It seems as if I’ve come full circle on the blogging for social media topic.  (Don’t know what social media is?  Check out this recent ProBlogger post on the topic.)  When I first began blogging, I jumped blindly into it.  I had no idea what social media was.  When I first learned about it, I didn’t respect it and began to submit all my content to Digg, Reddit and all the others.  A few posts were popular and I built a some traffic.

A spike in traffic from hitting the front page of Digg was nice; however, after a few days the Digg effect was gone and I was back to the same old thing  . . . without a whole lot to show for it.

Respecting the Process

After learning more about blogging and social media proper etiquette, I stopped the auto-submission routine that I was on.  When I tried to get involved in social media, I found I really didn’t like most of the social media communities, with two exceptions - StumbleUpon, del.icio.us and Mixx.  Although I’m not nearly as involved as many of you probably are, if I go to a site for fun, I’ll check out one of these two sites.  StumbleUpon is enjoyable for surfing, del.icio.us for bookmarking stuff I want to read and I go back to Mixx mainly because the community is so much friendlier than Digg.

Digg Has Problems

I really dislike Digg’s community nowadays.  It seems like everyone wants to criticize everything.  Digg users are rude and will curse you for an honest expression of your opinion.  Shouts are out of control.  Getting something to the front page of Digg just doesn’t mean the same thing as it used to.  I know, I’ve done it by simply spam shouting to several hundred friends.  You say, I’m part of the problem.  I agree, I was.  That’s part of why I don’t really care for it anymore.  It’s just too easy to manipulate the system and too much junk gets to the front page anymore.  Itty Biz said it better than I can - How We Killed Social Media.

If I Digg something now, it’s from someone’s blog only.  I no longer surf Digg to stay “active” in the community.  I’ve got Digg buttons on my sites; however, I don’t Digg my own stuff anymore - even if I think it’s Digg worthy.

In Closing . . .

I don’t write headlines or posts for Digg anymore.  No more stupid top 10 lists that turn off my regular readers just to get a day or two spike in traffic. Now I write for my readers and for people who are using search engines to find answers.  I believe those are the hits that matter most.

Open mic time.  Let me put a few questions up for discussion to you:

1. Am I way off base?
2. Should I care more about social media?
3. How do I get into social media sites when I don’t really like them?
4. Do any of you have social media misgivings as well?