SE Conspiracy

I tried to build an online marketers’ club back in 2001 via marketinghwy.com, but it just never took off. I think the Internet was still too “new” to people back then and they all wanted a quick buck –which I guess that will never change.

Tonight, I posted in my forum about this and the title of the article is “We Need A Social Marketers Club“… I posted in my forum instead of on this blog, because I wanted to foster more of a feedback than a blog typically affords. I am really gung-ho about this, and if enough people are interested, I would really like to see what we can do.

-Brandon

I can understand why webmasters would want to try using social bookmarking as a form of advertising their site. I mean, there’s a lot of traffic being funneled through StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us, and others.

So, why doesn’t it work well for the SEO gurus?

The answer is simple, actually, and you probably already know why (if you use those services) or you might have already guessed it (if you’ve done your homework). In a nutshell, straight advertising on social bookmarks doesn’t work because the mindset of the people there is dead set against being advertised to.

Who wants to see a bunch of ads after they just got home from work or they just got done washing clothes and taking care of the kids. People join social services like StumbleUpon (visit site) to “veg out“; not to “buy now” or “learn how to market online.”

StumbleUpon is a very addictive social bookmarking site -i.e. a site that allows users to share sites they like and weed out those they don’t. This particular site allows you to “Stumble” upon new sites that you haven’t seen but others wanted to share. Lots of fun.

In all actuality, the social bookmarking sites are gaining a share of television’s audience. There is a growing number of people who trade off some time being a couch potato for being entertained online. And therein lies the key. They go there to be entertained. So, if a site or article pops up that looks like an advertisement, the community as a whole will move quickly to weed it out.

I can appreciate their pain, and I saw it verbalized on an article on Digg (visit site) recently that was titled “SEO Spammers: Leave Social Media Sites Alone” (view submission). If you take a moment to look at the comments for that article, you’ll very quickly see the strong feelings on the subject. And, I can understand. When you’re on a social networking or bookmarking site, you’re there to chill. You’re there to relax. You want to let loose and let your guard down. You can’t do that if you bombarded with offers, ads, and spam.

From my own experience, I know that traffic from StumbleUpon and Digg can be rewarding but it’s not really the kind of traffic that an SEO (search engine optimizer) should be targeting. Ultimately, that audience won’t buy. It seems that -as is backed up in the Digg article mentioned earlier- SEO spammers don’t care about the direct traffic anyway. They only care about spamming the search engines for higher rankings. This type of spamming is less than 1% effective, but -as with spam- that’s all a spammer may need to be successful!

I just started this blog recently, and one of the first articles I wrote was an article about the mess that Google is creating. I had been writing that article in my head for months, and when I finally got it published on here; I showed it to a bunch of my friends online and in real life. I got a lot of kudos and great feedback and I even got quite a few people to join Digg and StumbleUpon after I told them what it was all about. Now, they’re hooked! But, the point was that my friends alone helped get my article placed fairly high within Digg but it ultimately got “buried” because it’s just not “pure entertainment” and didn’t “fit” there.

My article was a great piece to make you think, but I know when I’m “digg’ing” or “stumbling”, I don’t *want* to think! I want to relax. So, I cannot blame anyone for the article getting buried. That just tells me that isn’t my audience. Surprisingly, though, StumbleUpon also sent quite a bit of traffic and it seems that a good many more people from there actually were interested. I think that maybe users of StumbleUpon are more webmaster-related than users of Digg. I see Digg as more of a media company that is more of a threat to news and other media companies than a threat to other social bookmarking sites.

To me, Digg seems like the kind of site to compliment YouTube and may one day get bought out for that purpose. StumbleUpon is more based on the old “Paid to Surf” websites but with the twist of viewing stuff you want to view. They will be around for awhile. It will be interesting to see where they go. In the meantime, check out these sites. If you’re not a member, you might just be surprised and get hooked!

What do you think?

Do you use a social bookmarking site? Are you a webmaster?

I love to hear your feedback!

Update: Previously, I did not have a chance to really look into Sphinn, but it appears to be relevant to this blog. So, perhaps that is a market I can cater to. We shall see if my submissions are “hot” or “not”.. lol