Shameless Self Promotion hurts You and IndiBlogger
First up: I'm not flaming/trolling. I consider this an important issue.
The indiblogger forum is meant for networking and interacting with bloggers. I don't count post advertisements as fitting into either category. Quality posts will draw readers to your blog without you necessarily having to say, "Did you know this... read my post to know more."
This is a forum to share experiences and insights about the blogging experience. Can we please stop clogging the forums with shameless self promotion. Once you advertise your blog in the Review category, your blog is on everyone's radar. After that, let readers add their blog to your network.
Shameless self promotion does more harm than good. I would stop visiting a blogger who only interaction on the forum is "check out my post."
Renie: You've provided a button to say mark discussion as "shameless self promotion" but how many people have to mark it that before it gets removed?
cheers!
Prashant.
In blog catalog all discussions are categorised and there is a category Shameless blog promotion. In that thread one can promote one's blog. Blog promotion is also necessary as it is the age of advertisement. When we tolerate vigorous ads in tv and newspapers, why ads should not be here. But there should be a limit. Hence, there should be a category like Shameless Blog Promotion where in promotions should be allowed and people in want of such thread may click.
what's your say?
@healthy: I agree self promotion isnt a good thing, the forum already has a section for reviewing blogs
Thanks... It looks like the shameless self promoters are beginning to get the message...
cheers!
Prashant.
@Cyril Sam: I know what you mean. Took some time out and am amazed to see the activity.
@Vinay24K: Couldn't agree with you more.
It's very heartening to see that new members are jumping in on this forum. I've actually taken some time off so have no idea whether our little forum discussion made an impact in terms of reducing spammers though. Intend to check that out now...
cheers!
Prashant.
Renie, I agree with your point of view. When I started my blog I had hardly any hits for one full year but I took tips from the wordpress forums which emphasized that writing quality posts is what brings in the traffic. I have never advertised my blog except on forms like Digg and Desipundit which are for that purpose. If you want Indiblogger to be a proper forum then you are absolutely right. Self promotion is to be looked down upon. I think nowadays people want to be popular overnight! I took one whole year and even then I do not have the kind of popularity that many others have. I don't really bother about that. I just keep writing!
that is what we should be doing. but as you said, ppl want to get popular overnight. more so, they look to increase the clicks on ads.
Absolutely spot on. That was my experience with my first blog as well. I guess there are so many stories about internet millionaires and bloggers who became successful that people want a slice of the pie without necessarily putting in the work first. Glad that your effeorts are paying off though.
My two cents. Let us not get into words and semantics. Let the action speak.
Anybody that does this mistake, warn him/her first.
Second time, ban him.
Do this two three time. Things will take care of themselves.
I am a moderator in a couple of web forums and all I will say is that you learn by trial and error. Impulsively reacting to presumed assumptions is self defeating and actually kills the forum - as you will end up with few members with all activity dependent on their involvement.
We have to decide if we wish to be a elite Indian blogger joint with regimented process of enrolling members or do we allow it evolve and grow on its own. Food for thought?
And my liitle bit of self promotion-
Review my Blog / Follow me on Twitter / Websnacker / Ideasonic Studios
Honestly speaking, I dont know about your stats, but all the heavy traffic blogs and web site I have seen, gets more than 70% of their traffic via search engines..
Backlinks refers, only, yeah only single digit percentile figure !!!
So signatures / linking a forum posts, really really dont offer much of traffic !!!
I agree with Choto Cheetah. Almost 80% of my traffic is via search engines and while I am always going to want my GPR etc to improve, traffic is all that matters and SEO wins over link farming.
Since we haven't really hit upon an idea for penalising self-promoters... how about barring them from being nominated for IndiBlogger of the Month?
cheers!
Prashant.
"Shameless self promotion does more harm than good"
Does that mean shamefully if I do so it’s ok? Just kidding, no for sure. Though i'm a new user and my only objective of writing this reply is committing the said crime, I totally agree with you, promotion of ones substandard self is almost as bad as politics. Anybody undertaking such activities should be barred from the community IMO. We can employ something like the ‘report spam’ mechanism as suggested by a commenter I think.On a second thought, isn’t blogging itself is kind of shameless self promotion? I’m sure all of you will agree to disagree with me…
The report spam mechanism is already in effect. The arguments were for something stronger since this isn't stopping people from spamming. Personally, blogging is not shameless self promotion - conside it par with a company with a website.
~Prashant.
I agree with Prashant and Binayday here . A blogger's forum is just that , a blogger's forum . If I misuse it , and delve into self promo to the heights of suffocating others , I deserve to be banned . That is simple and logical .
That being said , let us also look at helping people out and remember that even the IndiRank is based on Alexa figures too !!
My final rant is that Prashant and BinaryDay are senior bloggers who should not use abrasion but aggression in a thread to convince people .
~Shakthi
Senior blogger? I don't think I agree... although I remember using Windows 3.0 and my first computer was a 386. In terms of experience... my blog started in March and that's when I joined IB. Is anyone really a senior?
There are people who will look into each thread..and others who can simply ignore. A lot of things come in the news paper each day. Starting from the shiny baldy Advani to the morosed face of Mayavati. Which one do you like? or you like some one like Bips with "no" piece.
I think, being a blogger, every one likes to get some comment about their writting. Atleast I do. When you want to move outside the arena of friends, you have portals like Indibloggers at hand to reach to a global crowd! (I leave being a global crowd, coz three days back my FEEDJIT viewer tracker caught hold of an IP that was from the International Space station, and it mentioned: ISS, NASA arrived from google.com on Canonical Cacophony ).
If you all have some nudges and grudges on this idea, then please, there will be people who will be asking for an opinion from people who they never know and who will comment unbiased (than friends). Overlook those links! Its the best remedy for all my contradictors!!!
(I leave being a global crowd, coz three days back my FEEDJIT viewer tracker caught hold of an IP that was from the International Space station, and it mentioned: ISS, NASA arrived from google.com on Canonical Cacophony ).
Hey... could you clarify the statement because I'm a bit confused as to what you are arguing about.
~Prashant.
I think he means a Martian visited his blog 
That's what I meant... even International Space Station people visit my blog!!! am in TOP of The Atmosphere!!!
that is quite a feat! but no once can confirm that, right
@ Healthy Living India same here buddy
@ Renie... Thanks for stepping in and clarifying IB's position on the issue. I really honestly hope the shameless self promotion will stop. I've got my fingers crossed...
cheers!
Prashant.
Prashant...
I agree to u on some extent but going there by checking out the link is in individual's hand...and if we gonna set a moderator for every link people type then it will be a mess and i don't think that forum will remain popular then...
if sumbody wrote u please read and comment on it...it is not that bad... than if a person comes to ur blog and write u wrote is so good and leave his 2 para long advertisemnt on the bottom :P
I don't think the real issue is about the ethics of self-promotion. The point is that every time someone posts a topic asking people to visit their blog, the actual topics that deserve attention in the forum are pushed down and eventually ignored.
Say a first-time blogger has posted a question asking for help on something, and 5 people post blog promoting topics after him. There's a good chance no one will get a look at the post with the query. And that would totally defeat one of the most important purposes of IndiBlogger.
So, yeah. While promotion is important, there're other ways to do it other than by crowding the forum.
I don't think the real issue is about the ethics of self-promotion. The point is that every time someone posts a topic asking people to visit their blog, the actual topics that deserve attention in the forum are pushed down and eventually ignored.
You hit the nail on the head Sahil.
Currently new forum posts get precedence over running discussions. People posting "How do you like my blog, folks 
" abruptly push down serious discussions into the limbo and everyone starts talking about banality, and the earth-shaking discussions going on elsewhere suddenly collapse.
I have a suggestion.
In the premium space on the left, top corner of the home page of IndiBlogger, instead of featuring every new forum discussion, only those that have say, 5 comments should be allowed.
This will weed out the "how do you like..." type of non-serious forum posts, most which don't get more than a couple of responses, and the serious discussions that attract a lot of traffic to the site and which promote camraderie between the indibloggers will receive prominence.
Bloggers! Let me put forward the problem from my point of view. We have several posts on this forum on the lines of "What do you think of this topic?" or "Read my views" with a link to that person's latest blog post. I'm all for people getting more traffic from IndiBlogger - that's one of the reasons it exists. But if this practise becomes the norm, this forum will become another digg- with a separate topic for every blog post in the Indian blogosphere.The entire forum will lose it's relevance, and it will lose the warm atmosphere we all have painstakingly built over the last 5 months.
Only verified Indian Bloggers have posting rights on this forum - which makes it different from every other forum out there. Honestly, being a part of this forum brings me more pride than having built it. Our focus here is to help one another. We're going to collectively shape the Indian blogosphere into a force to reckon with, a force that can make changes. That change can be whatever you individually want as a blogger - from helping parents become better teachers, to helping people understand IT, to changing the way people make Gulab Jamuns. These changes will be made via your blogs. But we can help each other to be more effective at making these changes via this forum.
Once you've built a reputation on this forum as a selfless contributor, you will have traffic on your blog simply because people like you and want to get to know you better.And that's quality traffic!
For those who haven't seen our thank you post to the bloggers on this forum, now is the time to do so!
Renie... I think that makes perfect sense! Thanks for clarifying your stand on this. I think IB is making waves in the blogosphere already. Great job, and I'm proud to be a part of this forum too. :)
Renie - Thanks for that beautiful clarification! While I was going through this thread, somewhere I was able to sniff arguments. The replies were getting harsher!
You possess good skills of convincing. That reminded me of SRK in the hindi movie 'Swades'! You are already doing a good job!
@ Somnath: In case you haven't noticed, there are people protesting. The first response to this thread was from Renie who also shares the idea that there is a diff between promotion and spamming. You are weakening your argument when you talk about movies because that's outside the scope of where we are at. It's a bit silly to say you don't have an ad agency because none of us do.
@Sourish: You weaken your argument when you talk about utopia. You are welcome to agree with Somnath because that's what a disc on a forum is about.
Let me reiterate the diff between promotion and spamming. My UID, as I mentioned earlier, is the name of my blog. Simple promotion tactic. My activity on the forums is to review blogs, help out beginners with their questions and share experiences and things that worked for me. What I don't do and what you should notice that none of the top 10 forum participants do is get on the forum and say, "Hey! I wrote a new post! Please read it and comment on it" That, is what we are calling spamming or shameless self promotion.
No one is stopping you from promoting your blog. That's the whole point. What we do consider as problematic is to simply get on to IB to say "Read my post" every day.
Imagine if every blogger did that on a daily basis....
cheers!
Prashant.
Prashant
Spamming is different than self promotion...
and believe me I've been to many popular blogs with low contents and been to many with a great content but no readers....
and I guess Indiblogger is moderated enough...and one do have an option of not clicking the spam links...
All I say is if u need a utopia then be ready for no improvement as most of the new and better things come out from the chaos only..
and I agree with Somnath's view on the purpose of Indiblogger...
promoting one's work is called publicity which is part and parcel of every media...! Print or Movies..then why arent people protesting? This is a digi-print media..needs promotion by self as we have no advertising agency!
There is a difference in Promotion and getting on nerves... 
I think..Indiblogger is to make a better traffic..increase network of readers and also to bring to notice interesting ideas that the vibrant residents of the blogosphere posses!
Agreed. But it is possible to get readers to notice you without you having to yell out "Look at me!" every day. That's what we are calling shameless self promotion. My UID is the name of the blog - promotion. My only activity on the forum is review blogs, help out beginner bloggers and share blogging experiences. Notice, I do not ever get on the forum to simple say "Look at me!" That's what we're calling shameless self promotion.
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