Social Sites like Digg are like being in high school all over again.

You really have to keep that in mind when you're coming up with a strategy of how to promote your content on these networks. If you're just starting out, you're sitting with the geeks in the cafeteria, and the cool people aren't going to pay much attention to you. It will take a long time (at least in internet time) to carefully craft a reputation that will allow you to move in the popular (read that profitable) social circles.

There are lots of reasons to build up your friend networks. The primary one is that having a large network of friends will allow you to communicate to them and rally support for your submissions. You can put out the best content in the world, but if you're depending upon people to spot it as it scrolls off the upcoming page at 5 positions per second you're not going to get anywhere. Great content is just gas in the tank. You have to support that content with great promotion.

If you don't agree with the above statement, try finding a top digger that doesn't have a large netork of friends. Being at the top of a social network will bring you friends, but you can't get there without a critical mass of people to support your submissions.

Remember Google's murmurs about an impending slap this Fall for social network submissions that were purely self serving? If you're submitting your own blog to social networks just for the links and not getting much play from the community, you're going to be in trouble. Having a lot of friends is a defensive move against that impending slap -- being popular shows that your content is worthwhile and deserves authority. Again, great content without the votes to back it up won't be worth much.

Finally, even if you're submitting to social networks just for the links, think about the internal structures of these sites. If you've got 500 friends, that's 500 internal links to your profile page. And your profile page points to your articles. Sure, it may not be a lot of juice, but it'sa heck of a lot better than a profile page without any incoming links.

Time to Party

Joining in on the conversation on these sites is like going to a party. The only difference is that anyone with an internet connection can get an invitation to the party. If you're an internet marketer, the purpose of going to the party is to build up worthwhile relationships. It doesn't do you any good to spend time with people that can't or won't do anything for you. If you're just at the party to have fun and drink a few beers then you can just wander around aimlessly. But if you're attending the party to further your business, you need to have a strategy.

As you walk into the room, you'll see lots of different groups of people interacting. Let's take a look at some of those groups and how you might try to fit in.

The Kings and Queens Holding Court

Some groups consist of an individual surrounded by a lot of people listening to what they have to say. The communication is completely uni-directional. The King/Queen is doing all of the talking, and there is a large group of people listening to every word.

As Mel Brooks said, "It's good to be the King." And while the temptation to friend MrBabyMan and become one of his 10,111 fans (as of the minute that I'm writing this) can be quite strong, the fact is that he's only got 328 friends and you therefore have roughly a 3.2% chance of becoming a friend. Less than that because he's already got enough friends, and they're mostly other top diggers.

If you've come to the party to build up worthwhile relationships, there's not much the Kings and Queens are going to do for you. Perhaps someday when you've become royalty they'll deign to be your friend, but until then it's not a good use of your time.

The Wall Flowers

These are the people that are just hanging around and watching. They're not participating in any conversations -- their comment count is pretty close to zero. They may vote on things, but they don't have much of a friend network. They aren't very active either. Take a look at the date of their last submissions -- it's usually months ago. Spending your time approaching them is another waste.

Loudmouth Cheaters

These are people that have lots of friends and lots of fans. Check their profile and they've most likely added a bunch of friends lately. Their strategy is to churn and dump. They friend a lot of people, and when they get a mutual friendship back they vote for their friends submissions for a few weeks, then they drop the friend and turn them into a fan. Digg is especially bad about this because there's no notification that someone has dropped you. BTW, these people are often the ones sending 30 shouts every day, sometimes several duplicates at a time.

Avoid getting stuck in these groups by using a few guidelines. Don't friend someone back with a high number of both friends and fans with a recent history of adding a lot of friends. And never, ever friend someone back that has shouts turned off. There's nothing worse than the loudmouth that sends you 20 shouts a day and has the audacity to refuse to listen to shouts from their friends.

The Torch and Pitchfork Crowd

Most social networks have a few groups that have appointed themselves the network police. They ruthlessly seek out content that goes against their idea of what is good for the network and attack it. On Digg it's the Digg Mafia or Bury Brigade. Needless to say, there's nothing to be gained in getting involved with people like that. They aren't there for a mutual relationship, they're desparately trying to prop up their low self image.

You can spot these types of people from their comments. Try a site search in google for the name of the person and the word "spam." If they throw that term around a lot then they're probably a self appointed netcop and you'll want to avoid them.

Lively Small Groups

You can usually find a few small groups of people having lively discussions. They're active on the site, making lots of submissions and voting for each other's posts. They tend to have fairly large mutual friend counts. There's an implicit understanding that they'll vote for your submissions if you vote for theirs.

These can be great groups to find, but you have to be careful that you don't get dragged into a voting block. Social networks are on the lookout for this -- Digg discounts votes from people that vote as a block. So don't ever vote 100% for someone, and don't vote up questionable content. There's nothing easier for an admin to spot than a spam article with 20 votes. And when those same 20 people have all voted on several questionable submissions it's easy to mark them as a block.

OTOH, even a block can be useful. It's probably easier to get 500 votes from a voting block than 50 completely random votes. And the rumour is that Digg would count those the same. It's better if you don't get dragged into a block, but don't let it keep you up at night.

Secret Friends

These are groups of people that you can't spot other than to look at their voting behavior. They don't friend each other on the network, but they do communicate and vote each other's submissions up. It can be an innocuous as people that automatically vote for the posts of certain personalities on Sphinn, or as nefarious as someone with a huge rolodex of AIM addresses that works their list to drum up votes.

These can be great relationships to enter into, but it takes careful nurturing. You've become more than "network friends" -- you're becoming an actual friend.

Another way to approach these relationships is to tell a network friend "I'm going to drop you as a friend on the social network, but don't worry, I'll keep looking at your submissions while you're doing the same for me." My guess is that the social networks aren't really looking at the friend lists, but rather the voting blocks, so this approach can add a lot of paperwork without much benefit.

Robots

Yes Virginia, there are robots on social networks.

Here's hint for spotting robots: their profile picture is almost always an attractive young woman. Guess what? The actual number of "hot babes" cruising Digg pushing articles about video cards is pretty small.

You can also spot them through their voting patterns. Just find "people" that almost always vote for each others posts. The auto shoutback feature of the PMS Social Suite sort of works like that, except that you can include a lot of variables as to how you're going to operate and you can be picky about which shouts you'll listen to. But there are plenty of robots out there that you can establish a friendship with and reliably get your shouts Dugg if you use them correctly.

Tools for Figuring Out the Party

Spotting these groups at the party can be a pretty daunting task. You really don't have any choice other than to use an automated research tool such as the PMS Social Suite. Paging through the interface of a social network trying to spot these patterns is pretty hit an miss. If you're just a hobbyist, then you've got the time to burn. But if you're purporting to be a social network marketing professional, you need to use some real tools.