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Hundreds of Bloggers to Interact with On Digg and StumbleUpon Posted: 25 Jul 2008 04:43 PM CDT It’s time to release into the wild another two of our Social Media Love-In lists - this time it’s all about social bookmarking. The opportunities for collaboration and cooperation on sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are amazing. They can be powerful tools with the potential to drive significant traffic to a blog. One of the keys that I’ve found to doing this is to have a good base of friends on the sites. As a result the following two lists could be quite significant. 271 StumbleUpon users 196 Digg users Didn’t make it on the lists? Unfortunately we were hit so hard with people submitting their social media profiles that we could only take submissions for 24 hours - however all is not lost if you missed out for two reasons: I’m hoping to do this again (it won’t be for a few weeks as this has taken a lot of work to compile) If you befriend the above people you can still benefit. I find that when I befriend someone on a site like Digg or StumbleUpon that it often comes back to me with the other person friending me. This is less so on SU where there’s a limit to friends (200 last time I looked) but there are plenty of opportunities for collaboration even if you’re not on these lists. Keep in mind - these people are bloggers - they’re influencers - they’re a part of sites that are incredibly powerful and networking with them can be a powerful thing. PS: don’t forget our list of 538 Twitter using bloggers. Technorati Tags: Digg, Social Media, StumbleUpon Share This

Passion, Honesty, Content and Light-Footedness - Ingredients of Successful Blogging Posted: 25 Jul 2008 03:23 PM CDT Yesterday I linked up to an interview with an Australian blogger (Alborz Fallah from CarAdvice.com.au) who has built his blog from a hobby to a million dollar business in just two years. I’ve not been able to get Alborz story out of my mind since as it’s a brilliant example of what is possible with blogging - but also resonates with my own story and approach. Today I’d just quickly like to pull out a few of the threads of the conversation in that interview that I think were important (there were many more but these resonated most with me): Passion for Topic It is totally possible to blog successfully and profitably on a topic that you have little or no interest in - but Alborz is so obviously passionate about his topic and I believe it is key to attracting a readership who shared his passion. Transparency and Honesty umerous times during the call Alborz talked of ‘telling it like it is’ on his blog. If a car that he’s reviewing is bad - he calls it bad, whether the car maker is a sponsor of his blog or not. This is another aspect of his blog that I’m sure has drawn readership to him as they know they are getting an honest review. Content Centered While Alborz talked of things like SEO, promoting his blog to other bloggers and other promotional activities - he said time and time again that he was mainly interested in high quality content. Even in times when his site disappeared from Google he wasn’t distracted from his primary task of producing engaging content. Exploiting the Weaknesses of Mainstream Media (Light-footedness) I loved the way that Alborz talked about taking on the ‘big boys’ in his niche here in Australia. He spoke about coming home from car shows and posting news that very night and how the MSM sites would not publish articles for a day or two (either because of their processes or just because they didn’t work at night). This highlights the power of individual and smaller publishers to break news and beat the large players at their own game. I think the more that bloggers take advantage of the fact that they can do what they like without editorial approval and get content published fast the better. Once again - a great interview if you’ve got a spare 45 minutes or so. PS: one other thing that I liked about the approach that Alborz took was that he started out with three blogs on three topics and played with each of them until I worked out which one to focus upon. I’ve talked about this a few times in interviews lately as being something that I did. At one point I blogged on 20 or so blogs on a variety of topics. Part of this was to see what topics worked and which I enjoyed most. I think choosing 3 topics like Alborz did is probably a better idea than 20 but the same thing applies. In the process of blogging on all three he got a sense for what his niche should be. Once he decided upon a niche he ditched the others and focused in upon his main passion - cars. I think that this is a great way to choose a topic to write about. Share This

Twitter for Beginners - 5 Things to Do as a New Twitter User Posted: 25 Jul 2008 09:01 AM CDT Yesterday I added all 538 Twitter users that submitted their details in our Social Media Love In. It took me a couple of hours to do - but I’m glad I did it because already there have been some wonderful conversations emerge. As I was adding new people to follow I noticed that there were a real range of people in the list. There were Twitter users with thousands of subscribers and others with 20 or so. Among the list there were quite a few who had literally just started using Twitter in the last 3 days (they’d started because of the Love-In itself). I’ve had a number of these people contact me to ask me where to begin as a new Twitter user. As a medium it can be a little overwhelming to know how to use it - so I thought I’d put together this list of things to do as a new Twitter User (this is definitely pitched at the beginner). 1. Work Out Why You Want to Use It One of the key things to do early on is to work out what your goal is. It could take a little while to work this out but the sooner you nail down what you’re going to use twitter for the better. There’s no right or wrong with how to use Twitter - your focus might be: to use it on a personal level to share what you’re doing with real life friends and family to build up you and your blog’s profile in your niche to unwind and have fun with new friends to build up your network in a niche The list could go on (and it could include multiple goals) - however knowing them up front will help you as you explore how to use it. 2. Start Tweeting One of the things that I noticed yesterday adding all 538 twitter users is that a number of them had only ‘tweeted’ once or twice (and a couple had never tweeted at all). I asked one person why this was and they said that they wanted to build their follower numbers up before they started using it. The problem with this thinking is that one of the best ways to build your Twitter network is to be active. Your Tweets are your best advertisement for people to follow you - if you don’t have any (or many) what reason do people have to follow you? So start updating your Twitter account. Don’t just write about anything - remember that every Tweet you make can either take you closer to or further away from your Twitter goals. 3. Start Following Others I spoke to one new Twitter user yesterday who told me that the ‘Love-In’ had brought them over 100 new followers - but that they’d increased this even further by finding other interesting people to follow herself. This user had discovered the power of adding followers on Twitter. She’d invested time into seeking out other twitter users who were Tweeting interesting stuff. This process is a bit of an experiment and involves following people and then seeing if their tweets ‘resonate’ with you. Sometimes it means you’ll follow someone for a while and then unfollow them - but you’ll eventually find a group of people that you enjoy conversing with. Which leads me to my next point…. 4. Get Interactive OK - so you know why you’re using Twitter, you’re actually tweeting, you’re following what others are tweeting - the time now is to start reaching out to others and getting a conversation going. This happens on a couple of levels: Firstly it’s about writing things that others will want to interact with. The best way to do this is to ask a question. People are wired to reply to questions so start asking some. Keep them relevant to your goals and be willing to reply to people’s answers. Secondly it’s important to respond to what other people are saying. The ‘reply’ feature on Twitter is key and should be used regularly, otherwise your use of Twitter will be quite one sided. After a while you’ll find that the conversation becomes quite natural as you get to know others that you mutually follow and track what they’re doing, what your common interests are etc. The beauty of being as interactive as possible with other Twitter users is that you’re talking to them in public and you’ll find your other followers and their other followers will chime in and make the conversation a little more multi-dimensional - it’s a great way of finding new friends to follow also. 5. Don’t Spam Another thing that I noticed happening with a few of those that I added yesterday is that the only thing they were using Twitter for was to promote their own content. While it’s possible to do this I wouldn’t advise it. I do promote my posts on Twitter - but I try to balance them with other natural and organic conversation as well. Another tip is to not just promote your own links, promote others. Keep them on topic and interesting and your followers will thank you for the links that you suggest. But Wait - there’s more… There’s a lot more that can be said about using Twitter - but I want to keep this as basic as possible for those just getting into the medium. Start with these five basic things, work on them for a week or so and then you’ll start discovering your own way. For more reading on using Twitter you might also like to read my previous posts on the topic: 9 Benefits of Using Twitter for Bloggers How to Use Twitter - Tips for Bloggers 5 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Presence (see also Part 3 and Part 3) 35 Twitter Tips from 35 Twitter Users Share This

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