Are You Sabotaging Your Social Stories?
I’ve been a participant in the social media scene, both as a reader and content producer, for a quite a while now. I’ve had several stories I’ve written become popular and I’ve had even more submissions make it. But no matter how many stories I read or submissions I see, I can’t get over the fact that people make the same mistakes over and over again when it comes to their social media stories. They dream of the exposure social media can deliver, work hard at creating viral content, and then they make one of these critical mistakes that kills their story before it even had a chance. If you have hopes of social media success, avoid these all too common mistakes and actually give your story a chance for a change.
Feeding the Trolls
We’ve all heard about how harsh Digg users can be when it comes to submissions. Even stories that hit the front page get comments like “what a horrible story” or “I can’t believe this made it to the front page!” While other social media sites have a less prickly reputation, you’ll see this on just about any site you visit. With a crowd as diverse as social media users you’re not ever going to please everyone. If you jump into an argument guns blazing at the first hint of a negative comment, you’ll not only be in for a long day, but you’ll also probably be killing off your story’s chances as well.
Spelling Errors
Look, no one is ever going to spell everything correctly 100% of the time. However, take the extra minute to double check the spelling of the title and description that you’re submitting to the social media site. You’ll also want to check the title of the story on your page but the submission is especially important. I’ve seen several great stories go up in flames because all the voters focused on was the typo in the submission headline.
Fake Comments
It’s always nice to hear or read compliments but social media sites are not the place to go for help with your self esteem issues. Don’t have all your friends comment about what a great site you have, or how amazing your content is. If you’ve done a good job, there will be others to sing your praises. If not, no amount of fake comments is going to help. Users will see right through it and your story will suffer the consequences.
Misleading Title or Description
Just about every article you read about how to hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. focuses on having an appealing title. The fact is, that advice is 100% accurate, but there is a very fine line between writing a compelling title and description for your submission, and becoming too sensationalist or misleading readers. If your submission says you found a way to cure cancer, you’d better make damn well sure you’ve got the cure for cancer in that article. If you disappoint readers, not only will they not vote for your story, but they’ll probably vote it down and leave a comment warning other potential readers.
Ad Focused
This might sound a bit hypocritical coming from a blog that not only has ads on it but is all about making money. However, the fact is no matter how much work or planning you put into creating content that performs well socially, it won’t matter if visitors have to dig through 15 ad blocks to get to your content. Seriously, you could be the next Shakespeare and you’ll never stand a chance if your site has 3 Adsense units before you get to the content. Besides, you’re not going to make much off social media traffic anyway, the bulk of them have ad-blocking plugins and the rest are too savvy to click your ads.
There are definitely more mistakes that could go on this list but these are the ones I see most often. I’m also probably not the first to write these things but either people don’t listen or they don’t think these things apply to them because this still happens A LOT. I know you think you’re helping your story along but the truth is, you’re sabotaging your story, your site, and ultimately your own success.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for the tips! I’m pretty new to blogging, but what I can say is that I pride myself on creating good content first, and creating buzz second. If your content demonstrates confidence, people will gravitate toward it.
I would add to that “Don’t make your posts any longer than the attention span of the typical user in your target social media community”.
Yup, AdSense on top is an auto-bury (or SU thumb down) for me.
Great post Ben. Seems like I gotta work on my titles more, since they’re not attracting any DIGG users.
-Mike
Out of the above, the most common mistake I’ve seen people doing is not having the correct spelling. And it really kills your story as people deem it unprofessional before they even go to the site/blog. Having too many ads above the fold is also a story killer. For me 1 ad above the fold is enough…
Hi Ben,
EXCELLENT article. I featured it on my blog as one of the stories that are “must reads” for anyone getting into social media.
Thanks!
Not only do typos spoil an article, but so does poor grammar and excessive punctuation.
Very good article, I agree with most of what you say. I do think spelling is my number one turnoff when reading an article someone posts.
Pingback: The Best of the Blogosphere: November 23, 2007 | Super Blogging
Thanks for the tips. I always try to proofread my posts at least twice before they’re published. What turns me off more than anything are all kinds of spelling and capitalization mistakes.
most of these tips were pretty obvious.I dont think I have gained much from your post.
Anyways , well written!
Cmon, man. You can do better than this. You should have prefaced this “for extreme newbies who have absolutely no common sense and are disasters-waiting-to-happen.”
Ah, even as I type this I now see the previous comment saying the same thing. Don’t take it as negative criticism because this post will be floating out of current view soon enough but use it to give your experience on something that’s actually stung you hard.
Check out my 11/25 post for example…
Best regards,
Sam
Pingback: bloggingzoom.com
The problem with social media sites is that they can sometime attract a lot of trolls who get a kick out of leaving negative comments just for the fun of it.
I prefer for my blogs to grow organically.
Great article, if there is one thing I’d add it’s this:
only submit your best posts especially to digg and reddit, submitting a bunch of low ranking ones in a row with only sabotage your future post submissions.
Excellent way to explain in straight forward way what’s going wrong your way… Appreciate your efforts in helping other’s analysing what they put up
Regards
Nice reminder for those of us who spend a lot of time on those social sites.
Nice post. Thanks for information about social media.
Very interesting website, but you must improve your template graphics.