Why you’re not making it big on Social Media sites

Social Media sites like Stum­ble­Upon, Digg, and hun­dreds of oth­ers are all very use­ful tools for blog­gers because they are such large traf­fic sources. Every­one talks about how they want to get on the front page of Digg, or get a mil­lion stum­bles, but not many peo­ple know how to achieve it. It turns out that just because you can write a really good, unique arti­cle and not make it big on the Social Media sites.

I have yet to really dis­cover the power of Social Media, but I do know a thing or two on what needs to be done to make these sites work out for you.

Set your sights high on the following

The links below are prob­a­bly the most well known Social Media sites, and you should pay the most atten­tion to mak­ing it big on them.

• Digg
• Stum­ble­Upon
• Deli­cious
• Red­dit
• Tech­no­rati

Most of the above web­sites have appli­ca­tions you can install onto your com­puter to use their ser­vice more effec­tively. You should check them out as they will really help you use the site to its fullest.

Your con­tent is lack­ing the essen­tials needed to go to the top

Peo­ple using Social Media sites are picky. They won’t read your sub­mis­sion if it’s been done a thou­sand times before (we’re sick of read­ing your 10 favorite Word­Press plu­g­ins!). Arti­cles like major news head­lines, an amaz­ing how-to, con­tro­versy or just an insight on some­thing really weird are hot top­ics. It’s not going to be easy to get any of your posts to the top of any of these sites (or easy writ­ing them). And we already estab­lished that being the first one to report a news head­line is not easy.

So how can you make your posts a lit­tle more interesting?

1. See what oth­ers in your niche are talk­ing about.
   Sim­ple enough, sub­scribe to a few blogs in your niche and study them. See what they talk about, and avoid blog­ging about the same things they do. The more unique the con­tent is on your end, the bet­ter your blog will look com­pared to the other guy.
2. Make your posts more appeal­ing
   The first step to get­ting your post read is to have things like good post struc­ture, a catchy title, and more. I have writ­ten a post in the past on cre­at­ing more appeal­ing posts in 4 sim­ple steps. Def­i­nitely check that out.
3. Think of this post as “the per­fect post“
   You should think highly of just about every post on your blog. If you talk about some­thing other blog­gers talk about a lot, then this should be the best post ever on that topic. Another arti­cle that has been writ­ten here called 7 Steps to per­fect con­tent writ­ing may be some­thing you want to check out.
4. Slap your opin­ion on every fact there is
   A post full of facts sucks, and peo­ple don’t go to your blog look­ing for all fac­tual infor­ma­tion. They want your opin­ion. It’s a blog, so there should be a ton of opin­ion­ated infor­ma­tion on there already.
   • You post your opinion
   • It cre­ates con­tro­versy (because not every­one will agree with you…hopefully)
   • Con­tro­versy = Discussion
   • Dicus­sion = Traffic!

In my opin­ion, it only takes one opin­ion to make your blog post awe­some. It’s like a chain reaction:

I think I am going to write a post later on how your opin­ion can make your post bet­ter. Stick around for that, I’m already tak­ing notes.

You want to get to the top before you’re ready

It’s com­mon (and nor­mal) to think that with really unique con­tent comes a front page spot on Digg, a flood of retweeted URLs, etc. It may not nec­es­sar­ily be your web­site that is not ready, but your social media pro­file. You can’t expect to really make the best of these sites with­out a strong profile.

You can cre­ate a strong social media pro­file in a vari­ety of ways. One thing to be espe­cially aware of is mak­ing friends on these sites. Friends can help you get your site to the top if you play your cards right.

Besides friends, what else is there to do to cre­ate a strong social media profile?

Cre­at­ing a good reputation

Going back to friends a lit­tle: to make friends, you need a good rep­u­ta­tion. Besides rep­u­ta­tion help­ing you make friends, it can get your sub­mis­sions to be taken more seri­ously, and that’s yet another fac­tor to mak­ing it big on these social media websites.

Other ways to build reputation:

• Don’t go sub­mis­sion crazy — Only sub­mit arti­cles if you think they’re going to work out on social media sites. Don’t sub­mit posts with news on your blog, or apol­o­giz­ing for not post­ing in a while. Peo­ple can see what kind of con­tent you put on Digg, Mixx, Deli­cious, etc. and may see that what you have added is stu­pid stuff. That ties into your friend mak­ing abil­i­ties as well.
• Make friends through your blog — Use plu­g­ins like ShareThis or Socia­ble so that other peo­ple can sub­mit con­tent for you. You could befriend these kind of peo­ple eas­ier, because it shows that they respect you when they add your con­tent to other sites.
• Stay vis­i­ble — What I mean by that is to always sub­mit new sto­ries, vote on cur­rent ones, cre­ate dis­cus­sions. It’s an awe­some way for your account to get noticed because of all this inter­est­ing stuff you’re adding (and the stuff you add doesn’t have to be from your blog).

So I hope this post has helped you under­stand the greatb­ness of social media, as well as what needs to be done to really use them effec­tively. If you have any ques­tions, fire away in the com­ments and I will get back to you ASAP.

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