While many people argue that the current metrics are no longer applicable, here’s a look at how we can adapt the currently available methodologies and apply them to social media marketing campaigns.

Submissions and shares

On a very basic level, every time someone submits or shares content from your site to a social site (regardless of how well that submission does) you build a submission history for your site and you also get a link back. Since many of these social sites have substantial PageRank, even moderately successful shares aren’t a complete loss (even if they aren’t promoted). Furthermore, it is also good to keep in mind that someone thought enough of your content to share it with another large community.

One thing to watch out for, however, is submitting any and all content from your site, regardless of quality, just for links. I’ve seen several startups do this and it’s important to point out that if you think you’re getting away with it, odds are 90% of the time you’re not. This will get you the scorn of the community and probably banned.

Promotion and one-time traffic

In the case that your content is promoted to the front page of one of these sites, you can get anywhere from 5,000 to 150,000 unique visitors directly from the social site (traffic range obviously depends on what site your content is shared on and how topical it is). This is a one time traffic boost that can be converted into a long-term, loyal audience through RSS or can be converted into one-time sales, registration, or whatever else your conversion goal may be. The impact of this momentary increase in exposure depends largely on how good you are in converting those visitors to long-time visitors.

Social media comments as well as comments on site

In the case where a submission ranks highly on the ‘upcoming queue’ or, better yet, is promoted, you gain in terms of engagement with your newfound audience. Not only should you count the interactions (comments, multiple page views, etc.) on your site, but you should also take into account the engagement you get on the social site that you are using to market yourself. Almost always, comments on a page that is made popular through social media will increase 7-8 fold, but there will also be hundreds of comments made directly on the social site, which should not be ignored. Combined, these create substantial value in terms of conversations with people who read what you had to say or glanced over the product/service you were trying to sell.

For people that inevitably ask whether there is value in social media comments (or is it just a lot of lip), the answer is that even under all that sarcasm and the mocking attitude of many of the adolescents on the sites, these conversations provide value in terms of pointing out flaws that others generally wouldn’t, or simply teaching you how to be successful in your future marketing endeavors by point out the flaws. Furthermore, with the rise of services like Twitter and FriendFeed, there is actually a lot to be gained from facilitating social media conversations, monitoring them, and actually participating in them.

Links, long-term traffic from linking sites, search ranking, and long-tail search traffic

The beauty of social media is that not only do you stand to gain one-time traffic and a one-time engagement boost by being on the front page of one of these sites, but because these sites are so highly trafficked (by millions of people daily) and because a large part of these sites’ audience is composed of high-profile individuals with blogs (or ‘publications’) of their own, there is a substantial long-tail that you can capitalize on. Content that would otherwise not be seen by high-profile sites can get on their radar by being ‘hot’ on popular social media sites, and is much more likely to gain 100′s of links and 1000′s of additional unique visitors from these secondary (referral) sites.

Because you develop these high-value links, you can easily rank prominently for targeted terms in search engines and increase your long-tail traffic which will stabilize at a much higher number than the pre-social marketing campaign numbers.

Cross-pollination through social media

One thing to remember is that it is it is always best to target one specific audience and develop content solely for their consumption. This increases your chances of becoming popular with that audience and the chances of a successful campaign. Don’t forget, however, that many of these social sites do have significant overlapping audience, and even when you target one specific site, content that has been made popular on Digg may find its way onto Reddit, and then onto StumbleUpon, and so forth. Similarly, content first shared on Twitter might find its way to Facebook.

What’s great about this is that you only have to target your efforts to one site (the one whose audience is most representative of your target niche), but you can reap the benefits of multiple successes as long as you optimize the site itself to facilitate further propagation in the social web. Anyone who’s seen the multiplier effect will tell you how they expected a certain amount of traffic from one social site, let’s say Digg, but were surprised when they went popular on StumbleUpon, then Delicious, then Reddit, and so on.

Branding and organic social media presence

Social media is great because it is powered by people just like you and me. Once you find the site that suits you best, you only have to self-promote the first few times. Once you have gained the audience’s trust, have built a social-media-friendly brand, and have made a mind-share impact on the social media community, every subsequent campaign will not only become easier, but you can reach the point where you are only creating the content and the community does the rest for you, completely organically.

When you take the advice above, keep in mind that businesses cannot succeed in social media without obeying the principles of authenticity, integrity, transparency, and participation. Self-serving networking and a singular goal of promoting your content or service isn’t the best way to ensure success.

What does that mean?

While the so-called derivative intangibles or qualitative advantages of social media marketing are not as easy to measure or widely understood (subject of another article), there are numerous quantitative advantages (ROI) that make it a viable and incredibly valuable proposition. You can calculate the traffic (uniques and page views), the stickiness (subscriptions via email and RSS, as well as direct return visitors), the increased visibility (links, search rankings and long-tail traffic), viralness (brand awareness or consumer mindshare), the engagement (comments across different sites, demographic/usability surveys and polls), and income (advertising, sales, and other conversions).

It’s hard to believe, but Digg‘s latest feature, the recommendation engine, is one that has been in the works for over two years. Before they developed images functionality, launched visualization tools, released Google, Netvibes, and Myspace widgets, developed Facebook functionality, rolled out dataportability enhancements, released updates to the comment system, updates to digg the candidates, and added several other features or enhancements to the social news site, the team at Digg already had the idea for a recommendation engine. They were looking at the site as a platform that monitors how you interact with it, and improves your experience based on what it learns about you. In fact, they took so long that some people even took matters into their own hands.

“Digg is also learning a lot about what its users are into,” Rose said, “so it should be able to recommend stories based on what you’ve been digging and allow you to communicate with other people who have similar interests.” – BusinessWeek, March 27, 2006

It should come as no surprise that when Digg finally released the new feature, over 2 years later, the expectations were incredibly high. After all, sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit have had similar recommendation engines for quite a while now and are already innovating beyond that. My initial opinion of the recommendation engine is that it’s decent but with some very obvious limitations. While we should all be glad the feature has been released, it’s very much a version 0.5 beta release. Keep that in mind as you use it because the engine’s performance can vary quite a bit from day to day.

How Does it Work?

A lot of people have been speculating as to how the recommendation engine actually works. To answer that in more detail, you should read Digg lead scientist Anton’s Whitepaper on the subject or my exclusive guide and review. Here’s a brief overview.

Digg Recommendation Engine from Kevin Rose on Vimeo

Anton Talks About The Digg Recommendation Engine from Kevin Rose on Vimeo

Whenever you Digg a story, the recommendation engine records two things about the action. First, that you liked that story, and second, every user that Dugg the story before you (this includes the submitter). This signals to the recommendation engine that these users like the same content as you, and sometimes they find it before you, so it uses those parameters to recommend to you stories they Digg or submit.

The recommendation engine also records your history over the last 30 days to correlate your Digging habits with other users who Digg the same stories as you. The compatibility percentage tells you how much your Diggs match with this user, and based on the percentage, if you’re not already friends, you can add and follow each other.

How it Doesn’t Work

In theory, the system mentioned above can work fairly well. Under the right conditions of healthy diversity of opinion, independence between individual members, and decentralization in the community, this recommendation algorithm would work great. Doesn’t sound like the Digg community, does it? The Digg community is a very homogeneous and imitative community, and for a community like that the rules the recommendation engine uses have one severe impact: they ensure that a core power group of users is much more visible to the community than the average person and that their content gets promoted over many other users.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly can be a bad thing.

First, why it may not be a bad thing. What happens with the recommendation engine is that users who have been participating on the site for a long time (and because of their dedication to the community and the passion with which they participate, they’ve developed a large following on the site) get a lot more influential. For example, if I’m a popular user on the site and have a following of 100 people, with the recommendation engine, every time one of those hundred Diggs one of my stories, not only does that ensure that my stories are recommended more often to that user (increasing our Digg correlation coefficient), but the same goes for every user that follows that user (my followers’ followers). By the end of it, someone with a following of 100 now has a following of 150, and not only is the following growing in absolute numbers but it also grows in diversity each time (because the correlation is never 100%). This may not necessarily be a bad thing since these users are popular because they submit good content, and now more good content will be submited and promoted to the front page.

At the same time, this can be bad for the Digg community over time because if the same users get promoted over and over again, it creates an even more homogenized community and you will see similar memes from similar sites, on similar topics, pop up again and again. This makes Digg a community where people go not to learn or to discover, but to reaffirm their beliefs regardless of right or wrong.

The problem with it isn’t that it doesn’t fulfill its promise of recommending content relevant to you. The problem is that it recommends relevant content on a basis that isn’t as efficient or equitable as it should be and may not necessarily help Digg get its edge back (for that we might need to look towards a freshness algorithm). Apart from recommending stories based on who you Digg and who they Digg, the stories need to take into account what you Digg and where you Digg from (content, categories, hopefully tags, and sources — we need to get contextual). The recommendation engine was supposed to help you discover hidden gems, not show you stories from friends you usually Digg. Those are stories you would come across anyway. The methodology of the recommendation engine algorithm is also counterproductive to Digg’s agenda of emasculating this core userbase.

Also Read:

• Top 100 Digg Users Control 56% of Digg’s HomePage Content
• The Power of Digg Top Users (One Year Later)
• Analysis: Top 100 Digg Users
• Today: 31% of Digg Homepage submitted by 10 Users

Furthermore, the other limitation of the system, and this one is intentional and by design, is that the “Diggers Like You” section doesn’t allow you to expand the list to more people. The system, while matching you with other users, automatically decides on a cutoff point for the correlation, and shows you only people who make the cut. I would like to meet a Digger that has an only 25% overlap with me. Maybe there are other stories I might like but am not seeing.

Finally, from a design perspective, people should be able to set what upcoming queue opens for them by default and how many stories are listed in their ‘Recommendations in Upcoming’ widget.

The Unexpected Consequences

The recommendation engine has many unexpected and unanticipated effects on everyone participating in the process, those creating the content, those submitting it, and those reading it.

Partly because of the hype around the new feature, partly because of the shiny red beta tag that people see in their profiles, and partly because the feature works better than any other feature on Digg for finding stories you would like, the feature has caused a big spike in activity on Digg. Core users are submitting a much higher volume and voting on an equally higher number of stories. At the same time, Digg is not throttling how many stories can be promoted to the front page on a day, so this increased activity means many more stories are being promoted. I have also seen many instances of stories being promoted in 6 hours or less (when they get recommended to a lot of people and get a burst of instant Diggs), and I have seen some stories get removed from the upcoming queue but still get promoted much after the 24-hour mark. There have also been stories with an astronomical number of Diggs that never got promoted. Also, because so many more stories are being promoted, it means that each story gets even less time on the front page than before, hence, less number of Diggs per story, less comments per story, less outbound traffic per story, and for those interested, this also dampens the linkbuilding effect that Digg is known for having.

How to Make the Most of it

Making the most of the recommendation engine is very easy. All you have to do is submit content you like and vote on content you like. The system will do the rest. The best part is the more you use it, the better it becomes for stories that are recommended to you, and who your stories are recommended to.

What it Means for Digg and for Advertisers

To truly understand the impact of the Digg recommendation engine you have to compare it to Facebook’s much-maligned Beacon project. The recommendation engine is something that, over time, will record exactly how you interact with Digg’s platform, and know what stories/sources/links you like, what top-level categories and topics you like, and if they are smart, exactly what content you’re consuming (e.g., contextually determining what music you like, what movies you’re anticipating, and what new Apple products are on your wishlist). The beta only records some very basic information (that’s why it’s a beta), but it is expected to become much more complex and robust as time goes on. This means better recommendations for you, but it also means that since Digg has a more comprehensive picture of who you really are, they can sell advertising that is better for you and for the advertiser, and for Digg’s pocketbook.

What This Means for the Future

The future of the recommendation system isn’t much different than what Facebook plans on accomplishing with Beacon. Beacon has a head start and already records offsite activities such as “…purchasing a product, signing up for a service, adding an item to a wish list, and more.” Digg’s ultimate goal is to be the decision market for all sorts of media (text content, music, video, podcasts) but also food/bars/clubs, shopping and entertainment, and more, and the recommendation engine is one more step toward that goal.

Note: According to Kevin Rose’s TWiT appearance last week, activity is up as much as 40% on some areas on the site.

Muhammad Saleem is a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

The landscape of corporate public relations is changing fast. First the press release died and we told you how to write a press release for the social media audience. Now the elevator pitch is dead and here’s how to adapt.

Corporate pitches are usually unnecessarily long, filled with useless buzzwords and an unfortunate lack of transparency (in favor of overstatement). An elevator pitch is supposed to solve that problem by forcing the person making the pitch to do it in 30 seconds or 150 words (the time it would take you going from the lobby to your floor in an elevator). The time restriction ensures that all formalities and verboseness are dispensed with and only the most important and relevant information is shared between an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist.

The Essential Elevator Pitch

With no more than 30 seconds to convince someone to give you a couple million dollars, what do you focus your pitch on?

1. What is the core idea and what problem does it solve?
2. Has it been done before (is there competition?) and is there a viable market for your core idea?
3. Why are you best suited to solve the problem and what is your business model?

These are some of the most important basic elements that you have to cover in 150 words or less. But what if you only had 140 characters to make an impression; what would you do?

Enter The Twitpitch

Stowe Boyd, an information technology consultant, recently decided that an elevator pitch is way too long and that the only way he will accept pitches is through his idea of Twitpitching.

A twitpitch takes the following from:

1. A twitter message of the form “@stoweboyd [pitch goes here without the brackets] #twitpitch”. (Note the #hashtag means that these will be accessible at www.hashtags.org/tag/twitpitch.)
2. A second, optional twitter of the form “@stoweboyd [single URL goes here without the brackets] #twitpitch”. Just one URL, please.
3. A third, optional twitter of the form “@stoweboyd [proposed time(s) to meet or call go here without the brackets] #twitpitch”.

That’s it.

What’s more, anyone who doesn’t conform to that method will be automatically marked as spam after three strikes.

To be fair, you have three Twitter messages (therefore 420 characters) to make your point. The first one allows you to succinctly describe your service, the second lets you link directly to the product or service you’re pitching, and the third allows you to set a time and place to meet. What intrigued me about the idea is that it isn’t a whole new way to pitch, it’s another way to make the same pitch without adding any noise to the conversation. For example, here’s what a successful Twitpitch looks like [via @thoughtfarmer]:

@jeffdachis #twitpitch For your new venture: ThoughtFarmer is social software for enterprise intranets. ReadWriteWeb: http://snurl.com/26hmn

The reason why the press release is dying is because these releases are usually boring, susceptible to hyperbole, and have a singular focus on the company. Similarly, no one is interested in your pitch of a product because no one finds value in your one-sided, obviously biased look at the product. The Twitpitch forces you to talk only facts (because you have only 140 characters for the first message) and then link to one (and only one) URL related to your product. If you want to make the biggest impact, this link won’t be a link to your press release or even a link to your product, it will be a link to the best or most prominent coverage that your product has gotten (much like the link above for ThoughtFarmer).

As you can see, this process is incredibly similar to the decisions you make when you submit an article to or vote on an article on a social news site. Essentially, all you have to go on is a title and description from the article and some things that you can infer about each submission from certain trigger points.

The Twitpitch streamlines the same process for Twitter. The title and summary are condensed into one tweet and the link in another. And assuming the link takes you to coverage of the product on another site, you bypass the corporate speak and get the facts from a human voice (and you are already getting social proof).

Compare that to getting an email from someone you don’t know (and probably can’t get additional information on – sorry, no about pages for PR companies), with no text in the email body, and a 2-3 page (if you’re lucky) document attached that you are supposed to read and respond to. A Twitpitch is open and transparent, delivers on social proof, creates value without adding noise, and is somewhat personalized.

The final great thing about the Twitpitch is that even when it is personalized, it isn’t limited to the person it is directed at. You can simply send a message on Twitter, tag it with #twitpitch, and anyone can track all the pitches being made at anyntime by simply going to: http://www.hashtags.org/tag/twitpitch. That way, even if you forget to direct a pitch at someone, chances are it will find its way to the right people.

Muhammad Saleem is a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

Mixx, a social media submission site, is a newcomer on the scene, so it understandably will take a while for it to catch up with older sites like Digg, Propeller, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. That said, this article looks at the current state of Mixx and the potential future of its small but devoted community.

This might come as a surprise, but Mixx serves approximately 500,000 unique visitors per month and is breaking their engagement record every month, even though the site is barely 6 months out of its private beta. One of the reasons for this is that so much of the activity takes place in the form of conversations (in the private groups as well as user-forums) that isn’t reflected in the metrics.

The Value Of Mixx Mixx, like many of its compatriots, such as Thoof, Streamy, Plime, Shoutwire, hasn’t gotten the attention of Digg and StumbleUpon. But why does it deserve this attention?

On a very basic level, Mixx does everything you would expect from your typical social news site. It’s completely user-driven, and all content is submitted, voted upon, and commented on by the site’s users. Content can be submitted to three different categories based on content type – News, Pictures, and Video. What sets Mixx apart from many of the other popular sites is that not only has the site incorporated some of the best features from the many other popular social news sites and aggregated them, but the team behind the site has left the keys to the kingdom in the hands of the community.

Community Recognition Mixx includes an abundance of innovative and differentiating features.

• You can create and edit your own custom homepage (not only which categories you want to display but what order).
• You can create groups and participate in discussions away from the comment threads (both privately and publicly).
• Unlike Digg (which stopped recognizing the contributions of its community members long ago), Mixx routinely awards the community with badges in a wide array of categories (not in an elitist fashion but in an appreciative fashion – from top submitter to hyperactive, enthusiast, and curmudgeon).
• You can even keep track of all the movers and shakers on the site through The Mixx Lounge.

In-Depth Features There’s also fairly well-implemented content localization, alerts that actually work and can be useful, a Facebook application, user-edited categories as well as tags, and a budding user-forum created by Mixxers for Mixxers. This forum is only moderated by other users and the Mixx staff routinely interacts with users, addresses their concerns, and takes their ideas for how Mixx should evolve next (the forum has almost 200 users, over 600 topics, almost 10,000 posts).

Founding Interest If that isn’t enough for you, the site has a company blog where Chris (the founder) writes at least once a week and responds to user emails and talks about upcoming features. Multiple users have told me that Chris, Kerry, and Kori Hill reply to users emails very promptly and address even the minutest concerns. The site also has relationships with multiple news outlets, including the LA Times and the NY Times.

There is a beautifully designed iPhone version of the site, a Twitter account that micro-blogs about the site, a robust related-content implementation that helps reduce redundancy, and may I add, the site is spearheading breaking news through social media.

Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? That’s because the site is really doing so much more than it gets credit for. Even I, who wrote a fairly unimpressed review of the site when it first launched, have rethought my take on Mixx and am looking forward to participating more on the site and better understanding this largely unappreciated audience.

Why Hasn’t Mixx Gotten More Attention? The feature implementation as well as the partnerships that the site is working on really show everything that Chris McGill and his team are bringing to social news, but all this brings us to our original question: Why is Mixx not getting the attention it deserves? To answer this question we have to look at the reasons why people participate in social news. As I outlined back in January, there are 5 reasons why people participate in social news:

1. Status and reputation: Just because we want to climb to the top of the leader board and be recognized for our efforts.
2. Monetary reward: Because we can make money through it. In this case the money isn’t coming from the site, rather from someone on whose behalf you’re participating.
3. Self-promotion: Because we want to be in a position to push our own content and build traffic to our own site/product/service.
4. Helping others: Because we can help other people out. Part of the reason why I continue to participate on Digg is because I know how much value the site can create for a content producer, and if I can help someone get closer to that goal, that’s enough for me.
5. Idealism: Because we believe in the principle of socially driven news and want to be a part of the movement.

Let’s add one more point to that list:

6. Enjoyment: Because a particular social news site brings us new, interesting, and engaging content from niches that mainstream news outlets wouldn’t otherwise be highlighting.

Not to marginalize the Mixx community, but a large part of it is comprised of users who were previously active at Digg and left after increasing frustration with the former site, and then found a much more welcoming home at Mixx. (For more, check out the Digg Refugees group in the Mixx forums). While this is great for Mixx as it gives the site some incredibly active participants and evangelists, it does create some problems. Incentive is an incredibly important aspect of any social news site, and right now, while there is incentive for these ex-Diggers to participate (since they get to establish themselves as Mixx early adopters and get the status and reputation), there isn’t much reason for anyone else to participate – yet. Let me explain.

Why More People Haven’t Moved to Mixx

• General submitters: As a submitter, if you have the option to submit your content to one site, you’re probably most likely to submit it to Digg (because it is the largest and most active site and you can get the most attention to your submission on that site). Even if you submit to multiple sites, Mixx is quite far down the list for some people and the exposure simply isn’t there.
• General readership: Until very recently, Mixx wasn’t breaking any news or finding exceptionally better content. The site has added a new ‘breaking news’ feature that allows them to address that concern, and when the news of Charlton Heston’s death broke, Mixx had the news five minutes later (this feature is very similar to what Propeller does) whereas it can take most sites hours to get such content enough votes and be promoted. That said, there isn’t only more content at Digg, Propeller, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, but the content is submitted to these sites more frequently and is generally fresher and more unique. Ultimately, the readership goes where the content is.

  This is understandable simply because other sites have enormously large user bases compared to Mixx.

• Content producers: Again, because the community is relatively small, there is no particularly compelling reason to target Mixx – right now. The outbound traffic is almost non-existent, so your content may only be read by four to five people. That said, comments on Mixx tend to be much better than those on Digg and people try to write down constructive thoughts rather than just trying to be funny and get the comment voted up.
• Marketers: I think the one point that almost no one in the social media space understands or appreciates is the impact marketers have on social news sites. These are the people that have the most to gain (financially) from participating on these sites and therefore have not only a significant incentive to create unique, high-quality, and the most highly-targeted content for the audience (because, after all, good content is the best linkbait), but they also have a significant incentive to participate most frequently and be community members in good standing. Because the return on investment from Mixx is currently very close to 0, marketers find little value in Mixx (apart from engagement in form of comments, if the story is promoted).

I’m sure by now you have seen a theme in all four of the points made above. Many people don’t want to submit yet because the community that will see the content is too small. The readership isn’t there because there isn’t a big enough community finding and vetting the content fast enough. Content producers aren’t targeting Mixx because there isn’t enough of a community that they can convert to a readership. Marketers don’t care much for Mixx because there isn’t any ROI from the relatively small community.

As I write this, I completely understand the problem Mixx has. Their product is great and, in many ways, it is one of the best products out there. The problem is that building a community is like a chicken and an egg question. Without a community you can’t be successful, and without any kind of cachet you’re not going to have an easy time building a community.

That said, Mixx finds itself in an excellent position. They have started with a clean slate and are identified in staunch opposition to everything that is wrong with the most popular social news site right now, Digg. What defines Mixx and the future of the site is its passionate devotion to all its users and the Mixxers’ devotion to the site. For example, thanks to the community members, the Mixx feed was added both to popurls as well as FriendFeed to be aggregated for all other users.

These users take it as their personal mission to campaign for the site and spread the word about the community. I took a look at this and I believe it is precisely because of this that Mixx is more successful than all of the smaller social news communities I previously mentioned. Mixx is doing really well for the stage that they’re in. They are growing fast, the conversation is moving along very nicely, and above all, the people behind the site understand what the problems are (not only with their site but with all the other sites in the space) and are actively working on fixing those problems.

After talking to many people who actively participate on the site, I’m confident that a year from now Mixx will be a force to be reckoned with. They are embracing social news and aren’t afraid of their community (like some other social news sites). They have no issue with giving complete control to you, the user, and working for you rather than having you work for them. They have taken the principle of community to heart and they truly believe that you know what’s next better than they do. And that, I believe, is what will help them join the ranks of the big four.

All Mixx needs is for the social news space (participants, content producers, marketers, other sites in the space) to understand that the site is 6 months out of private beta and evaluate it on that basis. Yes, the short-term return on investment isn’t the highest for the community members, but based on my evaluation of the site, if things keep going the way they are along with a little help from others interested in the best social news experience (people exactly like you, the reader), Mixx will mature into one of the top social news communities out there.

Even though I am one of the most active users on Digg and StumbleUpon and work for Propeller, I don’t have an issue with this evaluation because I believe social news is not a zero sum game. We can learn from Mixx and Mixxers, improve the social news space, and make the entire social news experience much better for our audience.

Muhammad Saleem is a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

Social media loses its soul if you take away the social aspects, and sharing stories with others is one of the most essential elements. Even without a shouting mechanism, these sites have had other methods of sharing. Each user has a profile where they can list their contact information, which you can use to share stories with them, and for the most part, email works just as well. Shouts (or site-mail, etc) are more controversial because they are so streamlined and because you don’t really need to know the user at the other end before you shout at them, that they can very easily be abused by spammers to promote bad content.

Personally, I think shouts serve as a stop-gap until more robust mechanisms are implemented that allow users to find stories that they would like to see (based on past activity and declared preferences, e.g., a recommendation engine) but haven’t seen yet. The same feature would also help determining which of your stories should be sent to which friends. That said, the solution is not to remove the feature, but to make sure it serves its purpose. In fact, most sites that have implemented a shouting feature have already realized that the system needs improvement. Digg doesn’t allow you to shout to all friends anymore, Propeller only allows you to do five at a time, and StumbleUpon has always allowed one at a time.

Prefaced with all that, here’s a look at how to use these sharing mechanisms without offending anyone’s sensibilities.

1. Embrace shouts. The first step to fair participation in the shouting system is to embrace shouts yourself. It’s simply unfair to be shouting at others while not accepting shouts back from them.

2. Shout to shouters. At a very basic level, when trying to determine who you should shout at, start off with those friends of yours who shout at you.

3. Shout once. Most people are okay with infrequent shouts, and many are even okay with one shout a day. Don’t, under most circumstances, shout the same story to the same person twice, or more than one story to the same person in the same day. Sharing is fun, but too much of anything is bad.

4. Don’t shout randomly. Chances are that many of your friends already checked out a submission from you. Check to see who’s already voted on something before you blindly start shouting at people who you shouldn’t shout at.

5. Get personal. Shouts are supposed to be your personal recommendation to other users. This is not always possible and not always efficient, but if possible, try to make your shouts personal. If it’s an article that is appealing to one particular user for some reason that you have discussed before, bring it up.

6. Shout eloquently. Shouting random submissions that you know aren’t getting traction because they’re no good is not the right way to go about sharing. Share only your best, and, if you can, good submissions from other users.

7. Don’t just shout. Sure, the feature is popular because it allows people to share stories, but at the same time it is a much more powerful on-site, micro-blogging tool. Don’t just use it to share stories. Use it to talk to other users, share your thoughts, send personal comments, or even shout to yourself to update your current status.

Muhammad Saleem is a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

The short-term impact from having your content promoted on social news sites can be massive—think 50,000 unique visits in a 24-hour period—but it lasts for about a day, and we want a long-term solution. Here’s a look at three different options to explore if you want a great short-term boost but also a good long-term source of traffic through higher search rankings and more search visibility.

Note: This is not an invitation to abuse social news sites to game your search rankings or search visibility. Use this as a guide to understanding how social media affects your search rankings, and use it to optimize your best content (best in terms of most likely to be socialized). Always remember that good content is good bait (and that’s all, folks).

The Digg effect

Explaining the importance of Digg to an online marketer or your average content producer is very simple. Getting on the front page of Digg instantly brings you—on average—50,000 visitors, but can also bring you hundreds of links to a specific article and to your site. These links increase your SERPs, and irrespective of how well your site or service is generally ranked, the specific post that was socialized and linked to can outrank most of its competition for those keywords.

Consider the following submission I made a few days ago (Disclaimer: The article used as an example here was not submitted for marketing purposes. I submitted it because I liked the article and thought that the social media audience would similarly appreciate it—and with 800+ Diggs, it did).

As a result of getting promoted on Digg, the article got almost 500 links and is now favorably positioned on Google (and will probably rise even higher in the coming weeks):

Because of the potential for a massive, relatively rapid acquisition of links, marketers have been quick to target Digg, but until recently, there was no long-term reason for marketers or your average content producer to create content specifically designed for any other social sites. Sure, the short-term traffic is good, but is it worth the effort if it doesn’t convert to long-term traffic? With steps taken by StumbleUpon, and, more recently, Del.icio.us, to incorporate submissions on the sites into Google and Yahoo, it’s time to give these social media services a serious look.

The StumbleUpon effect

Unlike Digg and Reddit, both of which can send upward of 25,000 visitors on any promoted submission, StumbleUpon traffic is usually lower in numbers but much more consistent and spread over a much longer period. From my experience, a post of mine that was popular on the site received 5,000 visitors for the first day, 3,000 the next two days, 2,000 for another few days, before dropping down to 500 for a while and eventually becoming insignificant (with the exception of some random days on which I will still get a burst of 500-800 visitors). Though there are exceptions to this, the average popular submission on StumbleUpon would fall short (even in the long-run) of the average Digg submission.

With its “social search” upgrade, however, StumbleUpon combines the authority of Google rankings with the likes and dislikes of your network of friends on the social site to provide cumulatively better (and more visible in search) results. If we revisit the above-mentioned article with the StumbleUpon Toolbar enabled, this is what we see:

Not only is the article already highly ranked on Google, but because it did well on StumbleUpon, it is even more visible and authoritative to the over 4 million active Stumblers. The images around the link show you if the article has already been liked/disliked, how well it has been rated and reviewed, which (if any) of your friends also liked the submission, and which category it was discovered in.

The Del.icio.us effect

The Del.icio.us story is very much like the StumbleUpon story. Although the site does send a substantial number of visitors to you if you manage to get to bookmarked all the way to the site’s “hotlist,” there is no long-term value created otherwise (from a marketer’s or content producer’s point of view). Now, however, Yahoo is testing Delicious integration in search results, and is widely expected to make this a permanent feature, raising the link value of a Delicious bookmark significantly.

The integration is very similar to the StumbleUpon social search integration:

In these search results can see how many people bookmarked a link, followed by relevant tags people entered for each link. Much like StumbleUpon, this will increase the visibility of your content that is popular on social news sites, regardless of how well the content is otherwise ranked on search.

Ranking versus visibility

One misconception a lot of people have is that Digg is the be-all end-all. It’s true that Digg is the site that sends you the most traffic and helps you improve your search ranking through link building, but if you look at the above-mentioned initiatives from StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us, you will realize that they’re just as worthwhile. Even though they don’t always explicitly increase your search ranking, they implicitly increase it by making your content more visible.

Muhammad Saleem is a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites.

“It is not a case of choosing those [faces] which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practise the fourth, fifth and higher degrees.” (Keynes, General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, 1936).

What he means is that people don’t make objective choices based on their own judgment. Rather, they choose what they think the average person is going to agree with as being the right choice. The same principle applies to social news sites. People mostly submit and vote for content not because they objectively think the content is good, but because they think that the community in general is going to find the content to be good. To illustrate this point, let’s look at the following news submission to Digg and break down the things that people look at as they anticipate the community’s verdict:

1. Play the field

As the community at Digg grows, the site is becoming less and less about technology news (where it was focused initially) and more about ‘world news and business’ and ‘offbeat’ content. To be on top of the social news pile, you have to keep an eye on the site’s ever-changing demographic and user preferences. This doesn’t mean that the same content that was popular before cannot be popular again. What this means is that you have to find a new framework (angle) in which to present your content.

There are several ways of playing the categories on Digg:

You can you can create content purely for the more popular categories (like business and finance), in which case there will be significantly more competition, but if you’re successful the payoff will be much higher.

You can create content for a relatively less popular categories (like sports), in which case the competition will not be as tough but the payoff won’t be as high.

Or, you can create content that is about a more popular category, but applicable to a less popular category. This way, you can get the best results with the least amount of competition. A great example of this is a post I recently read, titled 4 Ways Technology is Changing Sports Officiating. The post is great because it is about technology (hot category) and how it is changing sports (not-so-hot category). Therefore, it can be submitted to the sports category and be made popular easily, but still drive the traffic of a story from a popular category. (There are other reasons for the fact that this particular submission wasn’t significantly promoted, but the principle remains true.)

2. Obsess over your titles

There was a time when sensationalism ruled the social news space. As the space matures (ever so slowly), there is a backlash brewing against sensationalism, and using that age-old trick can will actually make the community go out of its way to bury you. The good thing is that this actually makes our job easier because it requires much less imagination to get attention. While writing your title, take note of the following:

Stick with regular formatting. Don’t use special characters, capital letters throughout, or excessive punctuation. Make sure there are no spelling mistakes or grammatical errors (the audience can be vicious if this is the case).

Try to use trigger words when possible, without overdoing it. If you’ve been on the site long enough, you start living its culture. If you’re writing about a popular meme, be sure to use buzz words that will get people’s attention.

Don’t give it all away. You want people to know what you’re writing about without actually telling them what you wrote.

3. Summarize, and don’t state the obvious

There’s no better way to sabotage any chances you have than to write “Title says it all,” “Enough said,” or something to that effect, for your summary. As a submitter that’s the easy approach—just don’t do it. As a content producer wanting to ensure submissions from your site aren’t botched, it’s in your best interest to present a summary of your content at the very top, before the actual article. Again, as with the title, a summary shouldn’t include any spoilers, but should make promises that you can deliver on.

Think of the summary as your chance to pitch the story. Answer the reader’s question: “Why should I click through to read this? Please tell me in 150 characters or less.”

4. Make it “picture perfect”

Not to be confused with the pictures section on Digg (though that warrants an entire post of its own), this refers to the use of thumbnails. The Digg submission process automatically picks up the images used on your page and allows a submitter to use one of them as a representative thumbnail next to the submission. With a title, summary, and now a thumbnail, a social news submission is the best summarized representation of your content, and you should take advantage of it. With every other submission carrying a thumbnail next to it, being the odd one out in this case is not a good thing.

Make sure that the images are relevant but provocative.

5. Take advantage of network effects

Making friends on social media sites is good simply because it helps you immediately get exposure to a much larger direct audience and helps you much more accurately asses what the middle of the road submission is (one that would appeal to the masses and help you win the beauty pageant). There is an equally important secondary effect, however, that a lot of people don’t give much thought to. A submission that is Dugg by one of your friends is indicated with a green sash, and no matter how poorly a submission is doing on the rest of the points mentioned in this post, if it has a green sash, one feels compelled to check it out.

This secondary effect is pretty much boundless: If you have 100 friends on Digg who have 10 unique friends each, even if 10% of your friends Digg something, that submission is ‘green-sashed’ for 200 people (100 of your friends, and 10 friends each for the 10 people that actually Dugg the story).

6. Woo the power users

Though it’s not a make-or-break scenario, if your content is submitted by a power user, it has a much higher chance of getting promoted, regardless of the algorithmic bias against these users. Part of the reason for this is because of the branding that these users have—there is implicit trust that most community members place in submissions from these users (and most often it is easy to ignore everything else and take a chance on something just because a power user endorses it). Not to forget that the “green-sash effect” is also that much more extensive for power users.

Though it’s very easy to get in touch with a power user, don’t do it unless you plan on pitching only your best.

7. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk

There is no doubt about the impact of comments on the success of a social news submission. First of all, on a very basic level, if a story is in the upcoming section with 100 Diggs and absolutely no discussion, people are bound to think something fishy is going on. In addition to that, there are several exposure-related benefits of contributing comments:

Every time someone makes a comment, it adds to the “hotness” of a story. A combination of the quality, quantity, and time of Diggs and comments on a story is what it takes to push a story from just the queue to the “hot in all topics” category and eventually to the Digg home page.

Also, every time someone makes a comment, the activity is recorded and can be shown in Digg/Spy, as well as users’ activity pages. Comments breed more comments, which ultimately means more visibility.

Winning the pageant

There are two schools of thought for achieving success on social news networks. The first is to write something provocative and incite emotion, and the second is to appeal to the masses and pander to the middle of the road. Both can be equally successful if you can manage to find out who your audience is. For example, if you’re going to be writing about technology, anything about Microsoft is going to be provocative but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be successful (simply because the Apple camp is stronger). In situations where you can’t judge which camp in your audience is stronger, targeting the average can be well worth it.

Muhammad Saleem is a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. The Let’s Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

Digg has an algorithm?

Yes, just as PageRank and other algorithms are used to rank web pages by search engines, some social sites use algorithms to determine which stories become popular. Call it DiggRank, if you will. Let’s take a deeper look at what the Digg algorithm is and venture a few guesses about how it works.

What is the algorithm?

Unlike editorially driven sites like Fark or Slashdot, where news is handpicked by a tiny group of individuals, socially driven sites use the votes aggregated by the community to decide what content gets promoted to their home pages to be viewed by the masses. At the same time, content promotion isn’t as simple as just comparing absolute number of votes that each submission gets and then promoting the ones with the most votes. There are several other factors that come into play. Some of these factors we are absolutely sure about, whereas others we can only venture guesses about.

Before we look at what factors may be taken into account by the algorithm, it is important to know that the algorithm is used to ensure that community participation is fair and that no one can unduly influence content promotion. Therefore, the algorithm is kept secret from the community to prevent people from bypassing or manipulating it.

What does the algorithm take into account?

Having been a member of Digg for over 2 years and several other communities for over a year, I can confidently say that Digg’s algorithm is the most complex and therefore hardest to manipulate (though by no means is it completely fool-proof). Based on my experience, the elements Digg’s algorithm takes into account include:

Recent participation rank of user and followers. Depending on how successful you have recently been on Digg, subsequent successes may be more difficult. For example, I have had 7-8 stories submitted and promoted to the home page one day, only to see 3-4 stories get 100+ Diggs and not be promoted the next day. At the same time, if I decide to take a few days off, the “algorithm bias” seems to adjust itself and I have no problem getting good content promoted again. The rank and recent successes of a user are taken into account both when you are submitting a story and also while Digging (voting on stories). If you get a quick succession of Diggs from “high-value” users, you are likely to be promoted faster and at a lower number of Diggs than if even dozens of new users Digg you. This, of course, is to ensure that the Diggs are of good quality and the community is actually doing its work by voting for good content and burying bad content.

Voting activity. The number of Diggs your story will require to reach the home page is directly correlated to the number of votes (Diggs) generally being cast on Digg at any given time and how your story compares to the average.

Submission category and activity in the category. Competition in some categories (Technology, World and Business) is much fiercer than in other categories (Sports, Entertainment), and therefore it is much easier to submit and have something promoted in the Sports/Motorsport category than Technology/Tech/Industry News. Also, along with being compared to general voting activity on Digg, your content is compared more directly (and probably with more weight) to content in its category. For example, it is possible to have a story promoted at 50 Diggs even though it’s not high on the upcoming queue for all sections, as long as it is at the top in the queue for its category.

Speed of votes and diversity of voters. The faster a story gets votes, the lower the vote count has to be at which it is promoted. For example, a story may collect 120 Diggs over 24 hours and not be promoted. If the same story gets 90 Diggs in one hour, it will almost certainly hit the front page. At the same time, however, it is incredibly important to have diversity in votes. Diversity helps prevent people from banding together into “voting-rings” (i.e. circle-jerks) and unfairly pushing their stories to the top. This is one of the reasons why you see stories from top-ranked users sit at the top of the queue for hours waiting to fulfill the algorithm’s diversity requirement (i.e. they are penalized for having a following of users that Digg every one of their stories).

Buries received. This is quite straightforward. The more buries your story gets, the longer it will take for your content to be promoted. If the Bury to Digg ratio (which is not 1:1; buries are weighted more heavily than Diggs) is too high, your story will completely be removed from the queue. That said, it is possible for a story to acquire enough votes to outgrow the Buries it gets. Each bury, however, can be taken into account as a certain number of negative votes, which increases the total vote count the algorithm will require from your story before promoting it to the home page.

Comments and comment ratings received. Participation in the comments can help push a story over the edge. People think that inserting “great article—thanks!” will help further their cause, while in reality these fake comments have the exact opposite effect. There is nothing easier than spotting a spammy submission with fake comments and burying it to oblivion. Naturally acquired comments (and ones that are voted up by the community), on the other hand, help tip the content promotion algorithm in your favor.

Misconceptions about Digg’s algorithm

Now that we have covered the basics of the content promotion algorithm, let’s examine some common misconceptions about Digg’s algorithm.

Wrong: An absolute number of votes is required. There is no absolute number. The number varies daily and even hourly. As mentioned before, the number of Diggs you need varies based on submission category and the recent participation record of the submitter and subsequent Diggers, as well as the number of votes, the time in which they are aggregated, and the diversity of the voters.

Wrong: You’re doomed if your story isn’t submitted by a top user. There is no such thing as content being automatically promoted to the home page. Even the best content submitted by the most consistent user can get buried if enough people don’t like it and Bury it. The algorithm tries to ensure a level playing field for all users (though this doesn’t always work), and in fact is sometimes harsher on top users than on newer ones.

Wrong: Number of friends is important. The number of friends you add on Digg is completely irrelevant. What Digg looks for is diversity in the Diggs a story receives. The fact that a user is your friend and votes for your story is irrelevant. Even if someone is consistently Digging you without being your friend, those Diggs are weighed less.

Wrong: There is a 24-hour window for success. This is true of most content: If your submission doesn’t get promoted within 24 hours, it usually has no chance of being promoted later. However, a small number of submissions do get promoted—even 2-5 days after submission—if people continue to regularly show interest in them.

What have you learned about the Digg algorithm from your own experiences? Please share your thoughts on this discussion about DiggRank on Sphinn.

Muhammad Saleem is a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites.

1. Before you even think about signing up with a socially driven news site, consider this: Have you spent some time browsing the community (reading the content and the comments, learning about popular sources and players)? Do you understand how the site works and the niche it serves? If so, is the site for you?

While all socially driven sites have the same basic elements (reading, submitting, voting, and commenting), not all of them function the same way and they definitely don’t serve the same niche (remember, it is not a zero-sum game, and it is with good reason that so many socially driven sites have managed to not only co-exist but also grow at the same time). If you don’t invest time in determining whether a site is right for you from the start, all your subsequent hard work likely won’t pay off and you will have to switch to a different community at a future date.

2. Before you click the sign up button, consider this: You’ve looked at the site and determined that you would be a good fit among the other community members, but have you thought about your goals? Why do you want to sign up with the site and what will you accomplish by doing so?

Too many people look at the popularity of a Digg or a StumbleUpon and they think that they absolutely have to sign up for them to succeed. But if you plan on using a site strictly to promote your site or content or that of your clients, don’t sign up, because the social web is certainly not for you. You might be able to call in enough favors or spam enough people to get a few stories popular at first, but you’re going to lose in the long-run. The community will soon get sick of your constant spamming and singular purpose for being on the site and will either start ignoring you or call you out as a shill. Furthermore, and contrary to general assumptions, these sites have very robust systems in place that can over time detect unnatural participation activity and penalize it.

3. Consider the needs of other users. Sure, it’s a “social” news site and every community member is supposed to share content he or she finds interesting, but don’t forget that you also have to take into account the interests of the masses.

A singular opinion that has no crowd-backing will never be successful on a social news site. For example, if you want to share pictures of cute puppies and you’re participating in a technology-focused or politics-focused site, you shouldn’t expect to be too popular (though I bet there’s a site out there for waiting for you). On the other hand, if your interests are HDR photography, supercomputers, hot models, and Ron Paul, then you’re just the social media everyman the community needs. Keep your interests in mind, but judge them within the context of the community’s interests.

4. Assuming you have an intention of participating in the long run, don’t engage in any troll-like behavior (e.g., unnecessarily burying, sinking, down-voting/thumbing of content, posting negative or otherwise superfluous comments or spamming the threads, flaming other users for any reason, and so on).

5. Once you’re an ‘active’ user, you have bigger responsibilities. To make sure you don’t make a fool of yourself, start from the bottom and work your way up.

In the beginning, try to read as much “popular” content as you can, to get an idea of what kind of content people want shared with them (and vote on this content based on your opinions). Follow that by posting comments on these stories, making sure that you are being objective in your commentary. Subjective commentary can be interpreted as a personal attack or excessive fanboyism (depending on the slant), neither of which is good. Only post comments if you have something substantive to say, and don’t try to use comments to drive traffic to yourself or otherwise hijack a comment thread.

Once you’re completely comfortable with the site and understand the community dynamic, you’re ready to start hunting and submitting stories you think other people will enjoy, and start sharing them with others.

6. Try to submit and share in moderation. Start slow and slowly ramp it up (but not to the point that you’re taking opportunities away from other people). Always start with sources that are already popular with the community so that you can minimize errors in judgment and accidental submissions from less-respected sources.

Even when you try to stick to the basics, not every story you submit will be popular (nor should it). Furthermore, while it is okay to share a story that you’ve submitted with your friends by using on-site or off-site communication methods, if you overdo it, you will start losing friends fast. No one wants to read every single story you submit (so please only share your best picks of the week). In fact, unless you’re gaming the system, or were instrumental in programming a site’s content promotion algorithm, you will start by failing more than succeeding. Don’t let this get you down—it’s natural. Over time, if you’re sufficiently social with other users (reading, voting, commenting, and making friends), your profile and your submissions will gain more visibility.

7. Once your profile is visible and you’ve had some successes, you’ll have a small group of users taking note of your submissions and voting/commenting on them. You are developing a following, but beware: These friends can be fickle if you don’t reciprocate.

Befriend these like-minded community members that enjoy your content, and thank them for keeping an eye out for you. These are the people you should be networking with. It’s called social media for a reason: no one can do it alone. You need to make friends along the way to help give you that extra push. Make sure that you check out the content that these users are sharing and give it at least as much time as they’re giving your content. Nobody wants to be in a one-sided relationship, and everybody can learn something from a friend.

8. Once you become popular, remember that a social news site is not your personal playground and the content promotion algorithm is not your friend (in fact, in some cases it’s your worst enemy). Don’t expect every story to be universally loved and promoted, and don’t whine about the algorithm being specifically unfair to you. Don’t assume that the rules are different for you and don’t take your success for granted. After all, you may have a good eye for content but keep in mind the people that help you along. Specifically the content producer who wrote, published, and hosts the content, and all the social news site’s users that looked at the content, read it, voted on it, and commented on it.

I started participating in the social news sphere in late 2005, when it was still being referred to as social bookmarking (the jump from del.icio.us to Digg hadn’t been made and the differences between the two models were yet to become completely clear). Furthermore, as a result of the nascent stages in which the social web was at that time, most of the points covered here are things that I didn’t have the opportunity to take advantage of (since no one had thought about writing them up). That said, this is a great opportunity for you to learn from my mistakes and excel at social news. I would suggest bookmarking this ‘manual’ for future reference and sharing it with friends who might be interested in participating in the social news sphere.

Muhammad Saleem is a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites.