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Shameless Self Promotion hurts You and IndiBlogger

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In Blogging Ethics

The IndiBlogger forum is now a read-only archive. Every public discussion is still here to read, but new topics and replies are closed.

Healthy Living India
from Bombay |

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.

Replies 1 to 20 of 92

Renie Ravin
from Chennai |

Hey Prashant - just one, really. That feature is to bring topics to our notice. Please excuse the delay this week - our team is traveling for the Delhi blogger meet. In fact we're on the train right now.

Malathy Badri
from Bangalore |

Delhi Blogger meet? Can you pl throw more light on it?

Then there must be a Chennai Bloggers meet also?

Thanks mate.

Rashmi Singh
from New Delhi |

now i think prashant should know that a blogger needs motivation-a motivation to go ahead with his work and that is why blog review section is made-everyone is doing self promotion,even prahant i think pointing to it and raising a discussion is doing so-wat say?

Rashmi Singh
from New Delhi |

indiblogger too is doing its promotion in media!!!without promos nobody even doesn't come to know about a movie!!!!nd it flops.......wat say????

Rishie
from A Dilliwala who is back in Delhi |

Renie,

Though I found this post quite late and am not sure if this button still exists or not, I still would like to make one comment (which is also a question to you). 

You have mentioned that one requires only 1 hit of this button to get noticed by the Mods. Can you tell me what exactly is done after that? I am asking this cause, you cannot rely on just one hit as there might be some mischievous people who might just go on a 'mark-him-spammer' spree. Though am sure there must be a proper process which you guys would have in place to tackle this, but I would like to know it.

Cheers!

Mohit

Sahil Rizwan
from Delhi |

Is it just me, or has the blog plugging gotten even worse now? =/

Renie Ravin
from Chennai |

Blog plugging? What's that?

Sahil Rizwan
from Delhi |

Self-promotion... Blog plugging... All used interchangeably... =)

Healthy Living India
from Bombay |

@ Renie: The thread's sticky now... good call. Let's hope people take the hint.

@ Sahil: Yeah I feel the same way. Seems that this thread has awakened a lot of people into plugging/promoting their posts even more.

@Delson: Sorry but don't think a self promotion button is the way out. All that will do is say "we can't do anything about it so let's find a way to accomodate them." The idea of a forum is to share experiences, suggestions, best practices and ideas. Don't think it was ever meant for self promotion/plugging.

Sumit Sharma
from New Delhi |

well prashant i totally agree with you actually there is a very thin gap between self promotion andspamming .........i am new in this forum however i got a quick view as what you was talking about. And if this kind of activity is happening in the forum so either the user should be banned from the forum like other forum does otherwise a notifcation in form of mail or message should be sent to the particular user.

Healthy Living India
from Bombay |

@ Sumit: I agree with the ban to be honest. This thread is right on top of the forum page and it still isn't a deterrant.

Don't see a mail or warning stopping anyone either. Even with the admins removing one self promotion thread, three others seem to pop up.

The decision to ban users of course lies with the higher powers. I think it makes sense really because if the forum admins don't want people using IB for plugging then they are well within their right to stop users who do.

Parv Kaushik
from Lucknow, Noida |

i dnt really think its that big a deal to give your link in your post.. its quite helpful too... if someone is curious about the person he may simply click on the link and visit.. this is internet people know what they want to visit and what they dnt want to.

blatantly selling yourself is awful but i dnt think it's soo bad that its giving to headaches if somebody doesnt like it he/she can simply ignore it nobody is shooting you for clicking on his/her link! take it easy!

http://www.parvkaushik.blogspot.com/ Wink 

Sumit Sharma
from New Delhi |

well i hope that someone from indiblogger team may b watching this thread..........

Guys cum on speak up

Hemal Shah
from Mumbai |

Renie, can you confirm if the Report This link is put to use?

Hemal Shah
from Mumbai |

Renie, can you confirm if the Report This link is put to use? Thanks Sumit and Prashant. This is an issue. I have seen this increasing day by day.

Healthy Living India
from Bombay |

@Hemal: I can say without any doubt or hesitation that the Report This button gets the job done. Renie removes the spammy threads pretty quickly. Although I definitely feel that there are far too many spammers for him to keep up without going batty.

Which therefore goes back to the stricter punishment debate....

cheers!

Prashant.

Hemal Shah
from Mumbai |

What we should do is to not let him participate in the forum or ban his blog through out.

Healthy Living India
from Bombay |

I'm with you Hemal. Some sort of measures need to be taken because the people who spam are simply blind to considerationl. Even with this thread going full swing, they aren't stopping. Will have to wait for the final word from Renie.

Hemal Shah
from Mumbai |

I hope the mods act quick.

Sourish
from Varanasi |

u r being rude to the beginners..as u have a lot of experience u r finding it embarassing..but sum people do write wonderfula and they seek for honest comments on them..but unable to find them they search for readers..and I see it no wrong... but I hate spammers though....

Hemal Shah
from Mumbai |

Sourish, no one is against promotion... but when people over do it, it is a problem. Those who are bloggin for a long time are actually helping new guys in the forums with question answers... Shameless promotion means that you want every one on the forum to read your posts and when it goes out of sight once, it comes up again and again...

Dr. Jigar Patel
from Chicago |

I agree that beginners need a platform.. but then once you ask for your blog to be reviewed, you get some platform.. Also if you wanna self-promote, do it on social bookmarking sites.. A lot of them dont mind self-promotion..

Chriz
from Chennai |

i appreciate sourish's honest words here...

many learn through the hard way...  blog-whoring has indeed become a business in itself and we can't exactly blame it, even if it crosses the limit..

the call is ours to click or not click ...

but viral marketing technique involves  leaving  your url in each and every public place, and every beginner (sometimes seasoned bloggers too) do that..

we can say that peeing in public is wrong.. but if the bladder is full and if it needs to be freed, then the call is ours :)

Healthy Living India
from Bombay |

@Sourish: I'm confused.... who is being rude to beginners or finding what embarassing?

Okay, check this out. Rule number one of blogging: Content is king. If you have good content, people will reach your blog. You don't have to spam people.

It's as simple as this: IB has decided that they do not want people using the forums as a spamming platform. As a user of the forum, we should respect that... or not use the forum. What a lot of people are doing is essentially getting free advertising space - which is wrong as well as unethical.

Does this clear up the confusion a bit?

cheers!

Prashant.

Sumit Sharma
from New Delhi |

@Saurish I accept your point that yes we should help nbeginners in getting traffic and comments but just think practically that if you are getting 10 - 15 such requests per day than what should you do ???

And yes if  they want to promote there blog so indiblogger is already displaying new blogs on the homepage and if want to go in deep level than i suggest there can be a section where new post of all blogs can be displayed in2 -3 lines and to read rest one can go to that blog !!!!!

Hemal Shah
from Mumbai |

You know, at times the new blog hardly stays for a full 24 hours. Review my Blog is important and there are people who have improved their blog on basis of comments they recieved. 

But posting what you wrote on the blog is not something that i feel should be done in a forum. Why is Twitter there for then?

Sumit
from Mumbai |

Thank God, someone brought this up. I'm rather new here, so I hadn't raised this, but I did feel some users were going out of their way to promote themselves.

Healthy Living India
from Bombay |

Hey Sumit... I'm pretty new here myself... shouldn't stop you from asking questions especially about something as strong as this. Welcome aboard and hope to see you starting threads.

Somnath Paul
from Kolkata |

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!

Healthy Living India
from Bombay |

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.

Somnath Paul
from Kolkata |

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!

http://www.somnath-is-here.blogspot.com

Hemal Shah
from Mumbai |

There is a difference in Promotion and getting on nerves... Embarassed

Sourish
from Varanasi |

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...

Healthy Living India
from Bombay |

@ 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.

Renie Ravin
from Chennai |

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! Smile

For those who haven't seen our thank you post to the bloggers on this forum, now is the time to do so!

Sumit
from Mumbai |

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. :)

Neeraj Shinde
from Pune |

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!

Sourish
from Varanasi |

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

Sahil Rizwan
from Delhi |

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.

बालसुब्रमण्यम
from Ahmedabad |

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 Smile" 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.

Healthy Living India
from Bombay |

@ 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.

Sumit Sharma
from New Delhi |

@ Healthy Living India same here buddy