I’m normally a fan of Elinor Mills stuff on CNET, but her story about the manipulation of Digg is just wrong, wrong and wrong.
The article basically discusses how marketers are using Digg to promote their company. This social media marketing is no different to search engine marketing, and those that try to get stories on the front page of Digg still need to provide quality content, or the community will bury it.
It’s not a scam or spam, yet Elinor refers to the practice in the same way SEO used to be discussed, a few years back. She refers to the “scammers” and “spammers” who are out to game Digg.
And how would you define a “splog”. I certainly wouldn’t use this description…
Some marketers offer “content generation services,” where they sell stories to Web sites for the sole purpose of getting them submitted to Digg and other sites. This combination of spam and blogs is called “splogs.” The stories often feature topics and keywords in headlines that are likely to appeal to the Digg crowd, such as “geeks” and “Apple.”
That’s not a splog, that’s creating valuable content that others will bookmark, or Digg. It may be “linkbaiting”, but to suggest they are splogs is wrong.
And right after Neil Patel explains the legitimacy of the practice, Elinor adds…
Another way to get Web links to a suspicious site is to get inside help from users at a social media site. For instance, spammers have tried to infiltrate Digg to build up reputations and promote stories for marketers, experts say.
There are always a few rotten eggs in every industry, but let’s not make the same mistake that was made about SEO, and start labeling everyone as a spammer.
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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.
You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.
