Like I said previously, social media is not all about friends and mutual help. It might also trigger unreasoned hatred, misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Well, fellow Mozzers might have noticed my highly negative attitude towards SEOMoz thumb down system; so recent discussions over there inspired me to post my opinion on general negative voting across the social media. It’s not that I am against disapproval or criticism in general – no, I am not going to put the necessity of negative voting under question – my main point is that negative voting should make sense.

What does a thumb down mean?

Different social networks treat thumbs down differently. In general, the role of voting down in social media site algorithm can be divided into three major groups (depending on the direct impact on an individual submission): active role, passive role and… well… something in-between.

Active role: a thumb down contributes to ‘burying‘ the submission (= no one will see it; an active role of general community news sorting)
Example: Digg

Passive role: a thumb down only shows a member’s attitude (no automatic impact on the post; though this might be added to a submitter’s record)
Example: SEOMoz

Intermediate role: a thumb down tells the system that the submission (and the like) is not relevant to you personally (and to like-minded people) (= don’t show things like this to me and my friends; but this is not necessarily a generally bad post)
Example: StumbleUpon

*Note: StumbleUpon algorithm has been up for debate recently; I have no official evidence to support this (like they say “The thumb down will also lessen the likelihood of your friends stumbling this content“), my assumptions are based on my personal experience and investigation.

What is the process of thumbing down?

Now what is the process of negative voting?

1/ Anonymous thumbs down (it can be either commented, or just left as it is) = the community doesn’t know who thumbed down the post (e.g. SEOMoz)

Advantages: people are free to show their negative attitude;

Drawbacks: beside being rather pointless (most often it does not mean/show/tell anything to a member), this kind of negative voting seems potentially dangerous to the overall community atmosphere and behavior: (1) it encourages ‘biased promotion/discrimination’ based solely on personal attitude (= I don’t like this person, so I will thumb him down no matter what he/she says); (2) it can limit members in their freedom of expressing their own independent opinion (e.g. members feel uneasy to voice their (opposite to the community’s) opinion at the fear to be thumbed down ‘scot-free‘); (3) it may be unfair (as often it is ruled by emotion, that’s only a one-click action!).

2/ Non anonymous (with no compulsory comment/explanation) – example: Mixx

Advantages: unlike the previous one it seems to be more thoughtful as a (cough) “thumber” knows that people will see who has voted them down;

Drawbacks: people may be afraid of showing their honest negative attitude to the submission as this is a good way to make enemies with the submitter (who most often watches his post progress).

3/ Non anonymous (with a comment required)

Advantages: an approach requiring much thought and effort; so negative votes are most often well reasoned;

Drawbacks: people do expose themselves to potential revenge (like above) plus in this case negative voting seems to take too much effort (anyway, why should a negate vote be so much harder to cast than a positive one?)

The solution?

The above analysis got me to thinking about a perfect system (ok, nothing is perfect under the sun – at least the best possible combination of the negative voting role and process). So what might that be?

1/ Anonymous (with no need to comment) but also invisible to anyone except a thumber himself = StumbleUpon. Really this model seems one of the best existing – it provides both freedom of the members and healthy sleep of the submission owner. Besides, non-active role of the negative voting allows for this invisibility. After all, thumbs down don’t mean “Your post is bad” – it just means “This article is not too interesting to me but I have nothing against you personally and I do assume that you are a talented blogger“. Besides, in cases of utmost disagreement, you can always show it by commenting your thumb down.

2/ Anonymous (with the required anonymous comment). I don’t know if that model exists, but it seems quite reasonable. It requires some effort and thought (removes “emotional” factor) and at the same time gives some freedom (you are no more afraid of massive revenge).

Any thoughts?

And what are your thoughts and experiences with negative voting across social media you participate?

Post images: under the same sun, dripping cloud, UAE

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Time to move from theory to practice now. StumbleUpon reviewed throughout this post was taken as an example. The approaches listed below can be applied to any similar social network, I believe.

Facts we all know about StumbleUpon:

- It can send an impressive number of visitors to your page;
- People coming from refer.php page are as a rule just random surfers (they won’t stay for a long time or ever come back unless you do not offer digg-front-page content type).

Benefits you can still gain using StumbleUpon:

- build relationships within your niche;
- develop your brand;
- get targeted visitors.

After some time of playing around and trying different methods, I compiled the list of approaches which worked great for me:

1) Get-noticed approach = grab attention of at least one niche power stumbler and others will come. StumbleUpon [as well as many other social media sites' out there] strong point is that each niche influencer has many “fans” (i.e. “followers”) who also have fans of their own; so if you appeal to one, you will soon [if you do your homework well] connect to others at an exponential rate.

How do I do that?

>>> Be an early bird: be the first to stumble interesting posts by your favorite bloggers. They will appreciate your efforts;
>>> Add bloggers you daily read to your friends and follow them. By reviewing their stumbles you will get their attention.

2) Brand-your-image approach. The power of imaginary should not be neglected. Photos catch an eye and stick in the memory. Having seen your image several times on the web, people will start recognizing you.

>>> Make sure to add one and the same photo to your StumbleUpon profile, to your blog home page and everywhere else where you actively participate.

3) Brand-your-name approach = if your name pops up here and there regularly, it will soon be recognized.

>>> “Interweave” networks you actively participate in. For example, stumble an article where you posted a comment. Thus a person will first see your comment and then see your StumbleUpon review = that’s it, he knows you already. This is the secret of “being everywhere” illusion.

4) Build-a-fan-club approach. Bear in mind that each time you stumble an article, your fans may read it – don’t waste your friends’ time.

>>> Stumble only truly valuable posts. This will encourage people to follow your stumbles and add you to friends.

5) Build-social-friendship approach. Treat your fans with attention; don’t focus solely on niche influencers – every contact is precious.

>>> Thank your stumblers (those who stumbled or reviewed your post) – drop them a message, stumble their articles (if they are worth it), review their profiles, comment on their blogs, etc

6) Friends-to-partners approach [using a new SEO 2.0 jargon]: if you managed to grab a niche mentor’s attention, don’t stop at this point – move forward.

>>> Subscribe to his blog and post comments regularly, do a research and find if you participate in more common social networks and add him/her to friends.

7) Do-your-homework approach. Note that there is a person behind a stumbler. And your task is to get to know this person: his website(s), his interests, social networks he participates, etc.

>>> When you already feel at home in the community and have many devoted friends, connect to them closer: reply to each message and comment thoughtfully, mention their posts or personal details they made public earlier (e.g. comment on their photos you saw on Flickr or Facebook).

Do-not-get-obsessed approach. Each approach listed above should not be overused.

>>> Don’t send messages to your friends daily saying how great their stumbles are or how interesting their new post is. Move forward moderately. The best thing is to be sincere. If you really liked the post – say it. Don’t try to be “excessively good” to everyone – this can be irritating. Stick to your own opinion. This is the art of being polite but still independent.

9) Tweak-your-own-system approach. What I have understood from my own experience – no method is perfect for everyone.

>>> You should always track your own progress and edit your initial plan. Put a tick each time when you see some result from your social media promotion; note that the fact that you discovered your individual approach is a great result in itself which is worth time and effort.

Can you share your individual approach to StumbleUpon niche marketing right now?

[time for self promotion: you are welcome to add me to friends if you are using StumbleUpon ]

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Web marketers who view social media as a promotional tool can be roughly divided into three categories:

1) Those who blatantly spam (in a hope to get quick traffic). They usually have no valuable content to offer the community and their main goal is to get people click on an ad.
2) Those who link bait (hoping that their article will generate some links from other bloggers). These webmasters usually focus on a catchy scandalous headlines with no truly valuable post following it;
3) Those who strive to become a part of the community and establish business or friendly connections with niche webmasters.

The third approach takes much time and effort and therefore people tend to choose either of the first two. However what seems to be easier has little [or no] effect.

By doing social bookmarking for traffic or spamming friends with “visit-my-site” private messages webmasters usually see low conversions as people participating in social media are “experienced surfers” – they don’t click on ads. So in this perspective, this traffic is worthless (sorry, Tad) these are only “casual visitors”. What is more, this method can hurt a brand, if a well known expert resorts to spamming.

Edgy headlines with no worth-to-pay-attention-to post below will generate minor or no inlinks as webmasters link to quality and useful resources. Besides even if your article is a state of art it is most likely to be buried without niche experts’ support.

This brings us to the third category of “socializers” who prove to be most successful in achieving all the above aims plus in building reputation, trust and brand awareness. The main rule here is when you start your social media campaign (I mean both social bookmarking and social networks, and even blog commenting), don’t expect fast results. Don’t measure the success of your social activity by mere numbers (traffic, feed subscribers or inbound links). Try to think in a different way. Each time when you want to measure your success, ask yourself the following questions:

- Which new marketing strategies did I learn from my social media activity?
- How do my social media friends evaluate my blogging activity?
- Did I manage to get noticed by a niche influencer(s)?

If you remain active and persistent, you will soon have more questions to answer and more pleasant for an eye statistics to look into. Being backed by niche experts and friends is the huge treasure which will help you throughout the time. Thanks to them you will soon see:

- People searching Google for your name;
- Your brand name being recognized;
- Niche influencers linking to your website and citing your posts;
- Friends asking you for a favor and helping you in return;
- Active social media participants helping you to promote your articles;
- Plenty of other direct and indirect benefits of your social media activity.

Update: please sphinn the post (kindly submitted by Tad)

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To Sphinn or not to sphinn… That is the question. Bookmarking one’s own articles can be frowned upon being compared with mere spamming. And here is my sincere confession: I DO bookmark posts authored by me as social bookmarking is the best way to get to know your audience, to evaluate your own content and to experiment.

Evaluation method	Result	What does it mean?
Compare traffic and feed subscriptions (e.g. Google analytics and Feedburner stats).	Your website experienced the huge traffic boost but there were no feed subscriptions.	1. The traffic was untargeted (refer to the bounce rate and page views stats of the analytics);2. Your content does not provide any new/ exciting/ useful information. 3. You do not provide any clear way to subscribe to your feed.
Compare the actual SB traffic and response rate.	You expected your post to generate a much better response (e.g. in the form of comments).	1. The visitors from SB are not interested in your niche (Google analytics will help to identify this);2. Your website is not optimized for that (it requires registration, asks for additional details, etc); 3. Your post content is not optimized to generate comments (e.g. you do not encourage people to comment)
Evaluate the social response.	Your post was not bookmarked in any other social bookmarking network.	Your post headline is not optimized for SB.
Compare the response from a general social bookmarking community and from a niche one.	Your post is much better responded in a general/ niche directory.	Your writing (style) is universal / very niche specific (nothing bad in either of these, unless your aims are inverse).
Compare the expected reaction and the actual readers’ reaction.	You expected your post to do much better in SB.	Well, that’s a great opportunity to assess your own content and writing skills.

So the most essential stats to look into are:

1. Traffic numbers (Google analytics):

2. Bounce rate (Google analytics);
3. Page views per source (Google analytics);
4. Feed subscription stats (Feedburner.com):

5. Commenting rate;
6. Blog and social bookmarking response rate (Technorati reactions).

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