gaming

For some people, the lessons of SMX Social Media did not resonate. There really is one takeaway that doesn’t seem to be widely understood:

Understand the community. Know who you’re pitching to. Know what you’re getting into.

There’s a clear misconception that because you can contact all your friends and have them game the social news networking sites, you can submit content that doesn’t suit the community at all, instead focusing on self-promotional content that deviates from every rule in the book.

I don’t consider myself a rockstar. I do, however, feel that I have a better understanding of the community to which I submit stories because I am not only submitting stories: I am actively engaging in the community. I am commenting. I am studying what’s been successful and what hasn’t been. It’s a completely different mindset than I had when I started using these social networks — simply because I had not given the networks and the users within a chance.