No bullshit social publishing news and opinions. Follow Brandon.
[This post is part of our series, 31 Days To Build A Better Blog. We used Darren Rowse's workbook to get our website, Soap Box Included, up and running. You can follow our series here.]
As you know, I don’t like to promote stuff. 31 Days To Build A Better Blog and ProBlogger: Secrets For Blogging Your Way To a Six-Figure Income? They are must buys for anyone looking to grow their business and online brand through social publishing.
Day 9 of 31 Days To Build A Better Blog deals with joining forums in your niche. My niche is leadership, particularly leadership among my fellow millenials. So I spend time reading Brazen Careerist, although after reading how Darren does things, I need to be more active in the community there. There are also a few Gen Y Ning groups I follow, but again, I should be participating more than I do.
Why participate? Aside from inbound traffic to your blog, which may be of questionable value depending on who you ask**, you are introducing yourself to others in your field, and it’s important to make connections when you can. So get to it.
**6:12PM EST Edit: I asked @Bing on Twitter whether or not forum links helped in the rankings, and they said: ”It is a hint for the ranker, but it isnt definitive.
The missing task: Digg
No. I’m not talking about getting on Digg’s front page. That offers little long term value. This is also true for any big website when they link to you, as was my experience with TechCrunch, College Humor, and Fark.
And no, I don’t think you should bother trying to figure out how to get stories on the front page. A very small group of people, with a little assist from the administrators, get their content to the front page. That’s ok. It’s just like Wikipedia where only 1% of it’s users edit the pages, and really, there’s no benefit to getting there aside from the temporary spike.
You want to use Digg for it’s real value: Discovering new blogs / websites in your niche and participating in the site’s community.
What you want to do is log into Digg using your Facebook account, add me as a friend (networking, remember?) and head over to the upcoming tab.
Digg (Vote) for the stories you like. I take forty five minutes a day to go through five upcoming section pages. Make sure with each vote you leave a comment. Not just on Digg, but on the website you’re digging for.
You can do this as a scatter shot, and leave links all over the place.
Or
You can digg blogs / websites in your niche, sort of like joining the forums, and get to know people in your community or topic area.
You should also vote for items on the front page, but since the digg comments area on that section are usually loaded, instead of leaving a comment, you should vote for the comments you like.
You can, and should, leave a comment on the actual website at every opportunity if it falls into your subject area.
Now, as a disclaimer: The Digg comments can get very sarcastic and stupid. Fark is worse, but if you’re going to use Digg, you should brace yourself and remember not to take anything personally.
So get out there, join those forums, and digg it up. I’ll see you there.
Recommended Reading To Start Your Blog:
ProBlogger: Secrets For Blogging Your Way To a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett
31 Days To Build A Better Blog By Darren Rowse
P.S. Digg is also a great source of content for your blogs. You can use it to find new topics or just interesting items you want to share that you would not have otherwise found. Today’s post was more about networking, but using Digg for content is something I expand on here.
