More than a month ago, we featured a post about the paradox of self-promotion. This paradox describes, that although social media frowns on self-submission…
[...] the sheer numbers of new videos, posts, sites, pictures, and stories appearing each and every day, [means] self-promotion is a necessity for anyone starting out and hoping to gain any sort of foothold.
Debates occasionally emerge, discussing the narcissistic and moral aspects of self-submission. While several social networks do not officially accept self-submitted content, it has been argued that self-submission is not wrong and in fact necessary. I’m not interested here in these aspects of self-submission.
Instead I want to concentrate on the logical reasons to refrain from submitting your own content.
These of course depend on the social network you are participating and submitting content. But if we take StumbleUpon as example, we will see that letting others submit your content is a much better way of promotion.
The Algorithm
First of all, let’s take a look at the algorithm of StumbleUpon. Although this is not verified information, it has been noticed that when the same user repeatedly submits articles from the same blog, the posts will not get promoted. So if you practice self-submission regularly, after a while you will notice that your traffic will not show any pretty peaks. Tim Nash writes:
[...] the number of times the domain is stumbled by a user is a factor therefore the initial stumblers audience score is affected by the number of times they have previously stumbled the domain. If this is done for both the initial stumbler and all stumblers thumbing the page up or down it would explain why mailing lists and friends stumbling the same domain has less and less effect.
Clustering
One of the basic rules of social networks – in fact, of networks in general – is clustering. In simple terms the rule says that most people’s friends are also to some extent friends of each other.
Every time you stumble something, the people that mostly see your stumble are your fans and mutual friends. In most cases, these are the ones who will continue promoting the submission. If you often promote your own work, the articles will be recycled among you and your friends – your strong ties; your content will never go beyond your network, due to the principle of clustering.
On the other hand if you leave your post to take its own course – to be discovered by someone else – it will appear in different circles. Never disregard the strength of weak ties (see Mark Granovetter’s research on weak ties for more information. It’s a *.pdf file).
Being Social
As mentioned by Matt, social networks are about being social.
You never know, next month you might have twice as many subscribers and realize that TheNanny612, Zaibatsu, and DoshDosh all think your stuff is great. You wont know if you don’t stop for a second and take a look.
If you don’t let other people submit your work, you are just giving a monologue. Let social networks become a part of the dialogue and learn from it. If you are interested in improving your site and promoting your content more successfully, stop submitting your stuff and start observing its development:
- See who submits your content. They might be loyal readers, that you didn’t know. Check out their work, make a contact with them. You will notice, that they will return to your blog with a stumble.
- Study which articles are being stumbled. Not every post is appropriate for every social network. Observe which posts get stumbled and which ones get popular. If you have a sharp eye, you will manage to direct the attention of stumblers to every post you write.
Conclusion
I don’t think there is any moral obstacle in self-submissions. If you don’t overdo it and choose wisely which post to submit where, it is a practice necessary to make yourself heard. But it is also a very easy and certain practice; you have daily 200+ pageviews and you call it a day.
You will notice much more satisfactory results when you think beyond this strategy. Refraining from self-submissions is a learning process. You learn more about your readers, about the content they like, and how to draw their attention. You are also facing a challenge, which alone motivates you for further improvement.
Of course, that’s my humble opinion. Do you let your community do the submitting? Are you analyzing the submissions and submitters to improve your work and your network?
This makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for writing!
Hmm..
Interesting.
I hadn’t known that they’d penalize stumbling the same domain repeatedly. It makes sense however.
I’ll attempt to keep this in mind in the future. I did notice somewhat that over time my stumbling was getting me less hits.
At first I was netting thousands of his, then it dropped to hundreds. This explains that cutoff.
Oh how true this is. Trouble is, whereby some social networks clearly state their policies on self submission up front (Sphinn for example), many stumblers are blissfully unaware of this factor in the algorithm until it’s too late. I recently saw my stumble traffic plummet and my submissions from my own domain no longer get accepted. SU didn’t even respond to my enquiries as to why this would be. It wasn’t until days of research had gone by that I discovered a buried little paragraph deep down on one of the SU pages that mentioned the ratio of one domain to other stumbles being a factor and that if this ratio is tipped, SU prevents you from submitting any more from that domain and affects your entire traffic. No warning and no possible way of readjusting the ratio to repair the damage. I’ve come across a few bloggers who have fallen foul of this when they are in the launch phase of their blog and trying to get some traction (me included). My blog has now built up lots of great stuff but I can no longer get traffic. Even when someone else stumbles me, I’m not getting anywhere near the same figures. Shame. Clearer information up front would have avoided many bloggers making this crucial and damaging mistake.
Self submission is indeed a predicament for new bloggers. I noticed the diminishing returns for self submission early on and stopped at that point for fear of some sort of penalty. I also maintained a very healthy Stumble rate of external blogs (probably 50 thumbs up to 1 of my own) to avoid any perception of selfish Stumbling practices.
Luckily, my content is relevant to Sphinn, which is a community that accepts self submission. So I was able to continue to promote my work there, which led to Stumbles from active social media users. However, I am now finding that Stumbles from my regular readers are now producing similar diminishing effects.
The key is to constantly find new Stumblers to support your work. Easier said than done…
Wow, what a great article! I didn’t know this. In fact, I’ve bought eBooks and seen products by ‘gurus’ who say you should be Stumbling every page on your blog as you build it.
Special thanks to Kimota and James for your valuable comments. I’ve signed up for Sphinn, but haven’t had time to really use it. It’s good to know they accept self promotion and it’s a good way to get your site in front of other stumblers.
I totally agree with James. Constantly find new stumblers to support your work. Simple as that…
I think Kimota’s Example is particularly relevant here. There does seem to be a “point of no return” within the stumble algorithm. Here at PandemicBlog, we have absolutely noticed it. We stumbled our own posts quite a bit in the beginning because we felt we had to. Now, with this post as an example, we have been thumbed-up by 25 people and have 6 reviews, but we have only seen about 100 visits from Stumble. This is sooooo much lower than what we are used to. I want to write an article comparing that to traffic in the past. You will all be able to see it shortly.
Well written. I think the value in this article is the last sentence:
Are you analyzing the submissions and submitters to improve your work and your network?
Great job.
Wait, so what’s the difference in submitting your own content compared to repeatedly submitting someone elses content everyday?
Jay
DatMoney.com
I don’t think there is a difference Jay. But I also don’t find a reason to constantly submit someone else’s content…
It’s all very complicated. Talent and content and exposure usually does the trick..
@Jay – I regularly Stumble the content of a number of blogs that I read daily and derive great value from. And while not certain, I suspect the same process of dimishing returns applies. The more you Stumble a site, the less effect it has over time. I believe this applies whether it’s your own site, or someone else’s.
Hum… Masturbation is not a Crime!?
Serious tho, I think it would be better for everyone if website authors could just act honestly and submit their own stories.
Unfortunately, this also happens when someone else submits your content regularly. A big fan of your site, for instance. Even though I still get a lot of votes, StumbleUpon completely stopped promoting my site, since the last 7 or 8 posts were all submitted by the same person – someone who is not affiliated to me. That means I have to ask a big fan to please stop liking me, which is kind of weird. It also means that if you want to sabotage a website (because it is a competitor for instance) all you have to do is submit every post it publishes.
The key here is to continuously expand your network. When someone thumbs up one of my posts, I send them a frined request along with a personal message thanking them for their good graces. This adds a fresh user to my network and he sees my future posts, and their frinds see them…
The key as you say, is to be social. I have found that since I began this practice, my traffic has spiked tremendously despite my continued self-submissions
~Man Overboard