Friends are the key to Social Media Promotion
I’ve been trying to be more active on Digg and StumbleUpon in the last few days. There are a number of factors which determine which articles get the most votes yet it’s clear that those with a lot of social friends easily get votes to their submissions.
Take Digg for example. A few people voted for one of my posts last week so I added them as friends. A few accepted and in the last day or so I’ve had a few shouts (quick messages) from them to vote for their posts (which I did). At the moment I have 7 friends but I’m going to get more as more friends means more voting power. This is why regulars with hundreds of friends can get diggs so easily.
Imagine you had 1000 ‘friends’ on Digg and you shouted for a digg. Even if only 100 or so friends gave your post a digg you would still get a huge traffic boost. Not to mention the extra diggs you would get from normal digg users who just liked your post. It’s clear that one of the biggest factors in social promotion is to make lots of friends and to actively digg their posts.
Digg, StumbleUpon and other social sites have been cracking down on those who exchange votes but I think they turn a blind eye to a lot of it i.e. they know they would lose a lot of members if they really cracked down on it.
Until they do crack down it heavily I’m going to be Mr Friendly on Digg! 
How to Blog | November 12th, 2008 at 4:50 pm #
Good point, they can only crack down on it so much, because then they’ll start having to ban anybody who adds over 10 people a day, or something ridiculous like that. Your strategy should really work, I’ve done that alot for stumble, but not so much for digg, I guess I should get on with that.