I Sphinn all day long in between running a busy SEM shop, blogging conferences, studying and living life (sort of). There have been a couple of articles decrying the supposedly black practice of Sphinn story promotion recently and I’ve quietly bit my tongue because the hue and cry has been way over-simplistic and alarmingly utopian. Not today…
The bloggers I respect most are BUSY. Some of them won’t find submissions unless they are pitched. I’m BUSY. Often really cool stuff would slip by unnoticed if a friend did not alert me to it. The propriety of promoting Sphinn submissions among friends is NOT a black and white matter.
There is room for healthy promotional activity in the “wisdom of the mob mentality.” This is especially true since Sphinn is not very deep at providing RSS subscriptions to micro-streams from particular users’ behavior on the site which would eliminate the need for me to hear from my friends to stay abreast.
Get Over It!
GRATITUDE and humility are the emotions felt when folks, familiar and unknown alike, ask me to consider their content. I’m not a rock star and don’t have throngs of adoring SMM groupies to the point where I’m pissed off or offended. In my last life as a musician I was fortunate enough to sell a LOT of CDs blending dolphin song and music and they were very popular for a while.
Traveling all over the world promoting music was very heady stuff but we were never too busy to sign autographs or talk to a dorky young musician who might not have been mature enough yet to know the correct protocol by which to approach us. Lest not each of us forget our humble roots. (Yeah like top diggers don’t EVER ask for diggs…LOL)
Where Would We Be Without Sales?
Business is about selling. I’ve made amazing new friends by receiving pitches and pitching, gained respect for those I’ve never heard of, discovered industry masters, and (ironically) have become even more engaged in Sphinn as a result of the in-and-outflow. That’s how social media is actually supposed to work. At least 60 bloggers have sent at least one message requesting notification when I social-bookmark content on Sphinn.
It was easy to gain total respect for one friend who told me that a particular piece of content I pitched was weak, did not turn his crank and that he wouldn’t Sphinn it (Sebastian) and MU asked that I not use SU for stumbling Sphinns. I’ve asked bloggers myself to quit asking me for Sphinns cause’ they were bugging the crap out of me. I learned how to respect guys like Lee, Barry, and Rand in the process. We all make mistakes and figure life out…It’s all good.
Even G_d Asked for Help Spreading the Word
A very well know SEM writer, who never asks for votes, once asked for support for content he knew I would love…which was correct…and I did help by asking a few other pals to consider the content that night. It went hot 26 minutes later, having gotten the extra 5 votes needed. It was a pleasure to be asked and was proud to share his writings with my friends. The content kicked-ass and sparked a serious dialog.
Sometimes there’s a topic out there in blog land that I KNOW everyone will miss unless I aska few people to Sphinn it. It’s funny…usually after asking a few friends to consider a Sphinn story the post ends up getting 45-50 votes. In several cases the post would have been dead in the water without a little work on behalf of the content…which is the INTENT of the promotion. Who cares about utopian socialistic mob concepts if everyone is dead and nobody has any fun or interacts. It is the CONTENT excellent Sphinners promote-not themselves.
Socialism Kinda’ Doesn’t Always Work
It’s all utopian and stuff to dream of living in a world totally absent of self-promotion but SORRY, that’s not how it works. I’d also like everyone to have free health insurance, love all equally, and never sin. For God sakes we’re MARKETERS in a SOCIAL community. BUZZER!! The actual IDEA is to leverage relationships for the greater good of the collective with respect, insight and by bringing value. Social media is the new PR, but is there no PR allowed in social media? 🙂
Give Me Better Toolz Then
DING DONG: Since there is no RSS feed on Sphinn for me to subscribe to submissions from just a specific user by “Sphinn-stream” I am reliant on filtering out friends’ submissions without hearing from Pligg. To clarify, I DO use the “What’s New” feature (bookmarked and accessed incessantly on my phone in fact) and subscribe to available feeds.
However there are no feeds which filter content sufficiently so as to eliminate the need for finding out that a good friend or up-and-comer has posted something new. I am not a moderator, don’t make money from advertising on Sphinn, and don’t have time to scour pages and pages of quickly moving new stuff AFTER the other 2 hours a day I already spend voting, commenting, and submitting.
How ELSE are We Supposed to Find Out?
There is no email alert system for me to subscribe to Tamar’s Sphinns so, unless I feel like picking through 100 posts, I miss some. Tamar, I would actually be grateful if you would drop me a note via FB or SU and let me know when you Sphinn something that really matters to you so I don’t miss it. I love your work and am excited about getting to know you. You’re thing is very special to but I’m not always willing to wade through piles of crap to find it. I’d rather skip Sphinn and go back to reading 85 blogs every day.
Too Much Noise to Be a Flippn’ Philanthropist
Like everywhere on the Internet there is a growing crap-pile of NOISE on Sphinn. 100 posts a day to wade through and give “give a chance” to new writers is a tall order some days when we actually have to service our clients who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on media buys, have serious social media plays underway, and are not impressed with Sphinn like we are. Honestly without following what my friends do and interacting with them as part of the submission process I would not care about bringing content to the group.
Maybe we should just read everybody’s stuff in blogs and not submit…accept then there would be no site. I find it ironic that micro-communities are basically big human-mixers but there are all these rules about not contacting your friends when you bookmark something. Maybe we could have secret handshakes or text each other ciphers.
This is all about connecting people. The LAST thing I’m going to do is stop connecting people. At SMX Social 5 of the top 20 Sphinners passed each other’s notebooks around, each voting for their own stuff on each others’ notebooks. Yeah it was wrong by rock star rulez, but I made between 1-3 lifelong professional associations in that session-all for playfully bookmarking posts that would have gone hot anyway…it’s sacrilege I tell you!
Just Make Sure the Content You Bring is Awesome.
Usually when friends show up to promote their content and ask for Sphinns, Stumbles, and Diggs, it’s because they know what I’m interested in and I’m grateful. It’s also rare that someone is overly aggressive when first contacting me. If they are rude I “correct” them.
When a story rolls in that is wonderful (and yes I peruse every one of them) I actually LOOK for that writer in the future by avatar. More than half the time when I GET asked for a Sphinn, I’ve already Sphunn it. 80% of the time when I ASK a
friend to “consider content for Sphinning” THEY have already Sphunn it. I contact them anyway because I know who likes what and I subscribe to the basic premise of Sphinn and every social site in the world: We bring value to the group. We make phriends.
It’s rare that I do not contact someone when bookmarking on Sphinn. That’s part of the joy for me. I love the network and connections. That said ask not what your community can do for you. Ask what you can do for your community. All of us ignore idiotic pitches but let’s not lock everybody out. Spam sucks but spam filters can wreck real stuff. Let’s not get so high and mighty that the rules for Sphinn are like some pagan ban on the pleasures of promotional interaction. It was never taboo to email someone and respectfully ask that they consider content in the past on behalf of yourself or friends. Respectfully, does the sunrise of socially moderated search mean that some direct human connections are evil now?
