Yes, there are plenty of people who are trying to use the social bookmarking sites for what they are supposed to be used for, which is what I do, and why I prefer to use email to exchange votes.

The type of people who are just sending junk aren’t the type of people who will make an effort to be part of a group who are going to work the system the right way.

Thanks for your comments, Herb!

Yes. There are people who knowingly game the system. But I also think that there are some who just genuinely want to promote good stuff that they find online.

But. I think that with anything in life, you are never going to get rid of the selfish people who think only of themselves. Great Post!

Thank you so much for adding to the conversation from the point of view of someone who understands how the system works, and also does their best to use that system for what it was originally intended for.

I appreciate your comments on my writing, as well as your subscription to this blog. Although it is challenging to make every single post worthy of worldwide recognition, I do my best to make the time that people spend here worthy of that time.

Thanks again, Jeff!

I couldn’t agree more. I have found that there are so many people voting for stories, just in hopes of getting a vote back. Thats not how I digg or Stumble. I ONLY vote on what I think is a QUALITY submit.

But. I also find and submit what I think are QUALITY articles. Like this one… it’s too bad that this has already been submitted, cuz I know I could’ve taken this to the front page.

Anyways. I just wanted to say that I love your work. I love your blog. And I couldn’t agree more with you.

Great Post!

Thanks for being a reader for so long – I appreciate that!

You make a great point about getting quality traffic vs. just regular traffic. Non-targeted traffic does not help the website, nor the visitor. Getting people to come to any given site who are actually interested in that content is a necessary part of the process.

Thanks a bunch for sharing your thoughts, Karl!

Thanks a bunch for contributing to the conversation, and I would definitely be interested in hearing the results of your experiment. As more and more social media sites come out, it will become increasingly important to know which sites are worth our time.

I totally agree with what you said about operating our websites like a business. That is exactly what we need to do, and in a business environment, you spend time on activities that work towards the business goals, and leave the non-productive activities behind.

Absolutely! We should all get our awesome content out there and even market it very aggressively. However, not EVERYTHING needs that much of our attention.

And yes, I’m with you on the “delete all”! That is why I switched over to asking for and sending out vote requests via email. Only people who are serious about exchanging vote considerations will consistently take the time to send and receive email messages.

My goal in this 3 month period is to narrow the field, so to speak. It is not physically possible to invest time and energy into all of these sites on a sustainable basis, as you mentioned.

Ultimately, like you, my plan is to have 3-4 sites that I utilize consistently, and then only budget a shorter period of time per day to them. When you think about operating your sites as a business, there are many important things to do, like creating great content, researching, reading related RSS feeds, responding to comments on your site and social media stuff.

Great post!

I have just come back from a week away to find my Social Marketing Centre and digg requests out of control.My inclination is to take a deep breathm selct all and delete and start again.

You make some great points

I remember Jack Humphreys with his web2 submitter saying to submit your best article weekly.

I also find for me that the post must resonate with me

Suzie

Coming up with a niche-related social bookmarking site is a step in the right direction. Again, more is not better when it comes to social bookmarking sites, but at least a niche-site cuts out some of the “noise” because it’s not a free for all where everyone wants to submit every type of content.

- Aaron

Awesome! You have already voted for some good content here, and I definitely want to reciprocate that effort.

You can send vote requests over anytime, Adam, and I’d be happy to take a look at them!

That’s a great question, and one that I have struggled with in the past. As you indicated, everyone will have their own criteria. However, I have a baseline minimum that a post has to offer before I will vote for it.

In short, it has to have SOME sort of value. It doesn’t have to be “mind-blowing” type of stuff, and it doesn’t even have to be something particularly useful, but it does at least have to offer something other than merely someone’s opinion. In short, I look for the post to have any of these characteristics:

- Entertaining
- Informative
- Empowering
- Educational
- Industry-specific news

I’m sure there are other criteria that other people would use, but those are the biggest things that come to my mind. In addition, even if someone always writes content that falls into any of those categories, they should still save their BEST stuff for the social bookmarking circles.

Glad that this post helped to clear things up for you. Feel free to give me a shout if you need more info on any of the specifics. I’d be glad to help you out.

The idea with keeping your voting habits to only content that is worth sharing via (formal or informal) voting groups is based on the very real fact that the type of people who are just voting on everything under the sun are NOT the type of people who will make the effort to get involved in a bookmarking group.

In addition, even if they did, and they start sending their requests via email, it will quickly become apparent whether or not what they are sharing is consistently worth voting for.

If it’s not, then simply don’t vote for it. If they are in turn not voting for the requests that you send out, then just take them out of your bookmarking group.

It’s basically a case of only allowing group members who are adding value to the group. If not, then they gotta go!