Social bookmarking icons worth it? I vote no Nascar

That’s a question I ask myself a lot. Darren Rowse raised the question today and as usual offered some keen insight.

He began with 37 Signals thoughts:

Given the Ebola-like spread of these things they must be really effective, right? Not so much. Zero out of Technorati’s top 10 blogs feature those icons. And only two out of the 15 entries in the current crop at Digg’s Top Today page offer ‘Digg me’ icons.

This focus on campaigning over content seems like a classic case of misplaced priorities. The reason posts wind up at Digg, Delicious, or elsewhere isn’t because the authors made it easier to vote for them (it’s already easy). A post winds up at these sites because people respond to its content and quality.

That’s been my thinking. Focus on valuable content for your niche audience, not on hype you are unlikely to get anyway.

Though Darren found that on a recent post he made it to the front page of digg drawing 20,000 vistors, he concedes that’s a real rarity and that he has no idea how many dugg the item as a result of the icon.

Darren concludes:

….[O]n the majority of my blog posts the icon doesn’t do anything (in fact some would say it might cheapen the look of the site – especially when the counter is low) – however on the occasional post the icon might just give a quality post that doesn’t quite have the legs to go viral a lift that creates a digg-a-lanche.

Most blogs used for marketing are focusing on a niche topic. Your target audience is not huge, it may even be quite small.

Your goal is not to get dugg at digg. Your goal is to further enhance your reputation as a reliable and trusted authority. Your time is better spent learning how to enter the blogosphere discussion to accomplish that goal so as to grow your business.

For now, I’m opting out of the below Nascar look.