7 Ways Self Promotion Hurts Yourself on Social Media
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Many website owners and marketers still assume that self promotion is the best way to gain links and exposure on social media.
You just dump your content on a social site and “done”. Most social media experts will disagree though.
There are at least 7 ways self promotion hurts you on social media even if there is some exposure gained. Getting links from social media works differently anyways.
1. When you share your content yourself nobody else can discover it
I often encounter this mistake where webmasters with no authority at all share their posts to niche communities.
Even on large social networking services you actually tell the algorithm that your content sucks when all that happens first is futile self-promotion with zero ensuing engagement.
They literally waste them due to their low status on social sites. Whereas I could get plenty of engagement due to my established user status.
2. Legit users don’t like you
When you share your own stuff you rarely will submit the best content so other people will view you as a selfish person.
When you are sharing low quality content just because it’s yours people don’t trust you in the future. You end up being trusted less than a completely new user.
3. Admins and moderators watch you closely
After several self submissions in a row your domain might get banned on niche communities as it will be viewed as spam.
Why? Due to the excessive self promotion. Some more disgruntled users will vote you down, report you or even bully you for that.
4. You won’t make many friends either
People you submit content of tend to befriend, like and remember you. After a while these people start submitting your stuff too naturally.
There is no vote exchange needed. When you share only your own stuff nobody will notice you and share your posts.
5. You can’t judge what works where
Social media power users know what works where, how and why. They now what people visit a platform and how a piece of content must be presented to become popular.
You don’t know. You don’t know unless you become a power user yourself, you can’t just by promoting your own content. Catch 22.
6. You gain no authority over time and throughout different social media sites
My contributions on some social sites made me so well known on social media in general that I get recognized at other sites too.
Even without a network of friends people vote for me because they trust me (and read my shares in the first place).
This works the other way as well. You might change your user name but you can’t change your website URL too often.
Some people will recognize you because they know you from elsewhere and vote you either up, down or ignore you depending on your reputation.
7. I’ll ignore you
Many people assume that just because I do SEO and they have a crappy SEO site I have to befriend and like them.
When you display solely selfish behavior by promoting your own crappy sites over and over I will ignore you or even report you as spam in some more serious cases. It works the other way too.
When I see a new user who contributes great content from day one I will eagerly check him out an visit his site. There I will pick up some good content and share it myself.
In SEO 2.0 we frown upon self promotion anyway as it reminds us of the dark ages of SEO 1.0 and low quality mass submission to social sites. SEO 2.0 works without self promotion.
It’s not selfish media, it’s social media, so you fail when you’re selfish.
You can only succeed being social, whether you want to succeed for a cause, out of ambition or for marketing purposes.
Self submission is almost as bad as blog suicide and one of the main reasons old school SEOs fail on social media.
* Creative Commons image by Lee Haywood
Hey Izabela: Thanks for the feedback. I do not think of voting for others as a trade. It may work for a while but it’s not genuine. My online friends do not vote for me due to being my friends. They notice my content because of that but they vote due to the quality of it. Thinking in barter terms is just a road block to real SEO 2.0 success.
You should not frown as much, it’s bad for you. It will make you look bitter and old before time.
I think that submitting foreign ;) content is just as submitting your own, it’s a trade. Or you can call it a social media investment. Well… before I invest, I need to get a loan. You know a good bank for me?
[…] today I read a new post at SEO 2.0 called 7 Ways Self Submission Hurts Yourself on Social Media. First of all, if you’re not already familiar with Tad’s blog I highly recommend that […]
Hey Tad,
I just published a post in response to this rather than writing an exceptionally long comment here. Essentially my feeling is that there is more involved in the question of self submission, such as the audience of the specific social media site and the reach of the blogger. I don’t have a problem with it and I don’t think most people do on niche sites, although with Digg and SU it’s more questionable. I do completely agree with your first point. Many people don’t consider this.
Yes, makes sense though to be honest, its not a bad idea to create other account and do submission for posts which are specifically created to use social media. You can’t wait till someone sees it as sometimes instant makes the difference.
“Social media power users know what works where, how and why. They now what people visit a platform and how a piece of content must be presented to become popular”, this is the exact reason i see some social media stars submit their own content to digg and SU.
In an ideal world your suggestion would make sense. But, it appears to me that unless you sometimes submit your own content then you are just blowing in the wind, waiting for something to happen. I thought that the idea was to make things happen?
I am so confused… I am a new blogger struggling to find readers. I think my content is valuable to those interested. I read many blogs that offer tips to young bloggers like myself, and many of them say that one should submit your content to digg, su, or other social news sites. By reading this I am concerned now that I am hurting my chances of being found or gaining any level of content popularity. So should I give up on submitting my content and hope that people just discover me? Or should I consider your article BS or an anomaly into it’s own? All I know is that reading articles like this is rather discouraging to me.
Yes, I agree, when abused, self submissions can only lead to trouble. However, you’ve tackled the subject from a newbie’s point of view. From the perspective of someone how’s just starting out with social media and is experimenting. And if he’s just starting out, it’s more then normal to submit your own stuff. Everybody learns the basic this way.
Which brings me to my point. How about experienced SM users? The ones that push only their best content, content that is at least as good as the one present on the front page. The ones that have a extensive network, which can actually help make a story popular. The ones that ask other people to submit their stuff (when needed) or just wait for someone to naturally do it. The ones that actively contribute to the community and provides value. In this case, I guess, self- submission is not only fruitful for the SM user, but for the rest of the community as well. Everybody’s happy!
It’s under this system that sites like mixx.com thrive and will continue to do so. Digg doesn’t understand this (or doesn’t want to) and a bunch of its power users, users that were responsible for more then 32% of the front page content. Guess which of the two is gonna keep growing?
Discuss.
This post is amusing and inaccurate on so many levels. So lets defunct every point made with my own irrefutable logic. (lol)
1) People are extremely lazy. You are lucky they even read a whole post, let alone submit your site to a social news website. Nothing wrong with taking the initiative.
2) There are no “legit” users on social sites. Just friends voting for friends. Those “legit” users you speak of will never get a story popular. Therefore you do not want to become a legit user.
3) If all you do is submit stories to your own sites over and over again then yeah, that will happen. Use a little common sense and mix up your submissions.
4) Friends? Really? Is this Mypsace? You don’t want friends. You want FANS. Next.
5) Can’t judge what works? Heck, look at the story votes and referring traffic to your site. What more can you want?
6) This is related to having friends on social sites. Are you in the business of scratching other people’s backs or creating good content and marketing it to an audience you feel can relate to it?
7) You just spammed your own group. Stop being lame.
I find this mind-boggling. As if we have the time to spend hours online looking for “good content” to post to a social media site. Social Media, by it’s very nature, is a means for one person to follow another person’s online activity – whether it be surfing, or contributing content. Somewhere along the way, someone made the “Ruling” that we should not post our own stuff. Well, maybe I ought not to write my own stuff too then. I likely won’t have much time for that since I now have to spend my social media activities hunting for worthy items to post to social media sites to gain favor with the people who’ve mucked the whole thing up in the first place. Ironically, your “ploy” and hidden threats (you not being along in this) are still being avoided by the regular emails I get from writers and site owners who understand this and say to me – “If you get a chance, come by and give my post a Digg” – or whatever medium they choose. If we keep policing these ridiculous expectations instead of allowing people to do what it is that they do, we’ll never enjoy the full benefits of social media. Welcome to the Rat Race Online.
Hi Tad,
You make several good points (especially the first) and I agree that it’s preferable to get someone else to submit your posts – but it’s sometimes hard to get a start. It’s not that easy to get noticed and to get accepted into the cliques. It’s not as simple as just having good content (and hoping someone finds it) or submitting other people’s work (and hoping they notice you submitted it). I’ve had good posts that no one notices. I’ve had trouble submitting other people’s work because most of the deserving articles are already submitted by someone else.
I know you’re very active on Sphinn, so this may interest you. According to the Sphinn guidelines (http://sphinn.com/guidelines.php), they actually prefer you to submit your own posts:
I’ve done that with a couple of posts and they’ve gone nowhere. I’ve also noticed that most of the articles that go hot are not submitted by the author. So it looks like the Sphinn community agrees with what you say, even though that’s not the official policy. Anyway, very interesting post and food for thought.
Despite this being social media, you can’t ignore the huge amount of lurking and inaction that is present. Maybe there needs to be more people submitting, and it needs to be more than the influencer’s and the creators of the content.
@FSP, I agree, people ARE lazy. The majority of people that read content will not submit it. They will just passively consume it.
As much as we like to think everything has become social, I can’t get out of my head that there still only a tiny percentage of people that are actively participating.
Until then, maybe we do need to be submitting our own stuff as there may not be enough people out there to do it for us.
Great post though, its got people talking!
Good article. I still think it’s worth while to post your own stuff once in a while. I have had some excellent traffic from Stumble Upon from submitting a post I wrote on my blog.
I like to do it this way:
Two for you, one for me. Seems to keep everyone happy!
[…] a must know. Always let someone else to submit your content. Read below for numerous reasons why. SEO 2.0 | 7 Ways Self Submission Hurts Yourself on Social Media __________________ – Rob – Blogs For Sale | Home Business Blog | Blogging Jobs | Hit me up on […]
I think for a newbie it is alright to start out posting links to a site you are affiliated with, as long as it is relevant and not spam.
Thanks people for the feedback. Now I got more than enough fodder for a follow up. Just commenting here would be not enough to cover all of these questions and remarks.
In the meantime make sure to follow the link to secret of SEO 2.0 post which was in a way the first part of this.
[…] 7 Ways Self Submission Hurts Yourself on Social Media […]
I’ve discovered the following through my own experience:
1) Proactivity is rewarded.
2) Anybody making an effort to promote their content will gain more exposure.
3) If you choose to be proactive and social post, you will be judged (especially by onreact – hehe).
4) Most people who read your post can you can see right through your intentions. If you have a solid moral imperative and good intention, social posting sites will err in your favor.
6) The vast majority of social posting sites are designed to ‘separate the wheat from the shaft’ so to speak. If you truly believe that your content is the ‘wheat,’ then it doesn’t matter who does the posting (you or somebody else) because it belongs there.
Thanks for the informative article. So far I’ve not submitted any of my posts, however none of my posts get submitted, and yet I think they’re of good quality . . . I’m a newcomer to blogging so not sure what to do!
great post… i agree with this most specially if you are just a newbie to submissions.. that are certain tricks to be learned in order to succeed.
Any pro-active submissions to social networks can only do good, but marginally so if the content of your site is below par. Subitting a standard made-for-adsense website to a social network is spamming IMO.
[…] 7 Ways Self Submission Hurts Yourself on Social Media […]