Promote My Site

In one of this week's hottest Sphinn stories, Google to punish pagerank for Digg stories, it is clear that people are really focused on the readers, links, and prestige of Digg and the other top-tier social networking and social bookmarking sties.

Which is fine but the level of upset makes it clear that a lot of people don't have any real diversified portfolio of links and readership. Nothing wrong with making buggy whips, but you gotta watch out for changes in consumer taste.

Let's take a look at what Google (supposedly, it was taken down) said:

We are working on strategies to level the playing field, effectively bringing back natural search patterns enjoyed in the pre-social bookmarking days. For webmasters who use social media responsibly, this is nothing to worry about - we will be targeting mainly a small minority of prolific bookmarkers with a new algorithm that looks at linking patterns over time.

Webmasters who rely heavily on bookmarking their own sites to gain traffic will likely see a drop in pagerank before the end of 2008, and we will be working closely with two major social bookmarking sites to find a solution that will have no detrimental effect on the average internet user.

Let me translate from google-ish

• "level the playing field" means: Make more money over here and get our stock back up from 430 to $700+.
• "pre social bookmarking" means: We used to be able to control what was hot, not Digg
• "use social media responsibly" means: Guess what we mean else we'll make your website disappear
• "new algorithm" means: Anuj and Prakash are going to be busy in Bangalore
• "will likely see a drop in pagerank" means: Let the rending and wailing begin

What will be the most interesting to me will be to see if breaking cover and running to cover your tracks is better than just freezing until the predator flies over.

The Key Phrase Is....

Kind of buried at the end: "we will be working closely with two major social bookmarking sites." Two. Let me repeat: Two. We took all the lists that we could find on the internet and spent months combing through all 2,162 Social Networking and Social Bookmarking sites to see who was alive and who was dead. (And, yes, you can download the list at that link!) We currently have a sublist of over 400 sites where you can create a login, actually login, and post a bookmark or story.

Automation

Really, you're going to need to automate some of your manual habits if you branch out from the tippy top tier players. We've reviewed a lot of the social networking automation options out there for you. It's not really going to be fun - life is easier if you use one or two sites rather than a dozen or more. But if people were using multiple sites then there'd less hyperventilating about this vague but important threat from google.

And if your (natural) competitors are going to have a problem, then that is really signaling an opportunity for you, isn't it?

Bear Stearns Closes at 30

And sells the next day at 2. Bam! Billions of shareholder equity lost. A year ago this would have been unimaginable.

Let's have a though experiment.... Eccentric Saudi Prince buys Digg for $750M, bans all content not involving funny Kitty Pix, Digg'ers flee to Mixx, Prince shuts down site in a huff.

What if all your links were from Digg? Or if all your readers were from Digg? Or if all your reputation in the social media world were resident in Digg.

Oops.

Do Nothing

Two words: Buggy Whip.

If you just keep on using one or two sites and your competitors diversify, then you will lose in the SERPS, all other things being equal. They will have a more diversified and stable reputation base, get readers who never see your stuff, etc.

Find the Niche Sites

Let's say you were in the Voice Over IP (VOIP) business and you were writing content around decision making, technology, standards, all that jazz. Which do you think would be better - digg or Voipigg? Who? Voipigg. It's a niche pligg site with good content control. Low volume, like most niche sites, but the 100 or so people who show up regularly are all looking for VOIP related stories.

It takes the exact same amount of time to submit both sites, so obviously digg is a better use of your time.

Think Risk Aversity

Really? Think about what started this whole discussion - threat of wholesale stripping of pagerank for heavy Digg users.

I think the mindset of "only have time for one" is a false dichotomy and that in today's competitive environment you have to make the time to develop and implment a diversified social networking strategy.