Comments on: How to boost your blogs social voting usability in a few easy steps and be a star on the home page

By: Online Casino Blog

Online Casino Blog — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:34:36 +0000

I don’t see any problem with self-promotion at all. In fact, it’s something to be applauded. Submit yourself to any sites as long as it’s ok in the TOS. If it is, then submit away.

If you aren’t comfortable with self-promotion then it’s very likely you won’t get anywhere in business. Period.

By: Mark Laymon

Mark Laymon — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:32:01 +0000

@ Andy,
I am still very interested on what the cut off is. It would only take a few times on the home page to increase your friends list by several hundred.

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:15:04 +0000

Just to follow up, I can now use shout… so they must have fixed the limits.

For some reason it only went to 100 people on my one use so far, but I received loads of messages from people thanking me for the submission that they enjoyed

With almost 4500 Diggs now it has gained me 50 new fans in the last 2 days.

By: Mark Laymon

Mark Laymon — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 05:04:10 +0000

@ Caroline

Since I am very active on StumbleUpon I do not believe that I am pushing it if I add a link or two. But if you are new and do not have a very large Stumble track record, I am sure some will complain. The reason I like to Stumble my own post is to present the most productive description and keywords for my tags. This could be remedied by asking someone or even placing a small box at the bottom of your page with specific directions on what you would like submitted.

My opinion is that a requested review is better than no review at all.

@ Megan

Thank you for the kind words and thank you for the link to cre8asiteforums.com, now I have even more reading to do this weekend...

By: BizDevMarketing

BizDevMarketing — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 04:09:49 +0000

I just read a great post on this topic at the cre8asite forums called Eliciting Blog Comments I think the usage of CTA's on blogs is a tad underrated. A pretty image link in the side bar that links to the comments form, with the right CTA could do wonders. Adding your picture writing in a personable tone, posing a lot of questions, and blatantly asking for participation are things that seem to work really well. Talk to your readers! Thats what we'resposed to be doing, right? I love the idea of asking for a Digg. I love the idea of using a chat widget that invites your readers to IM you... All great stuff. (And great post!)

By: Caroline Middlebrook

Caroline Middlebrook — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:50:39 +0000

I started out by submitting my own posts to StumbleUpon but after a few submissions I started to encounter problems. The Thumbs up button would appear green but when I clicked the button to check the reviews, SU would report that the url was not in it’s database. It’s as though my own submissions were being deleted.

Now I’m fairly lucky that most of my posts get submitted by somebody else so I dont bother with the self submission there. I do submit my own stuff to Sphinn though – but the rules state that you can so that’s not so bad.

By: Mark Laymon

Mark Laymon — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 03:26:43 +0000

What is really interesting to me is that with this post, more than half are participating one way or another. Even the private email comments are more than some past posts on this site.

This proves that if you do not ask for it how will others know what they can give.

Marcos wrote the post "Becoming A Social Media War Strategist - Manage Your Troops Intelligently" a few days ago. It is on target that you need focus what you want out of a post when you write it.

By: GiorgosK

GiorgosK — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:58:35 +0000

A little self promotion is not going too far … everyone is doing it anyway … and if you ask me, if you don’t promote yourself noone will (even in real life) so do the promotion and if others like what you have to offer they will spread the word …

By: Michael Dorausch

Michael Dorausch — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:54:48 +0000

“This post had several hundred people read it over several days, but only a few participated.”

That’s probably the case with most posts in general. I’m noticing there is a culture of ‘participators’, those that understand the value of community, support, promotion, etc.

It’s impressive to me when I see sites that naturally pull such activity regularly.

By: Mark Laymon

Mark Laymon — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:57:56 +0000

I do need to make a very important point!

DO NOT DIGG YOUR OWN POSTS!

I only submitted this one to prove a point that with out a submission it will never make it on Digg. If you have a friend that likes your writing ask them to submit it for you. Better yet, just leave a message at the bottom of your post asking the first person to please submit it to Digg.