Is Social Authority an utterly useless concept for Internet Marketers?
There are a rare breed of people on big social networks, such as Digg, recognized by those web sites as their “Top Users”. These people barely think about anything else other than their mission to make that Social Network a better place, and to sustain their position as a top user. These people are usually the first ones to submit a viral post - not that they know it’s going to be viral and submit it - but, they are the ones who make it viral.
Strictly speaking, anything they touch would turn to gold. These people have mastered the art of building up a reputation in a particular social media web site, and with that reputation, they are capable of virtually controlling where the social media network is headed. In other words these are the people with Social Authority.
Building Social Authority on a certain social network is a really time-consuming chore. You must basically live and breath that particular network for a good number of hours per week if you want to get anywhere with your social authority.
I do not intend to tell you how to build your social authority, since you’ve already heard it. In a nutshell, you basically have to build relationships with the other people (hence the term ‘Social’) and submit quality content from all over the web that others will find interesting, which can be very fun, but a highly time consuming daily chore.
It’s a good thing - the whole Social Authority thing. If you have a good authority and a social presence on Digg, you can virtually control millions of page views in web traffic each and every month. And that’s why so many Internet Marketers talk about building up your social authority and encourage you to do so., which is…
Utterly stupid and worthless!
Don’t get me wrong. If you want to be a top user on Digg and dedicate your time to keep that status, go ahead. But if you’re building up your social authority to drive traffic to your own blog, then, think twice. Why?
- Once you start submitting your own content and try to drive in traffic, you will lose your authority.
- The URLs in your profile will lead a few to your fans to your blog - which by the way, is not wroth the time consumed. (You get 40 visits per day from putting in 2 hours of work - worth it?)
- If what you’re expecting from Social Media is traffic for your own projects, and if you’re not getting it, what’s the logic of building up social authority to gain traffic to your blog?
The bottom line is, being a top user of a Social Media network is like being enslaved to work for little or no incentive. You will lose credibility as soon as people find out that you’re promoting your own content. If you want to be the most popular person on Digg, go ahead! You can do it. But if you’re expecting anything back from Digg, think again.
What do you think? Would love to see this post sparking some debate. So if have got views opposed to mine, let’s hear them!
Sometimes we want to be a slave just for the sake of getting any traffic imaginable (for example: Entrecard dropping)
Hmmm.. Guess that’s true..
Since your belief is that this is not a viable method to increase enough readership to make the work put in worth it. Then what is the answer?
Simple, you must make sure people with social authority can do the work for you. There’s no point in stumbling your own posts. What you can do is do a post to a degree that stumblers will find it interesting and work on viral promotion thereafter.
I think it is more important to learn how to leverage social networking sites and bookmarking sites in order to gain support for your business or marketing venture. Also if I am stuck on an idea and need to figure out how to move on it if I know how to navigate the social networking sites to find what I need it helps overcome that proverbial writers block as it were.
I only comment and so forth on stories if it really has struck a chord with me. I don’t want to give mindless feedback or half hearted attempts at participating.
Thanks Joe. Yes, I agree. Leveraging the support of a social network is more important than working on your social authority. Exactly my point!
I have felt this way for a long time about the social communities. It isn’t worth the effort involved to get your post viral. That effort could go into ten to twenty more quality post per week. Which would greatly surpass any traffic garnished off social traffic with long lasting traffic. I have found though that if you place your digg, your stumbles in the right spots and ask your readers to please stumble NOT EVERY TIME, but once every say ten posts on what you think is a good post, they are more likely to stumble/ digg etc. I have also found that once it is stumbled or dugg you can stumble or digg too without penalty. I made the mistake of diggin one too many of my own posts and was booted from digg. Even though my digg ratio was twenty sites to one of my own, but whatever i got booted and re joined under a new account.
Today I did get 100 hits from stumble and I only asked one person to stumble me
He discovered my post and I guess he is what you where talking about a social authority, he sends me tons of posts to stumble and I stumble them, and finally I thought how come this guy is so active more so than every other user put together. We talked for a few minutes, and finally he said yeah I get around two to three thousand hits a day from stumble. I about crapped my pants. He said, i never submit my own site, i never stumble my own site, I stumble for other people I have 500 followers and I message people to stumble my site in return I stumlbe their requests, he said u stumbled my site a month ago and I haven’t requested another stumble for my site. I thought wow, then i asked to him to stumble my site, like I said i got 100 hits today already from his one stumble, got lucky I guess. I will let you know how the his methods work for me, I figure its worth a shot to try his methods passively, I won’t become a stumble addict but I will atleast give his idea a try.
Thanks for your long insightful comment. I guess what you say is true. In an event like this, yes, social authority plays a good role.