There are many reasons the Digg Community may perceive you negatively, or worse yet, consider you a filthy social media spammer. If you take part in the majority of these activities you probably aren’t seen as a positive social media maven as you may have hoped. Instead your actions depict you as a whiney and needy nuisance.

You might be a Digg Spammer If:

1. Your only shot at glory is to slightly rip of a top digger’s icon so you might get a few extra diggs

2. Your icon is a busty woman, but you are an out of shape male

3. You have over 400 “friends”

4. You only shout with one of these sayings: “shouting for a friend,” “sharing for a friend,” or “for a friend”

R U a Digg n00b that gets pwned by 1337 Digg Commenters? Well RTFM so teh next time ur comment won’t be an EPIC FAIL!

On Digg, having something to say is only half the battle, knowing how to say it is the other half. This guides you to dissect the jargon, people and memes used in comments on a daily basis. Each section is broken down in detail to help you boost your Digg cred the next time that you leave a comment.

3G - Third Generation of mobile phone standards and technology

AMD - Advanced Micro Devices (mainly a CPU competitor to Intel)

API - Application Programming Interface

APOD – Astronomy Picture of the Day (link)

BS – Bullsh*t

CCTV - Closed-circuit television (UK public surveillance)

CCFL - Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps (Modern light bulb that uses a fraction of the electricity of regular light bulb)

Yesterday I presented at SES Toronto along with Lee Odden and Dave Snyder on a panel called ‘Twitter: Ultimate Time Waster, or Great Tool?’ I figured that in order to show how Twitter actually works - it would be best to use Twitter to do it. Here’s the results of the experiment and an extended version of my presentation. Also if you’re on Twitter and would like to follow me - here’s my profile: http://twitter.com/chriswinfield

The Best Way to Learn about Twitter is to Have Twitter Do My Presentation

• Started at 4:45pm EST
• No pre-planning or promotion around it at all
• Final question was asked at 6:04pm EST
• Over 275 answers in less than 90 minutes

Frequently I speak with Chief Marketing Officers (CMO’s), Business Development Specialists, Product and Brand Managers regarding Social Media engagements and they always ask: “How many customers am I going to get directly from my Social Campaigns? What’s going to be my CPA, my ROI and my ROAS? What Immediate sales will I get?” To this I respectfully respond: “Stop! Don’t look at Social as a direct response marketing channel.” These marketers often react in shock with a quizzical twist because they are used to hearing what they want which is: “Hey, all of our programs are going to get you crazy, mad sales dude, right away - mate.”

With great design and implementation you can break all the rules and still be successful. This, by any other means, shouldn’t have worked. It shouldn’t have reached the ridiculous number of 3,338 diggs after being posted just 4 days ago. It was Flash animation. It was an advertisement for a product. It was selling you something. But as the submitter ‘ad-hater’ #1 stated :

If all advertisements were done like this, I might actually start reading them.

What happened? It was a healthy combination of good design and smart implementation of a beautifully created product that spawned a much deserved buzz. Pink Floyd was selling their limited edition 40th anniversary 14 album box set called ‘Oh, By The Way’. The Flash animation was designed by a London digital creative agency called Bloc.

If we look at the presentation and design of the interface that the user controls to view the various albums in the set we see that it is very minimal.

In the olden days a sociologist had to find people and recruit them to fill out long arduous forms. Today there is Facebook, and these sociologists are finding out that people generally love to talk about themselves. It is fun to talk about my interests, social networks and life!

Check out the New York Times article ‘On Facebook, Scholars Link Up With Data’. I would imagine this is being used in many other ways and will be being used more frequently in the future.

I remember when I first experienced the power of the Internet. I was in middle school hanging out with a friend. We decided to use the computer in my father’s office and got online to chat. Of course that led to starting trouble within the chat room and getting kicked out, but the feeling of connecting (even if it was very juvenile and idiotic) was lasting.

Well both myself and the internet have evolved since then (thankfully). We are in the midst of Web 2.0. I mean, look at who Time’s person of the year in 2006 was- it was me, or was it you?

Now you can sell your handmade t-shirts to someone in California, post a video so millions can see it, raise money for a certain candidate or cause or even connect with a classmate that now lives in Boston.

I am becoming a big fan of the organic approach to StumbleUpon (SU) and the ways you can connect with members finding like minded users in demographic and interest areas.

The StumbleUpon social tool was built for discovering webpages that are recommended by your network of friends. The site allows for networking and the toolbar allows for finding and discovering new great content on the web. This is a powerful combination of Internet function and social web.

After using SU for a long while it seems that the tool will be able to grow in its use as a localized marketing tool. And though outwardly commercial sites tend not to get a great amount of traffic (rather fail miserably) – it’s all in the approach.

The three C’s of a strong social news profile are content, consistency and contacts. If you follow these tips, your success on social news sites will become that much easier.

Reliable Sources. Make sure the blogs and news sources you’re submitting from are reliable and have quality information. Make sure they aren’t sending false information to the readers. And if you see that they might be trying to game social news websites don’t submit their content.

General viewpoint. Find a viewpoint in which the majority of the users will have interest in, or even care about. Take a look at the top submissions for the day. Those are basically the stories which most people have interest in. If you don’t find stories for all audiences, the users will either bury your story, or it will just be left unnoticed. Try thinking from a global standpoint. Does your town hockey championship really effect people half way across the world?

Two weeks ago I posted about the ins and outs for forum marketing. When joining a community, especially if you plan to market to them, it is important to understand the dynamics behind a lot of the interactions.

Below are what I’ve noticed as the different types of prominent forum members.

The Worker Bees. These are the people that keep the forum moving. When someone posts a question they are quick to research the answer. When someone posts for advice, they give it. When someone need hugs, or encouragement they are there to offer it. These forum members will rarely cause controversy but they are the heart and soul of the community. They are the ones that keep coming back to make it lively.