Posts Tagged ‘social media marketing’

The keyword here is “social”. To be able to take advantage of social bookmarking sites, you have to become a part of the community, learn their culture, and use your knowledge to play the game (following the rules, of course). In social media, there are regular users and power users. When regular users submit a page, they get usually get modest traffic. In contrast, when power users submit a page, they are likely to generate traffic that would make servers cry. The difference? Power users have many friends within the community, and when they talk, people listen.

How do you become a power user?

1. Observe. Choose your preferred social bookmarking site and particular niche, then subscribe to it. The more specific the category, the better. Get a feel for the trends. Know what works and what doesn’t.

2. Keep ahead. Also, subscribe to the top blogs or sites related to your niche. Your RSS reader should have at least 20 of those. Some of these are probably among the most dugg sites already.

3. Branding. Join the site using a short catchy username, and an equally memorable avatar.

4. Get personal. Go to the Upcoming section and try to digg the ones you think will make it to the top. More importantly, be the first one to add comment of support. Add them as friend and check their profiles constantly to digg their other submissions. If you do this, they’ll most likely return the favor.

5. Test. Once you’ve accumulated about 50 friends or so, start digging posts from your own blog, one at a time. Don’t spam or you’ll get banned. Only your best posts should be dugg. See how much diggs you can get automatically, and how close you can get to Digg’s homepage. You might need to ask a little help from your friends first so that they know about your site. If you fall short of the number of diggs needed, just go back to #4 and expand your network. Remember, it’s all about being social.

Every blogger dreams about creating viral content, infecting people with your ideas and being the talk of the town. But how exactly does one go about it? Unfortunately, there really aren’t hard and fast rules. Even experienced bloggers will tell you that luck has a lot to do with it. It’s a matter of great timing and having the right people spread your post, creating that domino effect.

There are, however, some pointers you can follow, and if lady luck should smile upon you, your content may just spread like wildfire. So before you click that “Publish” button, check if you have done your due diligence on the following:

Quality
Content will not go viral if it isn’t special. Your topic should be unique, and your grammar near flawless. If it has pictures or videos included, a bit of polishing may be in order. Also, make sure you do thorough research on the subject, which should be relevant to your niche.

Quantity
Lists are some of the perennial fixtures in the viral content sphere. It’s been proven that people love “Top 10” and “Best of” listings. If you can extend that to “Top 100”, better – as long as you don’t sacrifice the overall quality of the article, of course.

Originality
With the sheer volume of content flying around, you’ve got be quite unusual to get noticed. Either that, or you’re the first to announce something huge that will blow people away. The point is, viral content must be something that jolts people and makes them go, “OMG!”

Controversy
It’s true what they say: “Bad publicity is still publicity.” Don’t be afraid to publish unpopular opinions. Debate and controversy make people engaged in a discussion. If they get emotionally invested in your story, they’ll be more likely to tell other people about it.

Study
Learn what other people are doing. Go to Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon, and all the other leading social bookmarking sites. Find out what’s hot and analyze what makes them click. Get some tips on how to write a proper viral headline, and see if there’s a common denominator in terms of writing styles.