Like most bloggers, I count on social networking sites as a means to promote my blog and my best content. I have very few goals when it comes to networking other than to gain sustainable visitors from people who enjoy my content. My measure for this is mostly the analytics of my repeat visitors, top commentators, and RSS subscription growth.

Because of my desire to use these sites to expand my reach and gain authority, I’ve been using networks whenever possible. My uses include:

• Exchanging requests for bookmark submissions
• Submitting quality posts I’ve read through my feed reader
• Discovering new content and commenting on the blog post
• Networking with those that frequently submit my posts

Recently, I have had conversations about the ethics of exchanging submission requests on two different forums and have decided to share my own standards for submitting content to networking sites.

I must first say however that each networking site has their own standards for submitting posts, discovering content, and an unwritten code of ethics. It’s up to you as the user to understand all of these elements of the site to find a way to ethically work your content and the content of others into these standards.

Organic Submissions

You’re reading a blog and the post you have just finished was helpful, well written, provided great information, or could be useful to other people. These qualifications should prompt you to submit the post to the network of your choice. For me, it’s StumbleUpon. The fact that Stumble has given us this great toolbar makes it the easiest and fastest for me to use.

When you’re discovering a post for the first time on a network, be responsible in how you submit that post to actually help, not hurt, the blogger you’re discovering.

• Properly tag the post with the correct categories. This means you must be a frequent user of the networking site so that you understand the types of post that are contained within each category. Scan through categories that aren’t of interest to you as well so that you do not inadvertently submit a post to the wrong category or tag.
• When possible, provide a brief overview of what the post is about i.e. review. StumbleUpon makes this easy by simply highlighting a portion of the page that contains information on the entire post. After your highlight, one simple click on the toolbar will submit the highlighted portion as a review. (Newbie tip there.)
• Optional: share the post within your network by sending the post to those who enjoy content from the same category.

Submitting Your Content

One of the bigger debates within a lot of networking circles is the ethics of submitting your own content to networking sites. While there are some sites that actively encourage submissions from your own blog, other sites frown upon the behavior.

There are multiple pros and cons to submitting your own content. But, if you must submit your own posts, here’s what I suggest.

• You should not always be the first one to discover your own content and you should not submit every single post you’ve written. This is over kill and you could be doing more harm than good.
• Make it your best stuff. Really, you need to have written the post, walked away from your computer and felt like King of the World with the information contained in your post.
• Take note of the traffic your post is receiving before submitting. While you may want to be the first to discover your content for the best tagging and title information, you may be better off to submit your post to networking sites when you start to notice that the post is receiving organic attention.

Exchange Requests

Probably the most debated based on ethics. While there are networking users that are all for the exchanges, others think that this is spamming, unnatural, against Terms of Service, and of course, unethical.

It’s possible to network within exchange requests and still do the right thing. Setup your limits ahead of time to what you will and will not submit to networking sites and stick to your rules about it!

• If you would have found the post on your own, would you have submitted it? This means that you go back to the rules of an organic submission. The difference however is that you were introduced to the post and encouraged to take action.
• Read the post. Huge, huge, huge! Know what you’re submitting, pay attention the links contained in the post to ensure that you want to associate your name to the content within the post.
• Discover more of the blog than just the post you were asked to submit. Peek around, you may be discovering someone you want to read more often. On the flip side, you may discover questionable content you don’t want your name associated with. Just because one post was quality to submit doesn’t mean you still want to be associated with the blog or blogger.
• Don’t expect reciprocal exchanges. All users should have their own standard so again understand when you’ve submitted a post for someone who doesn’t do the same on your request. And for heaven’s sake, don’t take it personal when you’ve submitted someone who didn’t do the same for you. Respect the limitations of that user and continue on. There are other fish in the sea who will love your post and will happily submit.

Exchange Websites

Deserving of it’s own sub-heading, we must touch on the topic of the websites who’s only purpose is to ensure reciprocal exchanges. Typically the use is to obtain credits by submissions to submit your own post. You only gain credits by being forced to submit another’s post.

Don’t do this. While they can be interesting to explore and the lure of traffic may be exciting, by most standards they are against the terms of service on the networking sites. Network users are looking for organic content and any site that uses the lure of credits to receive traffic isn’t organic and chances are you won’t be able to apply your own standards for submitting posts.

Setting Your Standards

Not everyone enjoys the same content. If all visitors liked the same content, we wouldn’t have niche bloggers, tags or categories. On that note, define what your standards are for submitting posts. Some ideas are:

• Well written and informative. If you’re reading a tutorial that is well written, for example, even if you know the tip/trick it could be worth a submission to point those that don’t know in the right direction. Above all posts should be well written. It is why we use that terrible phrase: Content is King!
• Appeals your type of read. List style or chunks of paragraphs. Which do you prefer? Was the post an easy read? Great for scanning to pick up the content? If the post was formatted in a way that appeals to you, it may be worth the submission.
• Non-sponsored. It’s not uncommon for posts to contain affiliate links and/or information. However, sponsored posts that command in-post disclosure (PayPerPost, SocialSpark) are out of the question for me. I want to submit posts that were natural for you, not complete money makers. This may not appeal to everyone but it is one of my personal standards.

Choosing Your Best

We all know when we have off posting days. If your post doesn’t stack up, don’t submit your own content for submission just for the sake of keeping up your traffic levels. This will hurt your reputation.

• Be unique… if you have a fresh find, idea, or point of interest you may have something worth the risk of submitting your own post.
• Posts generated to respond to a post on another blog can do well. “So and so mentioned in their blog post ___ and I thought I’d elaborate with my thoughts.” These type of posts generate conversations, especially when on hot topics within the blogosphere.
• Newsworthy. Some of my best performing posts on networking sites have to do with the multiple ranking systems and are in my race for rank series. It’s been my experience that most users want to read posts that somehow benefit them and not just inform them.

Final Thoughts

Traffic from a lot of networking sites is great. Especially when you have found a network that pertains to your niche with users who are actively interested in your primary topic. To create the most interest on these sites however, you’ll need to be in tune to the standards of the site and play fair. But like anything, that’s left up to your own interpretation of fair and ethical.