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Top Ten Reasons Bloggers Should Avoid Social Bookmarking

 

May 15th, 2007 · by David Bradley

Avoid social bookmarkingSocial bookmarking sites, such as Digg, Stumbleupon, and Reddit are all the rage. They almost all flaunt their so-called Web 2.0 credentials, although that in itself can be more of a distraction than adding value to a site or making it more useful. But, there are a few reasons other than esthetics that a healthy blogger should, not only avoid using social bookmarking sites but also discourage their readers from using them too.

  1. First, the notorious “Digg Effect” can knock your site offline for hours on end, downing your server and preventing your real readers from getting to your latest and greatest post.
  2. Second, Diggers, Stumblers, and Redditers (is that a word?) tend to be marginally more internet savvy than other web users. This usually means they will either ignore your blog’s monetization efforts or negatively vote for your monetized blog. If they have Adblock Plus running in Firefox they will never see your ads and scripts anyway. So, not only can these social bookmarking sites send you offline, even if your server stays ahead of the crowd, the surge in traffic will not help you pay the resulting increased bandwidth costs.
  3. Third, that massive one-off server hit does not represent a large proportion of web traffic and gives bloggers a false impression of their site’s popularity. Just because Digg etc are trendy, at the moment, does not mean that they represent anything but a small minority of the net surfing public. In fact, the vast majority of browsing of websites, including blogs, still comes from the major search engines, across almost all sites. Social bookmarkers represent a tiny niche. Nevertheless, the search engine companies recognize the existence of this trickle of users and are already stemming the flow by developing web 2.0 type searching of their own, e.g. Google’s searchmash.
  4. Fourth, do you enjoy visiting websites that have dozens of chicklets and socializing icons attached to every post? Thought not. Then why would your visitors? If you are using a plugin such as Alex King’s ShareThis or AddThis, then that is probably the happy medium between having no social icons and having just one to cover all bases. But, see items 1-3 for reasons not to add this extra layer of blog bureaucracy to your visitors’ experience in the first place.
  5. Fifth, social bookmarking can deflate a blogger’s ego in two respects. If you do not ever get Digged, Stumbled, or Redd, then you might begin to think that your posts are failing to impress. Similarly, if you do get bookmarked on those sites and either get little or lots of traffic from them, the comments that users leave can often cut to the quick. A fragile ego could be shattered by a throwaway, yet scathing, remark from a single commentator on Digg.
  6. Sixth, the enormous exposure you might gain, however transiently, will expose you to a far greater number of malicious net surfers who will see your site as an attractive target for various bad deeds. For instance, being Digged is more than likely to expose your site to more spammers and scrapers, but more worryingly is that a flippant remark made in a single post could become the target of a vindictive lawyer hoping to make a fast buck out of you.
  7. Seventh, social bookmarks will drain your time, reducing the number of hours left each day for actual blogging, or even totally preventing you leaving your computer’s side. The more attractive you try to make your site to Digg etc, the more time you will spend checking backlinks, looking at stats, and keeping track of your Digged articles, just in case one of them ever gets hitt hard.
  8. Eighth, you may have written provocative and attractive copy and when that SB Effect hits, you may be expecting a stack of great comments to bump up your site’s content still further. You won’t get it. Digg and other social bookmarkers rarely bother to comment on blogs. Specifically, Digg users are at best tolerant of blogs and at worst hate them with a vengeance (see above).
  9. Ninth, you might have half a dozen newsfeed subscribers today, but what about after the Stumblers land? Sorry, it will not make much difference, just as those users do not tend to leave comments they will also likely fail to subscribe to your RSS either, no matter how prominent your giant orange feed icon.
  10. Tenth and finally, despite the hyperbole, social bookmarking, like all the other web 2.0 malarkey is a passing phase, it is a fairly big phase, but it is passing nevertheless. If you aim to keep up with it, you will lose focus, and in a couple of years time, when it is but a memory and we have moved on to web 3.0 (or maybe just web 2.1), your social bookmarking stacked site will look very old hat, whether that’s white or black, does not matter.

A tag cloud with terms related to Web 2.0So, what is the best strategy? Ignore the fact that your a blogger, ignore the existence of social bookmarking sites, and simply create great, original, and relevant content that real people will want to read. That is the true key to a site’s long-term success, don’t even think of your site as a blog. You never know, even if you do not monetize on the crest of the social bookmarking wave, you may find that longevity and steadily rising visitor numbers bring their own rewards just the same.

40 responses so far ↓

  • itsguiman // May 15, 2007 at 12:47 pm

    That sounds like 10 valid reasons not to bother then , so I don’t think I will! Is it me or as a web designer/developer there are so many things to get your head around. Aargh! What’s the flavour this week? Social Bookmarking, Web2.0 - which means different things to different people, Blogging, Digging, Ajaxing, Firefoxing, Phishing, Spaming…Sorry my heads spinning, I just need to get on and earn a crust, as there aren’t enough hours in the day for all these distractions!

  • Michael » Blogs'n'bloggers // May 15, 2007 at 2:32 pm

    I completely agree with the author. It is not always worthwhile submitting something to a social bookmarking website. For me it is worth it only if it is a part of your well thought out blog promotion strategy.

  • Rusty // May 15, 2007 at 7:37 pm

    I agree, but couldn’t help but chuckle at the wry irony - using a ‘Top Ten’ list to talk about avoiding social bookmarking when ‘Top Ten’ lists are some of the most common items you’ll find on social bookmarking sites.

  • Wayne Smallman // May 15, 2007 at 8:12 pm

    “… do you enjoy visiting websites that have dozens of chicklets and socializing icons attached to every post?”

    Indeed. I see lots of that, and it’s just a distraction at best.

    I’m not so sure social bookmarking is a passing fad.

    To some like me, it’s an essential. I live out my del.icio.us account.

    But, I tend not to use Digg at all. And I can’t say that I’ve ever used Reddit or StumbleUpon.

    But enough people do.

    So-called ‘ad-blindness’ is the biggie, though. That’s goin’ nowhere!

  • David Bradley // May 15, 2007 at 8:14 pm

    Indeed, Rusty, well spotted…

    Wayne, perhaps I was being a little too pessimistic to assume that social bookmarking is but a passing fad, it is probably as much a passing fad, as blogging itself. That said, it’s unlikely to stay exactly as it is now for too much longer. Just as we had informaiton overload with the first waves of websites a decade ago and that steadily grew until social bookmarking emerged almost inevitably, so too the overload we are now seeing in other people’s choices will be superseded by another wave, what that might be one can only guess, but buzzwords like mash and social search tools are likely to play a role in the inevitable. We might see a lot of mergers of SB sites in the next year or two, or someone might come up with the next stage that is equally as novel as social bookmarking was just a couple of years ago.

  • Jake // May 15, 2007 at 9:34 pm

    I believe the main reason behind blogging is to have users come for your content. You seem to think differently, which is the main part of this. I also do not believe the authors should submit their sites to social bookmarking sites. I use Digg, del.icio.us, and primarily StumbleUpon often. I also use Firefox with Adblock, but will allow Google ads (and I occasionly click on them too). However, I never put my own worko on there anymore anyway. I only use it to read… and discover new feeds for my RSS reader. Since you’re against one of my favorite things on the Internet, I won’t subscribe.

  • David Bradley // May 15, 2007 at 10:16 pm

    Jake, Jake, Jake…I don’t think differently at all! I blog for the very same reasons as you - to provide informative, useful, and hopefully entertaining content for my readers. Personally, I spend an inordinate amount of time Stumbling, Digging, and Redding. Far too much time, in fact! Hence my diatribe :-) Your choice whether or not you subscribe, but you will never know useful my next blog post might be. I’ve got stuff on OpenDNS, helping users find you feed, recording Skype calls, and charting your successes on Digg, all coming up over the next few days…but you’ll miss out on those if you don’t click that big old orange button!

  • Leo // May 15, 2007 at 11:50 pm

    Very interesting points, and I agree with many of them. However, I’ve presented some alternative viewpoints in the comments of my post as a response:

    http://freelanceswitch.com/blog-writing/how-to-write-a-popular-post/

    Keep up the good work!

  • Wayne Smallman // May 16, 2007 at 8:10 am

    “Just as we had information overload with the first waves of websites a decade ago and that steadily grew until social bookmarking emerged almost inevitably, so too the overload we are now seeing in other people’s choices will be superseded by another wave, what that might be one can only guess,…”

    Well, data mining is getting better, so the AI knows sort of what we like.

    Out of that, we might only need to make a few selections of what we like and then the rest is harvested.

    And from a task-based point of view — say you’re a researcher, for example — then you might need to only define a topic and outline and then the software mines the web for the data.

    BTW: given that I’ve read of other people devaluing the Digg-effect, how long before the search engines do, too?

    After all, their purpose is to mimic our own, is it not?

  • ozz // May 16, 2007 at 10:50 am

    Load of cr*p. You build sites to get visitors, not to hide them on the internets. And what you get with social news sites is visitors? Why the hell should one be against it?

  • ozz // May 16, 2007 at 10:58 am

    And oh to the irony. You yourself have the Alex Kings share this, plus the sphere plugin. What the hell for? lol. The times have changed. But still, traffic means everything on the web. Monetization is not a point for everyone. Social news is here to stay for a long time, whether you like or not.

  • David Bradley // May 16, 2007 at 11:06 am

    Wayne, yes indeed, datamining and curation of data is moving on apace, viz Chemspy’s mention of DBpedia.org

  • David Bradley // May 16, 2007 at 11:07 am

    ozz, yes, I do indeed have Alex’s ShareThis running on the site and the Sphere plugin. All fun and games, n’est ce pas?

  • Wayne Smallman // May 16, 2007 at 6:36 pm

    I’m sensing a lost-in-translation moment, here.

    Dry whit & sarcastic tongue-in-cheek humour seems not to travel too well.

    Never mind, David!

  • ZHereford // May 16, 2007 at 10:12 pm

    Interesting article David!
    I wonder if there have been any studies done on the benefits vs. drawbacks on social bookmarking.
    It seems that everyone wants to jump on a band wagon just so they’re not the last one’s to join, even if they don’t know whether it works.

  • John Wesley // May 17, 2007 at 7:58 pm

    You make some good points. Social bookmarking certainly isn’t ideal for blogs. But in my experience it is the only way for your average blogger to get a huge burst of traffic. True, most of it disappears, but some people do subscribe and become regular readers. It also does a lot to increase mind share.

    I don’t think there is anyway I could have reached 2000 RSS subscribers in 6 months without Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.

  • David Bradley // May 17, 2007 at 8:19 pm

    Good one John! You’ve got a good foundation in place for building yourself a nice, strong blog. 2269 subscribers when I visited your site just now. Love your how to be an expert graph!

  • Robert Irizarry // May 29, 2007 at 12:44 am

    Great article David. While I’m sure there’s quite a bit of steam left in social bookmarking, I can’t disagree with the need for balance. There’s potential for traffic in social bookmarking but given time to optimize for search engines vs. social bookmarking, the bottom line for most of us is that the bulk of our traffic comes from search engines.

  • Eliena // Jun 17, 2007 at 2:32 pm

    i don’t think i will quit using social bookmarking sites.. i got all the traffic from these sites. but thanks for awareness…

  • David Bradley // Jun 17, 2007 at 7:05 pm

    Eliena, I suspect the reason ALL of your traffic comes from social bookmarks is that the spammy nature of your blogspot blog title, which includes the notoriously blackhat keyword mesothelioma is either supplemental, sandboxed, or banned by the search engines.

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  • Tom Foremski // Aug 13, 2007 at 9:53 pm

    It is too much work to tag my copy and add the Digg this! stuff. I always concentrate on the content. If it is good enough it will find its way to people. All that traffic from search sites or Digg-type sites is fly-by-night. I get more than 90 per cent of my traffic through bookmarks and RSS, my readers know where I live and they come to me and that’s the way it should be, imho.

  • ses5909 // Aug 26, 2007 at 12:26 pm

    I do believe that Social bookmarking can help expose a site…especially a new one. But I imagine at most you retain way less than 1% of traffic that came b/c of the site. There are only a couple of those sites that I use, but I am that techy person you described.

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  • nithin // Oct 27, 2007 at 9:01 am

    Yes, what you said is some what agreeable but what about the enormous traffic you can expect to your site. If we are using sites like blogger.com then there is no end to the bandwidth that we can take. So we don’t need to feel about the servers.

  • David Bradley // Oct 28, 2007 at 9:43 am

    Thanks for your thoughts nithin…this top ten was meant only half seriously, it’s more about advice on how to plan for getting a social bookmarking spike than anything else.

  • BloggerDollar // Nov 5, 2007 at 3:53 pm

    What’s the point of blogging if not having readers.

  • David Bradley // Nov 5, 2007 at 9:33 pm

    Thanks for the comment BloggerDollar, but who said anything about not having readers? It’s regular, repeat readers you want, not just passersby who come from a social bookmarking spike…

    …that aside, the post was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

  • abol // Nov 8, 2007 at 5:06 pm

    I think of social bookmarking as an internet marketing strategy, why don’t we use it to get traffic?

  • Simon // Nov 14, 2007 at 2:12 pm

    Thanks for post (which I came to using Stumble Upon). I was just bracing myself to launch into Digg and Redditt etc to find out how to use these sites to promote a blog. Now you’ve persuaded me not to bother. Thanks. It’s a huge relief.
    On the other hand, when you start a blog and no one, really no one, is reading it, you’ld do anything just to get get a couple of visitors through the door.

  • David Bradley // Nov 14, 2007 at 4:12 pm

    Simon, don’t give up. Social bookmarking/networking *is* where the next generation of traffic comes from for many blogs and sites. This article was tongue in cheek. Doesn’t the very fact that you reached this site via StumbleUpon tell you something…?

  • Barbara // Jan 23, 2008 at 7:40 pm

    Hi David,

    This is a great post. Although I have had spikes of traffic from Digg and Stumble, I have learned to realize, those traffic levels don’t last. With that being said, my traffic does seem to level off, at a higher level, than before the spikes.

    I have done some Stumbling, and a little “Digg”ing, but find it takes me away from providing good content for my blogs. With a family, full time job, and two blogs, SB is still on the back burner for me.

    I’m curious though, do you think SB will go away, or transition into some other type of cyberspace social medium?

    Barbara’s last blog post..Comment Luv Plugin Increases Traffic

  • David Bradley // Jan 23, 2008 at 8:23 pm

    Barbara, this was very much a tongue in cheek post. I do actually like the traffic and the spikes (when my servers hold up). Social bookmarking will most definitely evolve during 2008. Web 1.0 was all about pushing non-interactive content, web 2.0 was about interactive user-created content, web 3.0 is going to be about interactive user-created networks…

    db

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  • horatio salt // Feb 27, 2008 at 7:29 pm

    thought provoking stuff, david. thanks. me, i figure every post i write is an opportunity to stage a car crash at the side of the road. if enough people slow down to have a look, i’m happy. if i holler the right words as i stand beside the wreck, google will bring a new rush of cars past my debris. and now, i must stop mangling this metaphor before i hurt myself… ;-)
    horatio salt’s last blog post..$250,000 reward for return of missing snowman

  • David Bradley // Feb 27, 2008 at 8:00 pm

    Gee, Horatio, if only you’re bloggin’ airbag had gone off half way through that comment, we’d have all been saved the carnage ;-)

    Good point though. This post, as you’ll have realised was a deliberate car crash waiting to happen, and there’s already a pile up occurring in the counterflow traffic…

    db

  • Lola // May 16, 2008 at 3:33 am

    I totally agree with you. You posted this blog precisely one year ago and it’s still very logical. For most websites or blogs, Social bookmaking has a hit and run effect.

  • DevTopics // Jun 12, 2008 at 5:51 pm

    David, I realized this article was tongue-in-cheek based on your first reason, essentially: Avoid social bookmarking because you may be successful and get knocked offline from the traffic surge.

    Reminds me of that famous Homer Simpson quote: “Trying is the first step to failure.”

    Many web hosts now offer “traffic surge protection” to handle the Digg effect. My experience is that although a Digg surge is short-lived, there is often a residual effect of viewers that enjoy your site and return for future visits. Most bloggers will see a persistent traffic increase with each Digg surge. Hence, it’s important to understand how to use social news sites to your blog’s advantage.

    Funny article, though, made me LOL.

    http://www.devtopics.com/can-you-digg-it-7-tips-for-bloggers-working-with-social-news-sites/

    DevTopicss last blog post..Is Google Making Us Stoopid?

  • David Bradley // Jun 13, 2008 at 7:44 am

    DevTopics, yes, indeed, off-the-record, I do enjoy the occasional surge.

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