DON’T Use Social Media as a Tool to Promote Your Blog!

Jan 28, 2008
14 Comments

Watch on YouTube.

I believe that if you’re going to participate in social networks, you have to truly join in and be a part of them or you will not get much benefit for your blog at all.

Major points:

  • People don’t care about your blog.
  • But… given half a chance, they might care about YOU.
  • So I don’t use social networks to promote my blog. I use them to promote myself.
  • When you treat people like human beings, there’s some good karma from that. If you treat other people like they’re nothing more than opportunities for you to market a website, well, there’s karma from that, too, but that karma ain’t so good.
  • Create a social media strategy for what you’re really, truly trying to accomplish over the long term.
  • love the blog, if you need any seo or drtv marketing or advertising advice call us in the Uk
  • You are making a good point there.
  • Michael Martine
    @Jana - yeah, that is funny! But I am also an active Stumbler... it's just that StumbleUpon is not like Facebook or LinkedIn, which are a little more similar to each other.
  • Funny I actually found this blog through SU on you guessed it, Facebook....
  • Michael Martine
    Great thoughts and ideas, everyone. My personal experience has led me to prefer LinkedIn over Facebook, but plenty of people on Facebook really do engage each other for something more than just a big super poke, like for Shipwreck above in comment #6.

    As Walt says in comment #5, you've got to spend your time in the right place--right for you and for your audience.

    So, what about automating part of this, as linkerjpatrick mentions in comment #1? That's a tougher one to nail down, but you know, really, all this is about is the old "golden rule": do for others as you would have done to you. While you might be tempted to see something as a "promotion", others might just see it as spammy.

    Jason Calacanis is one of my friends on several social networks, but on Pownce, it seemed all he could do turn it into a mouthpiece about Mahalo. I'm sure there's hardly anything else on Jason's mind, but that's not much of a valuable contribution to any idea of a community. In fact, Pownce almost got a mention in the video for being so spammy, but I wanted to keep it short.

    Only you can answer for yourself if you're truly contributing to make the social network a better place for everyone or if you're using it as a tool. The specifics or methods are irrelevant.

    What Bill's talking about in comment #2 is what happens when there is abuse. I saw those videos, Bill, from StomperNet, too, and I followed their advice with some good success. They specifically said the same things that I'm saying now. Be a real participant. Contribute value. Don't spam or abuse it. But people didn't listen, and look what happened. Scribd shut that bullshit down in a flash, as they should have.

    Stephanie and Raza's points also echo this idea: share stuff that others would find valuable. Be real. If you were on the receiving end of the tweet, post, pownce, etc., what would your reaction be? Remember the golden rule. Social media rewards people who understand that.
  • I disagree...I promote my blog very well using Facebook. I've created a group there and I use this to message all the group members each time I put up a new post - it gives me access to those hat don't want to subscribe to my feed or email. I think it varies depending on what your blog topic is and whether it appeals to the social networking audience.
  • Michael,

    You're right on the money.

    It's two parts:

    1. Spend your time at the right place. Like the real world, you probably wouldn't roll into a biker bar expecting to find a nice girl to take home for Mom's ok.

    2. Join in the conversation... and have a freaken' point. Back at the biker bar, you better talk "Harly", or shut up and drink your beer.
  • Yeah, my blog is an extension of my personality. I try to PARTICIPATE and SHARE stories, mistakes, experiences, etc. in a friendly, witty, and hopefully relevant way. Once people like my thinking, it's only natural that they'll check out my blog. You have to give people a reason to visit your blog... other than just saying "visit my blog"

    Raza Imam
    http://BoycottSoftwareSweatshops.com
  • Great points. I enjoy using StumbleUpon, but it's not about just promoting my stuff. I like sharing articles I find interesting.

    It really amazes me the junk some people try to share in social media. You aren't making yourself or your site look good. Social media should be about sharing things that are really interesting to others. Build a solid reputation as an interesting person and then see how much they care about what you write other times.
  • Nice post. I feel pretty much the same way at the moment. I'm just watching a lot of what's going on with social media and getting those internet marketing emails on using social media.

    You might already know this but one of the latest promotions by an internet marketer on how to use Scribd resulted in this response from Scribd - http://blog.scribd.com/2008/01/support-for-html-uploads-discontinued.html

    For me, there's something to be said about FaceBook being for college kids because of its history and LinkedIn as being a more professional community.

    Certainly if you hang out on FB enough you feel that college feeling even though there might be some businesses on there.

    LinkedIn does not feel that way to me.

    I think that college aura of FB might be around for a while. But ya' never know.
  • I admit I have been using Twitterfeed to broadcast updates on my blog to my Twitter account and from their I have "piped" my twitter updates to Facebook. Is this the sort of thing you are talking about? It not something I heavily push but after I time of experminatation with the technology and have been heavily considering turning of my blog feed updates to Twitter. With that being said I try to make at least 80% of my twitter posts pure conversation or as I like to call them, "personal press releases." I know some people would have never come to my blog and left a comment if that had not received notification of the updates via other channels and I also subscribe to other people on Facebook and Twitter who use the same tools to send notification about blog updates.

    Facebook seems to totally different and people focused. It seems to be more accepted and used on Twitter as just another part of someone's life. However I do get very annoyed when all someone does is use Twitter to send blog updates.

    Guy Kawasaki has received a lot of criticisms for doing this with his Trumors site. Merlin Mann however seems to view Twitter as almost a poetic art form an only occasionally sends updates from one of his web sites.

    I personally don't feel used if someone is actually engaging in conversation most of the time. I don't mind the occasional, "this is what I just posted on my blog" updates.

    Are you saying people should go "cold turkey" from using things like Twitterfeed, blog widget applications on Facebook, linkedin, etc?

    I definitely think a site like Trumors with it's constant influx of updates can abuse the system. That's what RSS is for.

    I personally like it if some is getting ready to host a live show to be recorded as podcasts uses Twitter and other social networking tools to inform their community they have a chance to participate.

    Can we not use these channel smartly? I'm definitely going to subscribe to the comments here because I want to do the right thing in this arena. I definitely see you point and would rather err in that direction but I'm curious if their is not room for a little leeway.
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