First Social Bookmark - Got Snarky "this looks like spam" comment

[Mark Figura]

I'm getting my feet wet with social bookmarking for SEO purposes. But it looks like I've stumbled. Perhaps someone more experienced than me can shed some light on what happened.

First, I setup profiles a few weeks back on various social bookmarking websites. I did not immediately start bookmarking after setting up my profile, and instead, let the profile "season" a few weeks. Now, I didn't add in extra info beyond what was required either, and I didn't take part in forum discussions.

Then just yesterday I used SocialBot to make a few bookmarks back to my friends massage website (she's a license massage therapist, and everything is completely professional) .

On Reddit I bookmarked her website and even wrote a few testimonial words. Not over the top. Something like "my neck was hurting and Becky was able to fix my neck issues within a couple of visits".

Within a couple of minutes a commenter said the posting looked like spam.

I don't want my friend's website to be blacklisted in any way by my actions. What would you have done differently?

[mgkimsal]

Originally Posted by Mark Figura

I'm getting my feet wet with social bookmarking for SEO purposes. But it looks like I've stumbled. Perhaps someone more experienced than me can shed some light on what happened.

First, I setup profiles a few weeks back on various social bookmarking websites. I did not immediately start bookmarking after setting up my profile, and instead, let the profile "season" a few weeks. Now, I didn't add in extra info beyond what was required either, and I didn't take part in forum discussions.

Then just yesterday I used SocialBot to make a few bookmarks back to my friends massage website (she's a license massage therapist, and everything is completely professional) .

On Reddit I bookmarked her website and even wrote a few testimonial words. Not over the top. Something like "my neck was hurting and Becky was able to fix my neck issues within a couple of visits".

Within a couple of minutes a commenter said the posting looked like spam.

I don't want my friend's website to be blacklisted in any way by my actions. What would you have done differently?

I've found Reddit to be *very* active, and people tend to vote stuff down almost immediately on finding it, then perhaps looking at it and deciding whether or not that was justified.

Just my experience with reddit.

[Dan C. Rinnert]

I try to start out by bookmarking fun or useful links before trying anything business or marketing-related. Build a profile as a contributor and not just a marketer.

It's kind of similar to advice offered on Twitter. For every one marketing tweet, you should have at least four or five non-marketing tweets. I've tried to treat social bookmarking in a similar manner.

Why did you wait several weeks ?? As soon as you set up your profile you could have started bookmarking... But as Dan posted above you should be also bookmarking some fun and infromative stuff...

James

[Mark Figura]

Thanks guys. Using Socialbot I guess I can do semi-automated bookmarking fun stuff also, and not just focus on self-promotional links.

[JohnMcCabe]

First off, there are folks out there who think a link to anything even vaguely commercial is spamming the bookmarking sites, so 1 comment shouldn't worry you to much.

As others have said, you need to switch it up. Link to stuff that would interest your target market, but doesn't try to sell something - news stories, journal articles, videos, etc. Throw in a healthy dose of 'personal' stuff - jokes, videos, gossip, stuff that helps people waste time.

You know some people think WWW stands for World Wide Waste of time, right?

You just have to look human.

Case in point...

I've been cleaning out my Twitter accounts lately. Unfollowing people who bore me. Usually, there are two patterns that get the heave-ho. First, people who tweet nothing but the same lame affiliate links day after day. Second, people who try to mask tweeting the same lame affiliate links every day by programming a bunch of generic quotations to space their promos out.

I imagine the bookmarking sites are similar...

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

You know some people think WWW stands for World Wide Waste of time, right?

He He .....

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

Case in point...

I've been cleaning out my Twitter accounts lately. Unfollowing people who bore me. Usually, there are two patterns that get the heave-ho. First, people who tweet nothing but the same lame affiliate links day after day. Second, people who try to mask tweeting the same lame affiliate links every day by programming a bunch of generic quotations to space their promos out.

I imagine the bookmarking sites are similar...

I have 379 Unread DM's John .... I did a test not long ago and cleared all DM's and waited a little while. Checked back in when I had 75 DM's and out of all of them only 1 person called me by name.

So I posted the results on my forum and tweeted it.. within a few minutes I lost 5 followers... I guess they did not like the fact that I did not read their spam DM's ..lol

James

[SurviveUnemployment]

It's all about participation. You have to make yourself welcome. Make friends. Drop links. Build trust. THEN spam the living hell out of them! (kidding -- be a slammer, not a spammer.)

Originally Posted by SurviveUnemployment

It's all about participation. You have to make yourself welcome. Make friends. Drop links. Build trust. THEN spam the living hell out of them! (kidding -- be a slammer, not a spammer.)

Glad you added the disclaimer ..lol You had me going there for a minute I must say ...

James

[derpengy]

I've found the best way to make this seem non-obvious is to follow an 80/20 rule - 80% content and 20% commercial/SEO posts. Also, they're not really review sites, so the "Kathy solved my problem" might have been a tip-off.

I dunno, as most people have said, users are fickle. Social Median allows people to set up newschannels based on the types of links/RSS feeds you intend to "clip" (bookmark) on the service. This prevents some of the negative feedback, because if they didn't want to see links about a particular subject, they wouldn't have subscribed in the first place.

[Lloyd Buchinski]

One thing that might be worthwhile doing is just using reddit for reading for awhile. Personally when I do, I do notice some posts that do seem to be really spamy. Basically most of the readers there are looking for entertainment, not a commercial recommendation. When you do see someone trying to plug something it does stand out a bit.

They practically encourage down votes. One of their sections (might be 'funny') has the comment 'not funny stuff will be down voted mercilessly.'

I don't have a lot of experience with social bookmarking sites, but reddit is my favorite, both for reading and for bookmarking. The crowd there actually seems to be a bit more intelligent than at the others.