddits, but similar in that much of the community is subscribed to the larger feeds.<\/p>\n
Today I want to focus (mostly) on Digg.\u00a0 I used to actively Digg stories and comment, but now I just lurk and study the communities\/content\/interactions (it\u2019s a one of the places that helps me stay on top of the latest\u00a0viral images).\u00a0 Once in awhile\u00a0content from this blog gets Dugg\u00a0too, which is surprising considering I\u2019m a marketing blogger.\u00a0 For the uninitiated:\u00a0 the influential web communities of Digg and Reddit have a love-hate relationship with marketers.<\/p>\n
Love, in that clearly top users are some of the sharpest content marketers around (although this isn\u2019t publicly acknowledged on the communities themselves).<\/p>\n
Hate, in that many in the community outwardly disdain most things marketing.<\/p>\n
Fair play to them, there\u2019s no shortage of spammy marketers making the rest of us look bad.\u00a0 But I\u2019m hoping the Digg and Reddit communities eventually realize we\u2019re not all spammers, since in reality the most popular users on the sites are also in essence marketers.\u00a0 They\u2019re the good kind, the ones the web finds valuable.\u00a0 The kind I talked about in\u00a0qualities of effective web promoters.\u00a0 In other words:\u00a0 I don\u2019t think these communities hates marketers who use\u00a0permission marketing.<\/p>\n
But on the whole if you mention marketing in a thread on Digg or Reddit it sets off red flags.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to dissect why this is:<\/p>\n
Reason 1:\u00a0 they think marketers are gaming their community for links\/traffic Too often in the past, (and even in the present) marketers would collude to game social communities for the traffic benefits and links that would result.\u00a0 The spike in traffic is quite significant and the right types of sites will convert some subscribers if their content goes popular.<\/p>\n But the bigger opportunity which some black hat social marketers colluded to use Digg for is the SEO benefit of reaching many other influential users:\u00a0 inevitably bloggers and web publishers will take their reactions off Digg to their own sites, linking back to the original content.\u00a0 Content which goes popular on Digg and Reddit also ends up getting shared on a slew of other networks\/communities.\u00a0 Additionally, tons of sites are scraping page 1 content from Digg and Reddit and using it to populate their blogs.<\/p>\n Essentially:\u00a0 content that goes popular on Digg and Reddit generally gets quite a bit of linkjuice.<\/p>\n Is this a legitimate reason to hate marketers?<\/strong><\/p>\n Overall, I think these days the community does a good job of policing itself against the obvious spam content (although something sneaks through now and again).\u00a0 No doubt, there are closed-door deals happening between the right kind of content based sites and top Digg users \u2014 but hey, that\u2019s what happens in a network that is essentially an\u00a0oligarchy.<\/p>\n But why should users only hate marketers?\u00a0 It would be naive of them to think the media outlets enjoying traffic and linkjuice from Digg do not have designs on the system.\u00a0 The smart ones do.<\/p>\n In a world where\u00a0content is advertising\u00a0(and advertising is content) I think it\u2019s the wrong viewpoint to consider only marketers as promoters.\u00a0 Media play that game equally so.<\/p>\n Reason 2:\u00a0 they think marketers are gaming their community for ad revenue<\/strong><\/p>\n Many in the Digg community think marketers are trying to game the system for the ad revenue that will result from pageviews generated.<\/p>\n Is this a legitimate reason to hate marketers?<\/strong><\/p>\n Tech savvy users aren\u2019t the demographic that click on ads online, they know better (many are even using AdBlock plus).\u00a0 To be honest, it\u2019s not much ad revenue from getting Dugg once.\u00a0 If the community keeps Digging the same site, sure\u00a0traffic is going to spike\u00a0\u2013 but Digg is too hard a system to game more than once or twice, which isn\u2019t going to result in much, if any ad revenue.\u00a0 It would be even harder to game Reddit \u2013 their users are far better at knocking out the junk.<\/p>\n This is a legitimate reason to hate spammers, no marketers.\u00a0 I think we should start making a distinction.<\/p>\n Reason 3:\u00a0 they think marketers are disingenuous<\/strong><\/p>\n There is a stigma that marketers, advertising people and PR folk can\u2019t actually contribute to digital conversations and are just there to take, take, take.<\/p>\n Is this a legitimate reason to hate marketers?<\/strong><\/p>\n There is something to this:\u00a0 the few that mess things up\u00a0make the rest of us look bad.\u00a0 But as a marketing\/PR blogger, I won\u2019t link off to or share content from these people either.\u00a0 In other words, it\u2019s pretty obvious to me what the difference is between those who are genuine and those who are 24\/7 shills.\u00a0 If I can tell the difference, then members of web communities should be able to also.<\/p>\n In response to Digg and even Reddit users \u2013 I\u2019d challenge them to seriously read the content of what sites are getting shared and not immediately react negatively if it is submitted by a marketer or even if it is marketing-related content.\u00a0 We\u2019re not all trying to game the system \u2013 sometimes we\u2019re members of the community too.<\/p>\n Social web users obviously like marketing in the sense that it\u2019s the spread of ideas, but if it\u2019s in our job description many immediately write us off and it\u2019s somehow a taboo subject.\u00a0 Why is it only those who don\u2019t outwardly display themselves as marketers (yet are still obviously marketing) get a free pass?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve made it no secret how much of a fan I am of\u00a0Digg and Reddit\u00a0and how much there is we … <\/p>\n
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