Smart webmasters know that by getting their sites listed on the ‘popular’ lists means a major influx of traffic, which can result in:

• Increases in RSS subscribers. A number of sites have documented a rise in subscribers after a post becomes popular on a social media site.
• Increased links back to your site. Many bloggers find things to write about on social media sites. If you’re popular, expect lots of nice links back from other blogs.
• Google Juice. The increased backlinks will ultimately result in better PageRank with Google and therefore higher placement in search engine listings.
• Reputation. As all these factors come into play, your site has the potential to become a trusted resource and this can all reinforce your reputation as an expert in your niche.
• Better advertising revenue. Maybe not immediately – social media users are an ad-blind crowd. But increased traffic and better SERP placement is likely to see better advertising opportunities over time.

As you can see, there is a lot to gain from leveraging social media sites. Note that I didn’t say ‘exploiting’ social media sites.

Seeding

Seeding is the practice of submitting links to social media and bookmarking services like Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Reddit. There are countless others, although the impact of seeding is less if the service is less popular. Which explains why attaining the Digg front page is the goal for many bloggers!

Seeding becomes controversial when you’re only promoting your own site, or you’re seen to be submitting stuff purely to gain traffic. This is frowned upon by the users and moderators of social bookmarking services for a very good reason – it’s considered to be spamming. And everybody hates spammers.

The only exception to this rule is if you’re creating quality content and otherwise participating in the community. If you’ve created a unique article or post that will offer real value to visitors, then there’s nothing wrong with seeding your own pages. Nicer if someone else submits it for you though.

My Suggestions For Ethical Bookmarking

• Limit your activity. Not all social networking services will yield a result, and some are barely used at all. Why waste time with multiple submissions – you could be creating great content!
• Participate in the community. There’s a reason they call it Social Bookmarking – it’s all about people and connections. Find people with similar interests, comment where you can and build a solid friend list. You might actually enjoy it…
• Don’t just seed your own stuff. Share the resources you find interesting, particularly in your niche. It’ll vary your submission list and it’s a great way to reward other bloggers whose writing you admire. If you only seed your own stuff, you’ll look like a spammer.
• Be inspired by the community. Lots of bloggers get their inspiration from their social bookmarking tool of choice. They can also discover great writing in their area that they might never have found before. All this can generate ideas for you to write about and experiments to try on your own website.
• Above all, don’t spam. Not every post is worth submitting to a social bookmarking service. Shorter posts, or link posts that point out a resource but don’t offer any real insight are examples of this.
• Hope that people start to seed your pages. The Holy Grail of Ethical Bookmarking – in my opinion – is when people start watching your blog or website and seed your links for you. Word of mouth is better than self-promotion any day of the week!
• Seed other people’s pages. Reward websites and writers that you enjoy by bookmarking their work. It’ll give them all the benefits listed above, and your Digg account won’t look quite so spammy!

Start Your Ethics Engines

Creating an account on every social bookmarking service available is counter productive, spammy and a waste of time. I believe that you’ll really only see benefits from social bookmarking if you’re participating in the community. That means seeding other people’s pages, commenting on posts and building up a network of friends.

Also, by focussing on one or two particular sites, you stand a greater chance of success with your bookmarking. And it’s long accepted knowledge that when you become popular at one site, it won’t be long before your content gets seeded to other bookmarking services. For instance, if you hit the front page of Digg, you stand a shot at getting popular on del.icio.us or reddit.

Self-promotion fuels hostility in social bookmarking users. Do it too much and you can expect a backlash. Let’s push to drop mercenary linkbaiting in favour of participation and fair use of social bookmarking services.

For whatever reason, some people took a dislike to Kathy and started singling her out for abusive comments on other blogs and forums. Some disturbing pictures appeared with Kathy’s head pasted on to them, and her personal details were leaked on the Internet.

Kathy is a high-profile example of how someone can be abused on the Internet. In a digital culture it’s easy to forget that there’s a real-life person on the other end of the screen. In the absence of human contact and direct accountability, some people think they can say or do anything online.

Recently, Tim O’Reilly published a draft Blogger’s Code of Conduct. It’s an attempt to lay down some basic principles for interaction on the web. I have a problem with it though. I don’t think it’ll work.

Why a blogger’s code of conduct won’t work:

No Enforcing Authority
In an opt-in system like this, the people who will adopt a code of conduct are probably fairly ethical already. What about the trolls? Well, they’ll just continue character assassination as before – why should they care about a code of conduct that has no authority to back it up?

Unclear Legal Jurisdiction
So, what if a blogger in Australia threatens a blogger in the UK? What if they make the threat in the comments section of an American blog? Supposing that sufficient evidence can be gathered, can it be brought to court, and if so in what country? It’s these gaping legal issues that make it so easy to post anonymous stuff online.

Limited To Bloggers – What’s That About?
I don’t understand why a code of conduct applies ONLY to bloggers. Bloggers only form a small part of the fabric of the Internet. What about forums, social networking sites and good old-fashioned email? I’m sure there are other methods of interaction that don’t necessarily involve bloggers.

Maybe I’m being too cynical about Tim’s intentions, but this looks like an ill-conceived bit of bandwagon-hopping. As Darren said, the principles resonate with me, but I can’t see myself signing up to principles that cannot be universally upheld.

I heard the phrase “like herding cats” for the first time last week – I think it’s particularly appropriate for this situation.