More and more people are spending free time (and work time) online and lots of those people want to discover interesting things on the web. Google Blogsearch’s new home page applies that insight with a browsable version of what’s going on in the blogosphere. The UI design is a little reminiscent of Google News, but the new Blogsearch home page uses a lot of different code.

It’s great to see this new home page go live, because I’ve watched as the blogsearch team in New York pulled this together. Some people will compare it to Techmeme, but the sites are quite different. Here are a few of the differences in my mind:

- Techmeme focuses on very reputable blogs. That means that spammers find it hard to show up on Techmeme, which is great. But it also means that you’re more likely to see posts from the same A-list sites often, so you don’t get as much diversity. Techmeme tends to select the “best of the best” stories; on the Blogsearch home page, you can keep clicking the Next button until you get tired of going deeper. On an individual story on the Blogsearch home page, you’re more likely to see a lot of different voices, not just the top-of-the-pile blogs. For example, for the “Apple drops parts of its NDA” story, I count 38 posts about it on Techmeme and 121 posts on the Blogsearch home page:

So you’re getting lots of story choices from different blogs, plus there’s the full blogsearch backend if you want to search in more detail.

- Techmeme is heavily focused on tech news. The new Blogsearch home page surfaces stories from the wider blogosphere. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, that news didn’t really show up on Techmeme much, other than how Lehman’s spending on Information Technology (IT) might change. The Blogsearch home page is a blend of different blog topics. You can still get technology-only or business-only stories, but they are a click below the home page. There’s a few categories (world news, science, video games) that you won’t find on Techmeme or its sister sites.

- Techmeme is faster to pick up new stories. I don’t think the Blogsearch folks have focused on the speed of detecting new items so much as showing a diverse set of information. That might change over time; I just don’t think that was the highest priority for the initial launch.

- The two sites do have a different editorial voice. The Blogsearch home page is more likely to have gadget posts, new software versions (did you know that the Gimp 2.6 just came out?), and embraces the video game niche. The Blogsearch home page also tilts more toward bloggy blogs as opposed to mainstream news sources. Techmeme’s sister site WeSmirch is solidly about celebrity gossip; while the entertainment section of the Blogsearch home page mentions a Neil Gaiman reading:

So I view the sites as very different. I love Techmeme and will keep going there every day, but I plan to make the Blogsearch home page a regular stop now as well. Every discovery site from Techmeme to FriendFeed to StumbleUpon to freshnews to Alltop to popurls gives you a different lens to discover new things on the web. I think it’s nice to have another site that highlights interesting things.

Discovery is different than search, but they’re definitely related. I’m glad that the blogsearch team is looking at new ways to surface interesting things on the web. Congrats to the people that contributed to this launch, and I hope more people at Google start to think about surfacing fun stuff on the web.

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Google Blogsearch and Techmeme

Most bloggers recognize the incredible potential that exists with social media marketing. Many want to maximize the traffic they receive from social media, so they add a Digg button to their posts or sign up for an account at StumbleUpon. What too many bloggers overlook is that Digg and StumbleUpon are just two of the hundreds of available options, and they may not be the best fit for every blogger.

In order to get the most out of social media traffic you’ll need to put some thought into choosing the social media sites that are the most appropriate for your blog and your audience. Unfortunately, none of us have the time to be an active member on more than just a few social media sites, and trying to target too many of them by adding countless buttons and widgets to your blog will only make it cluttered and ineffective.

Among social media sites there is a huge variety of audiences, types of content that is popular, amount of traffic that is sent to popular links, etc. I think most of us would agree that quality traffic is more important than quantity of traffic. The quality of traffic that you receive from social media will be largely dependent upon finding the right fit for your blog. You’ve probably read that social media traffic is very low quality. From my experience, this is not always the case. Traffic from poorly-targeted social media sites will be low quality.

When you are evaluating social media sites pay attention to these factors. Find 2 or 3 that are a good fit for you and get the most you can out of them.

What type of audience? General or niche?

With so many different social media sites out there, the audience will vary greatly from one to another. Obviously, there are a number of general news sites, like Digg, but there are a growing number of excellent sites that focus on a specific niche. These sites typically will not send as much traffic as the major players, but the traffic will generally be of much higher quality and greater networking opportunities may be possible. If you’re looking for niche social media sites in your industry, check the categorized list of social media sites that I compiled.

What type of content does well?

One of the main things you’re going to want to study is the results of different types of content. Visit the front page every day for several days and look for patterns or habits that you can identify. Most social media sites will have an audience that generally prefers a few specific types of content. Learn whatever you can from the popular items, and try to create your own content that will have some of the same appeal to users. For example, if you see resource lists constantly on the front page, you may want to create your own resource list. Or, if you see controversial articles covering current news topics, try to go that route. Of course, whatever content you create should also appeal to your regular readers and subscribers.

What type of content does not do well?

At the same time you are looking for types of content that routinely draw results, also pay attention to what types of content you are not seeing on the front page, or what is drawing a negative response from readers. Just like each audience has its own likes, each will also have its own dislikes. Trying to promote the wrong type of content at a specific social media site is a waste of time.

Do users submit their own content?

If you are planning to target a specific social media site you will definitely want to know if there are any written or unwritten rules about submitting your own content. If so, you’ll need to rely on your readers to submit it, or ask friends to do so.

How many votes does it take to be popular?

Some sites, like Digg, can take over 100 votes (and more in recent months) to make it to the front page, whereas smaller social media sites may only require a few votes. Obviously, the larger sites also tend to have more users, so in some ways it can be easier to get votes. Still, this is something that you should consider. For my primary blog I target Design Float, a niche site for designers. One of the great things about promoting content at Design Float is that it only takes about 3 votes to get to the front page. Although it takes just 3 votes, popular submissions can easily receive a few hundred visitors in a day.

Are there tools/widgets that you can use on your site

I’m sure you’re familiar with voting buttons and widgets. The Digg button is very popular, and several others are also common. There are some widgets and plugins that allow users to vote at just about any site they want, and there are others that are specific to a particular site. If available, consider whether or not you should use voting buttons on your site. My opinion is that voting buttons can be very effective if you don’t use too many of them and if you choose social media sites that a decent number of your regular readers use themselves.

How much traffic do popular submissions typically receive?

Of course, you will want to have an idea of what type of traffic you can expect if your content becomes popular. There are so many social media sites out there that many of them send next to no traffic at all. Don’t necessarily write off a particular site because it doesn’t send thousands of visitors, but you also don’t want to waste your time chasing after 10 visitors.

Is the profile of the submitter important?

Some social media sites, especially Digg, will be impacted by who submits the link. Certain “power users” have hundreds or thousands of friends that follow their submissions and vote them up. On other sites the profile of the submitter has very little or no impact. This is important for a few reasons. First, if the profile of the submitter does play a large role in the success of the submission, you’ll need to either find influential users to submit your content or build a strong profile yourself to submit your own content (which can be frowned upon). Second, sites that don’t favor particular users will place more value on the quality of the content rather than the network of the user.

What are the demographics of the users?

Ideally, you’ll want to find a social media site that has similar demographics to your target audience. For obvious reasons this will improve the quality of traffic that you receive. Some social media sites tend to have users that are in a particular age bracket, a specific sex, or from a specific geographical location. To determine these items you may have to spend some time on the site and visit the profiles of a lot of users. See what you can find out about them.

What views prevail?

The audience of different social media sites tend to have varying views on different issues, and some audiences can be very passionate about certain things. This can either help or hurt you. Cater your content to fit in with popular opinions and you could see impressive results. Write a post that goes against the majority view and you could see some backlash, depending on the site. This really can apply to just about any topic. For example, Apple vs. Microsoft, or conservative vs. liberal views.

What formats are accepted?

Many of the major social media sites are accepting pictures and video in addition to just standard links. Some social media sites even have specific sections or categories for different types of content (Mixx does this very well). As video continues to become more and more common, more social media sites will add specific elements to accommodate video submissions. For now, you’ll want to take this into consideration to determine if your content would be a good fit for a specific site.

How can you network with other users?

One of the basic elements of social media is networking with other users. Regardless of what site you are targeting, having a strong network of other active users will be extremely valuable. Not only will it improve your chances of getting traffic, but you can also make some great connections and help others along the way. Some social media sites offer much better networking opportunities than others. StumbleUpon is one of my favorites for networking. Being able to send messages, share links, and review other users all right from the toolbar make the networking on StumbleUpon hard to beat. If one of your goals is to improve your network through social media, make sure that you spend your time on sites that will make networking easy.

Are there specific sub-groups?

Social media sites that allow you to start your own group can improve your ability to meet others that share your interests. Again, this is something that Mixx does very well. Users can start a group or join and existing one, and group members can invite other users to join. If you’re looking to do some networking with others that fit into a specific niche, this may be something to consider.

Are the users connected to other social media sites?

Almost all social media users are active at more than just one social media site. If you can identify the relationships between various social media sites you may be able to use this to your advantage. For example, many popular submissions at Digg wind up on the front page of Delicious after a bunch of Digg users have bookmarked the page. Maybe you would like to target Delicious, but only a small percentage of your readers use Delicious. If it’s easier for you to get to the Digg front page, you may be able to create something worth bookmarking and transfer that Digg traffic into a spot on the Delicious front page.

Another effective approach is to use smaller, niche sites to send a smaller rush of traffic and try to convert that traffic into Diggs, Stumbles or Delicious bookmarks. Making the front page of a niche site is typically easier than hitting the front page of the major sites. Maybe you can take a small step towards a popular submission at a niche site that will allow you to take a bigger step towards success at a major social media site. Several months ago I wrote a more detailed explanation of this approach, How to Set Up a Domino Effect of Traffic.

How long does the traffic last?

Social media sites are notorious for sending a quick rush of traffic, and then nothing at all. With most social media sites, popularity doesn’t last long. StumbleUpon is one of the few exceptions. With SU you can still be getting trickles of traffic for several months or longer. You should consider whether or not sustained traffic to your submissions is important to you. In order to get a consistently high level of traffic from most social media sites you’ll need to be hitting the front page every couple of days, which in most cases isn’t realistic.

How many links can be generated?

Link building is a priority for many social media marketers. If you fall into this category, take some time to research how many links popular items are getting from different social media sites. You can do this by going back through items that were popular a few days ago and do a Technorati search for the specific URL of the page. This will allow you to see all of the links that Technorati is tracking to that page. One thing to remember here is that not all of the links you see will have been a result of popularity on a specific social media site. If an item was popular in one place, chances are it was popular somewhere else too. Still, if you check several different items you can get a good idea of the link building power this way.

Is there a feature/option to share submissions with friends?

If you have an established network of friends, you may want to ocassionally share some of your links with them. Each social media site has its own way of allowing this. StumbleUpon’s can be done straight from the toolbar without ever leaving the page. Digg uses the shout system to send email notifications, and many other sites have their own versions. If you want to be able to share your links and ask your friends for votes, this is important to consider. If you don’t want to share your links and you don’t want to be bothered by other users sharing links with you, these features may be more of a negative (although you can turn them off on many networks).

Is having friends important?

Social networking obviously involves being social. Most social media sites have a system that allows you to add other users as your friends, and for other users to add you as a friend. At some social media sites this is more critical than at others. The number and quality of friends can sometimes have a significant effect on the traffic that you receive. This is important to know before targeting a specific site, because it may mean that you’ll need to spend a lot of time networking and gaining friends.

Conclusion:

My opinion is that the ideal strategy will involve targeting 2 or 3 different social media sites. That is enough to get some results, but not too many to spread yourself thin. If possible, be an active user of at least one major social media site and at least one niche site, although not every niche will have an effective social media site. If you have other things that you look for, please leave a comment.

My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the guy behind ProBlogger. You can read a little more about my journey of blogging on the About ProBlogger page - but let me take a moment to give you a bit of glimpse at who I am.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How to Target the Right Social Media Sites

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How to Target the Right Social Media Sites

by Jackie Baker

Blogging for business is huge these days. When done well, it’s a great tactic for engaging your visitors, facilitating conversation with your audience, attracting links, and getting more pages to rank in the search engines for relevant terms. But there are some key functioanlity areas you need to address when incorporating a blog with your main website.

As you optimize individual blog posts for your targeted keywords, you have the potential to have more pages rank in the search engines for those terms. Just think, if you optimized well and got lots of links, you could have website pages and blog posts fill up the top results when people search for “martial arts austin.”

Additionally the title of each blog post needs to be clickable. Instead of just reading all of the posts on one page, link the title to the individual post. That way, a reader can click to read just that post and all of its comments. Speaking of blog comments …

Comments Section
The Premier Martial Arts blog has a link for comments, but it isn’t used in the traditional blog sense. Instead of allowing readers to leave a comment under a specific post, they are taken to the main contact form on the website. This is not blog commenting!

Blog comments are a means to facilitate a conversation between readers and the blog author. They are also a way for people to get links back to their own blog. Each post should have its own comments section. Visitors can click on either the title of the post or a “comments” link under the post, where they are taken to the individual post page with all of the comments listed at the bottom and a form for submitting their own. This form should have fields for visitors to enter their name, email address, URL, and comment.

For an example of how a comments section should work, check out the one at the bottom of this article, and on every other article on Search Engine Guide.

Subscriptions
You have two primary call to actions on a blog:

1. leaving a comment
2. subscribing to a feed

Every blog needs to have an RSS feed (really simple syndication). An RSS feed allows regular readers to subscribe to your updates in a feed reader.

Feeds are great because they allow people to easily track your blog updates, which in turn keeps them more engaged and involved.

Make It Easy To Share
Social media is huge these days. And you want it to be very easy for your readers to share your content with other through primary and niche social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us, and many others.

Blogging platforms offer plugins you can use to add buttons to your blog that readers can click to submit or vote for your article if they like. Make it easy for readers to share the stuff that they like!

Speaking of blogging platforms …

Many of these platforms also come with a large variety of templates you can use, and then customize. Or, you can find a programmer to create a template that matches your main website design.

If you are going to run a successful business blog, you really need to do it with software that will make it efficient and easy. And the best part is, most of these are free!

Blogging is a great online marketing strategy because it keeps your content fresh, engages your audience, and attracts links. So make sure that it is working as well as it possibly can!

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Excerpt from:
Site Clinic: Incorporating A Blog On Your Company Website

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