Week 6: use the social Web blog start series
The Blog start series continues. In total 10 weeks I give tips and hints to optimize the makers of candy College.com blogs, to increase traffic.
Last week before the summer break was the subject of “Tips for best posts”.
Today it is now the external marketing. Because normally a long needed a new blog until it is properly listed in Google you must look after other traffic sources.
The “social Web” is very important. And therefore it should be today.
What is the social Web at all
It is called the join Web. In fact it comes that Internet users not only passively consume but actively contribute content, evaluate, recommend, etc.
Social sites users so actively involved in the design of the content. Social sites would be dead without actively participating users.
Such social sites are always popular. In times of spam, online advertising, public relations, and so many Internet users with recommendations of other Internet users are interested in. So they hope undistorted facts and opinions themselves.
In the great distinction is 2 types of social sites:
- Social news sites
- Social bookmarking
While the user log current articles, papers, Blogposts, etc. The other user then evaluate these links and the most popular links are then usually at the top and get the most visitors.
Here user place their favorite links and sort public bookmark lists build on this. These can be exchanged then with each other and highlights the most popular bookmarks.
Of course most services have their peculiarities, but in fact it works.
Why should you use the social Web?
Because many Internet users are on the road. Using social sites provides the following benefits:
- Social sites bring back links. Nofollow whether with or without (of course better) this back links provide a stronger linking of your own blog.
- Entries in social sites bring direct visitors. A FrontPage article at Yigg about 100 visitors brings me. This is now no comparison with Digg, where there are thousands, but for new blogs, this is a good source of traffic.
Some of these visitors is to root readers. I think as almost all new interesting blogs on social news sites. - Entries in social sites also increasingly appear on Google and co. This heard the opportunity to draw your own blog search engines users.
- You can make contacts, and meet other users.
- The duplicate content issue plays a part in social sites. So it should be happened, the text on the social site than original was considered and the actual original text in the blog as a copy. It flew the blog article from the Google index.
To turlich there are also disadvantages, albeit very few:
However, Google has now well under control. We should write the description text for the social sites but extra, and not just take the text from the separate article.
DOMAIN.COM uses social sites?
DOMAIN.COM seems so far not optimally use the social Web. On the pages of blog not find social site button and no voting button.
If Julius reports his article from candy College.com still manually when social sites I cannot say.
In any case, I recommend the following procedure:
(1) appropriate social sites choose
To first of all we should select the appropriate social sites. While social bookmarking sites such as Mister Wong always work, many social news sites specialize in specific topics.
DOMAIN.COM rotates as mainly to search engine optimization and related things. Yigg, however, has for all possible topics space.
Julius should get so first overview, which there is social sites and which of them are suitable for its news and articles.
(2) Are themselves active
Waiting not that other users on social sites logs you on. Blogger to log their own items in normal and not prohibited.
You should log but each post. Either he is content really good or you’re the first to a topic. Then says “Login” at all appropriate social sites.
It is important that their other blogs on social sites reports. So, ye trusted.
(3) The technology helps
There are a number of tools which help the marketing social sites and simplify.
- Bookmarklets
- WordPress plugins
- Voting button
- Firefox plugins
It is bookmarks you can pull in your browser’s bookmarks bar. You then find an interesting page, you click on the bookmarklet and to appropriate social site and may report found page.
There are many WordPress plugins which simplify linking to social sites. I previously had “Sociable” in use, have installed the service “Seitz Oaks” but scratch. Below is the small black bars. These plugins provide links to various social sites.
Many vendors (e.g. Yigg and hype) offer so-called voting buttons for your own blog. These buttons displays the number of previous votes for this item in the respective social site. You can also voted mostly directly by clicking on this button for the item, without visiting the social site only.
There are various plugins for Firefox. They offer similar functionality so that you can report a page on a social site for example easier. Mister Wong as a such Firefox plugin offers
More information for using the social Web
Of course, the social Web provides further opportunities for blogs.
So for example Twitter is just difficult. It is a messaging system (microblogging), which you can subscribe similar like blog feeds.
The headings are very important in social sites. From the large number of items reported there every day, you must stand out with a very good heading.
As already mentioned, the reported content either should unique, so something special be or but it is the first who writes about a particular message.
To report a news has already x entries on the social news site, makes no sense.
We should really make the effort and the items manually log. This one should vary always something the text. Also, I had already success thus appropriate to social site match the headline.
On Friday there the evaluation
As always reported ;-) what he enforces them having Julius then on Friday in what he considers my tips, look like the results.
The blog start series
Go to the previous parts of the series:
Week 1: Objectives and basic settings
Week 2: important WordPress plugins
Week 3: get getting back links
Week 4: Getting marketing started
Week 5: Tips for best posts