Seth Violates the Rules of People Power
Seth Godin has a post brainstorming ideas about how Digg can monetize its user base. While the idea of letting marketers submit their new campaigns to Digg is interesting, it violates the basic people-powered premise of Digg.
Instead of this:
Then, go to the teeming masses of marketers out there and invite them to nominate their new ideas, their new posts, their new sites to your editor. The editor picks the ones that are good enough, that make the cut. Figure three or ten or a hundred a day, depending on the demand. Once demand goes up, charge $20 just to submit one, so the editor can hire a squadron of assistants.
What he should be saying is:
Then, go to the teeming masses of marketers out there and invite them to nominate their new ideas, their new posts, their new sites to the site. The masses pick the ones that are good enough, that make the cut. Figure three or ten or a hundred a day, depending on the demand. Once demand goes up, charge $20 just to submit one, so Digg can turn a profit.
Seth, don't forget the people-power! Digg succeeds because ther are no editors. Don't you dare try insert an intermediary into the people-power chain.
Some other notes to marketers:
- Study Digg. Study, study, study. If you don't have marketers that understand how to get a post front-paged, then you don't have marketers. With professional copywriters and creatives, you should be able to get frontpaged on at least 25-50% of your submissions. If not, go back and study. I got one frontpaged the other day. It's not hard if you know what works.
- Get to know the top submitters. HIRE THEM. They are the top because the understand the above rules. They are the Web 2.0 cool hunters, and they can help you tremendously. Why not offer someone a job doing what they love?
- Don't market. Just create cool stuff that's fun, interesting, or different. Hire people to solve common problems, undertake fascinating research, or anything else that will get your clients traffic. Create free software tools for people - do anything creative (except spamming) to get links. That's what it takes.
I've had 8,000 visitors come to the site from Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, because of being frontpaged. Learn how to do it.
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