On Twitter and other Social Media platforms, there has been these “Top Award voting” sites that proliferate Social Media. “King or Queen of Twitter,” “Top this or that” etc. I saw one where it promised you would be declared “Twitter royalty for life on their site,” but the bad quality of the build on it was such that I dont think its still in business. These are sites that you have to go to, setup a profile so people can “vote” for you and then start harassing the crap out of your friends to vote. Usually, its for some made up title, for a category that a million other people probably out rank you for being more deserving of.
The sites are smart and have vote limits, like: “1 vote per hour,” so rabid contestants click over and over and annoy their friends to also do it. I’ve seen “cat fights” between Twitter users as to who is cheating. I’ve heard of people wasting enough time to setup scripting programs to ping vote the sites automatically. Complete utter Idiocy. I even find it more annoying when someone else submits me, which is the case if you find me on one. I DONT sign up for them, if you see me there. Honestly, if you are truly respected in your field, you shouldnt have to be out “whoreing” votes personally.
Heres THE problem for me: YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME, EFFORTS AND NOT GETTING PAID FOR MARKETING FOR SOMEONE ELSE! I honestly, think you should better invest your time in something that makes money for YOU. I’ll support you in that.
I’m always amazed at how some people think some little thing like one of these events, will catapult them OVER all the work that it takes to truly be successful and recognized by your peers. These sites are making a killing off of ads and traffic. If its a big brand site, it helps with ad revenue and getting people to “hump” your brand. Usually they get List data en mass. Its free advertising referrals at best.
When you visit one of these sites, vote and direct all your other friends to do it, you are freely advertising the site and when people go there, they are increasing their traffic and ad revenue. Sites make more money off of their advertising if they can show they have more traffic. MEANWHILE YOU JUST FILLED THEIR EMAIL OPT-IN LIST WITH ALL YOUR FRIENDS INFO THAT THEY CAN MAKE MONEY OFF OF! Who wins – the websites. Who loses – YOU. You waste a bunch of time on it and now your friends hate you for annoying them. Check your bank account – nope nothing more there. Do you have any idea how much money you just made these sites for FREE?!
Another part I detest, is when someone I’ve never ever heard of or chatted with in my stream, wants me to vote for them to be a “Social Media Star” or whatever the title is. Usually its someone with little following, who has no business in that catagory. Meanwhile, they are hoping someone with my caliber and reach will do the work for them? Thats like a “Extra” in a Hollywood film, hustling Jack Nicolson to vote for them in the Oscars? Uh Hello?
I dont mind if you send me a link once asking for my vote. No Problem, I’ll scratch your back and support you. But, dont send it to me over and over, asking me to do it 50 times a day. Personally, I’d be more willing to support you if you were making an affiliate commission off it. Its the fact that your NOT getting paid, that bothers me. Plus, you are NOT even getting paid to SPAM ME for someone else? Even worse, you probably have a blog that your neglecting that needs marketing, while you are doing this.
Some people think its fun and god bless em. Have fun with Twitter. Hey if you think its fun and this really is the best use of your time you can come up with. I’m all for ya. But for all the work you may be doing, MY MAIN BOTTOM LINE POINT IS THIS: IF YOUR GOING TO WORK THIS HARD FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S WEBSITE, DONT. START YOUR OWN AND PUT THAT WORK INTO PROMOTING YOUR OWN SITE. I’ll gladly support you and you can bug me to promote and retweet your site all the time, BECAUSE I’ll know the money is going into YOUR pocket. Whenever someone asks me to promote THEIR website I gladly oblige.
So in the end, work hard for yourself to get traffic to YOUR website. Annoy me to promote YOUR site. I’ll love it. Not some fad contest no one will remember next year.
Chris, it’s good to see you speaking up on this trend. It seems so easy to tempt someone’s ego with a title and fake award that honestly won’t impress anyone. You make a great point about all the work people put into getting votes … time and effort that would be better spent building quality content and promoting it.
A great post Chris and with time being more valuable than ever before, it is tough not get annoyed at spam heads and time wasters! Those of us that do work hard and try to provide value for our blog readers and our Facebook friends, will sadly just have to tolerate the ‘riff raff’, right? Pretty hard to be ‘King’ of the Blogosphere, right? It’s quite a kingdom to rule! I can think of quite a few people that deserve the position more than a newbie spam head!
A great post Chris and with time being more valuable than ever before, it is tough not get annoyed at spam heads and time wasters! Those of us that do work hard and try to provide value for our blog readers and our Facebook friends, will sadly just have to tolerate the ‘riff raff’, right? Pretty hard to be ‘King’ of the Blogosphere, right? It’s quite a kingdom to rule! I can think of quite a few people that deserve the position more than a newbie spam head!
Good honest original post.
Very well put sir! @iamoffended
Thanks for writing this Chris. It really irks me when I see superficial sites taking advantage of people that really may not know better. Without question, the educated view you present here should help people to focus on what matters most – the value that they themselves bring to the web and the world at large.
I think we should add any sort of giveaways that require a Tweet or Facebook post, logo creaiton contests, forced-tweet coupon codes/offers, promotions, and group coupon deal-buck tweets (sorry Groupon!) to this list.
Here’s my blog post about why I put some effort into the Shorty awards http://banana.blog.co.uk/2011/01/13/why-i-d-like-to-win-the-shorty-award-in-poetry-10358334/ When a poet is looking for an angle to get some publicity anything helps and at least with the Twitter Shorty Awards you didn’t need to go to any website to vote – you could just Tweet your vote from your Twitter account. Sadly I got beaten by a dog – who didn’t write poetry :))
Wow – Amazing Chris! thanks for ranting about this. You opened up my eyes a bit. I work in PR online so I see this a lot by people I know and even people I represent. I’m going to have to take a step back and talk to some of my clients about these practices. I didn’t know much about these sites before NOW! THANKS! 🙂
the mud that is social media marketing these days…
I love to support schools trying to win a contest for funds, and internet contests for bloggers who really do put out great content. Everyone needs a little recognition. But please don’t ask me to help you win an iPad. You’re right Chris, I rarely want to vote more than once. I would count on my parents and family to do that for me. With the large numbers of people I want to follow and keep up with, I def don’t want to see frequent repeated pleas for votes.
You bring up a good point.
So, how do you explain Empire Avenue? 🙂
Hi, Chris thanks for taking the time to read my blog!
You’ve just given away all our secrets! Ok – I jest … I can’t express how fully and profusely I agree with you!
My Thoughts Exactly, you hit it dead on!
Hi @ChrisVoss:twitter I was Stumbling Monique Cloutier’s Likes on StumbleUpon. She is sharing your blog post here. I am subscribed to your YouTube user Channel as ExposingNature and I have bought some of your Empire Avenue social stock. Following your updates on Twitter @VideoFun:twitter . I have sent you a Facebook Friend request pending your approval. Of course you are in my Google+ Circles too – Paul Letellier
That question @pirillo:disqus is on my mind too. I think we all go with the flow and we are there, then we move on, then we check back, and so on. Paul Letellier (e)VIDEOS
On Facebook, I play CityVille. In fact, there are times I play CityVille a lot. I would never spend any of my own money to play the game. I play in angst sometimes; hoping for more and more goods and people that will help my buildings complete quicker and for me to achieve more levels and grow my city. To get more game cash, I need to level up as quickly as possible. This is where they trigger you to satisfy that urge by spending your money to buy their Cash which you can use to do tasks more quickly. The numbers are really sad though at how much money people can spend just to play this pasttime game. Things really cost a lot of Cash in this game so you really don’t get much value for your dollars. There is also symbolism… Like in the types of inventory you are awarded. Ya right, awarded, ya, a Coliseum, where people would line up and even pay to watch people hack each other up and brutally kill one another. You won’t see a Coliseum in my CityVille. I actually have been using playing games like CityVille to help me adjust to a life now with computers. Just a bit of a rant of my own to share with you all here. Paul Letellier @VideoFun:twitter
I felt for you Chris when I was watching your YouTube video My Last Day of Live Streaming http://youtube.com/watch?v=nDjPuFitJU8
Paul Letellier ExposingNature on YouTube
Thanks Paul!
Perfect post. Caspio is a great tool that lets you build any type of voting, contest, and other apps fast and without coding. This post showcases a sample app http://blog.caspio.com/web_apps/vote-for-the-oscars-contest-app-created-by-the-boston-globe/