If you have been around the social space at all lately, you are bound to have heard of Mixx.
To put it into context, it’s a sort of cross between Digg, LinkedIn and MyYahoo. In a nutshell, its a social network that lets you find and share news based on your interests and location.
Even before Mixx launched, it received quite a bit of hype and some even suggested it might grow to replace the social media powerhouse Digg.
So based on all the coverage Mixx had received, including some personal recommendations from some Mixx advocates, we wanted to give it a fair shot and test it out.
I think it is important to point out that as a marketer, you are looking to find a way to use social media as a platform to give your content or sites a large amount of visibility in a short time. Although participating in a community that you enjoy is a nice bonus, it is not a priority or a requirement to be successful in social media as a marketer.
The above understanding is what I went with when testing out the site, and this article does not reflect whether or not I personally like the site structure, design, and functionality, which as a marketer, I could care less about.
Test Case 1:
On November 23, 2007, we submitted this story, Kegadoru: Injured Idol Fetish, to Mixx. http://www.mixx.com/stories/16356/. This was submitted on a weekday morning and went to the front page quickly.
Mixx sent 147 UVs to the site over a 7 day period.
The same article was submitted to Digg, where it received only 56 votes and did not make the front page.
Digg sent 89 UVs to the site over a 7 day period.Google sent 265 UVs, UniqueDaily.com sent 1,289, and StumbleUpon sent 2,239 during that same period of time.
Needless to say, I was not overly impressed with the results we got from a front page story and decided to give up on Mixx for the time being and give it a few months to grow and mature.
Brian Wallace remarked that since my initial test of Mixx, there had been an increase in traffic and activity. TechCrunch also mentioned that Compete was showing traffic on Mixx to be rising dramatically. I decided that maybe a second look at Mixx was in order.
Luckily a friend of mine Chris Winfeild, President of 10e20 and social media expert, was also testing out Mixx and was kind enough to share his results, giving us our second look at Mixx.
Test Case 2:
Around January 2, 2008, Chris’s article, Why Social Marketing is Critical to the Internet Marketing Mixx, was submitted to Mixx. http://www.mixx.com/stories/49836/. This article also made it quickly to the front page with69 votes, which is a ton for Mixx.
Mixx sent 43 UVs to the site.
Again, the results clearly indicate, from a marketers’ point of view, using Mixx does not justify the time and energy spent. With over a hundred social media communities and sites to choose from, you should probably pass on using Mixx for marketing purposes.
However, I am hopeful that more people will find Mixx to be a community they want to participate in, so that at some point, it will become a viable solution for social media marketing, but until that day comes… I will stay out of the Mixx.
**Traffic is used in this article only as a metric to gauge activity. The real value in social media is not through conversions or traffic, although that might be your ROI metric, but rather the value is in the links you can get from the mass exposure your content receives.
Links result in better search rankings and higher quality, second tier, traffic from sites you are being linked from.
Brent, having seen your name around the search blogosphere, flickr coverage of the conferences and such, seeing a review like this is meaningful, and nice reassurance that I wasn’t missing anything there.
On the other hand, Sphinn also sends very little traffic, yet the people it does send are fairly likely to comment and/or be influencers who could link. So you need to consider who is coming too, not just the unique visits (unless you’re selling CPM ads, in which case you could give less of a damn about who is coming). I love it when something I write makes Sphinn’s frontpage, even though the traffic is nothing spectacular.
@Gab.. The thing is Sphinn is pretty niche. Niche communities related to your product, content, or site is always good to market within.
I love this title 🙂
Great post, Brent! I’ve been using Mixx regularly, and have had similar results. At the same time, I’m really liking the community that’s building there… truly the “anti-Digg” in terms of civility…
I totally agree, it’s very pretty and shiny, but as we know, it’s all about the eyeballs. What it needs is to break a few stories first, get some real traction and crank up the heat.
However, I am hopeful that more people will find Mixx to be a community they want to participate in, so that at some point, it will become a viable solution for social media marketing, but until that day comes… I will stay out of the Mixx.
Then i feel that you are missing out. Marketing purposes or not, i wish i had of been around when digg started to see the real growth in these types of communities develop. It’s interesting watching mixx grow and I hope it starts to get bigger than the current ‘leaders’ in the market.
I guess I’m a kid 🙂
Great piece Brent … I was wondering about this and just hadn’t got around to experimenting with it yet. Thanks!
Why does everything have to be about money. Although in your defense you did say silly Marketer. They are as anoying as telemarketers.
@ Dad, "Why does everything have to be about money"
Because I can't eat art.
As an avid Mixx user, I wish all marketers would stay away from Mixx. Leave it to us kids. I get tired of seeing headlines that sound interesting, only to click through and get some crappy content that was a waste of my time because someone was trying to get an extra penny from AdSense.
The majority of “marketers” are link baiters and as much scum as the people who call my phone despite me being on a do not call list.
So please, leave Mixx to us kids. And when/if it grows big, don’t come back to it.
Kudos to the author for helping to keep the spammers off Mixx!
i just learned this web site, i mean, you know, mixx from you. and it seems good. and you showed a truth in your post but not at all.
Well said, but not at all.