I first started blogging on Angelfire when I was a freshman at the University of Texas capturing nuances of college life, parties, and girls. According to Seth Godin’s ebook, I had a ‘cat blog’. A ‘cat blog’ is one about my cat, my dating travails, my boss and whatever I feel like sharing in my public diary. Too bad I didn’t like cats or else I could have made a lot of money writing about them. Go figure.
Post college, I had a Xanga site, which was the 1st generation of a blogging community. Blog 1.0 I assume. It had a nice interface, some cool features like subscriptions (a list of all my friends’ blogs), blogrings, eprops and comments. I remembered days when I would update my Xanga just to get eprops. Blogging was so simple then…
Today, blogging is BIG business. There are people out there making mucho dinero off of blogs branding themselves as marketing gurus, left-wing liberals, and social media rockstars. There is so much information out there people are doing whatever they can just to be heard. And the people who are capturing the attention of the digital masses are the ones getting paid.
As a prototypical type-A MBA I spent the last couple of days trying to figure out this whole new world of social media and how I could manipulate it to get digital eyeballs on my blog. I kept sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss of the blogging underworld dissecting ways to drive traffic through twitter back links and digg power users. My obsession with this new age 2.0 eprops kept me up until 4 in the morning for the last couple of nights. After a couple cups of Starbucks, a few cans of Monsters, and two sleepness nights, I finally snapped myself out of this ridiculous funk after falling asleep on my laptop with the keys imprinted on my face. I realized that the intent of the blog was not to get the most traffic, but more to figure out my own career path and give others privy to business school and USC Marshall. I got all caught up; sometimes EGO can get the best of you.
Since I spent so much time diving into the social media world, I might as well share what I discovered the last couple of days.
Here are 7 of the most popular social media sites people use to sell ideas and develop personal brands:
- Alltop – This is Guy Kawasaki’s baby – a collection of blog dumps based on topics. So if say you are into bacon – go to Alltop, type in ‘bacon’, and presto! bacon blogs. If you have your own bacon blog, this is a good place to get the word out and see if you can exchange links with MrBaconpants
- Delicious – I remember when the site used to be called del.icio.us and I had no clue what this weird little site was all about. Actually, I still don’t. But apparently, it’s the biggest collection of bookmarks in the universe. Get your blog tagged on here and you will get more traffic than LA rush hour
- digg – Submit links and stories on this site and the users will either digg it (and the link moves up) or bury it (and the link moves down). If your blog is Dugg, or end up on the first page, you better watch out for the Digg Effect creating havoc on your host server
- LinkedIn – The Facebook for Professionals, LinkedIn is your one-stop shop for building your professional brand online. Fill out your profile, build your professional network and increase your visibility and you will be amazed at the number of job opportunities that will pop up. Check out this article on becoming a master brand using LinkedIn
- StumbleUpon – This website is great for promoting ideas in specific niches and generating buzz. It’s not as mainstream as digg, which is great because you get a lot more quality traffic coming to your site. And you usually stumble upon some quality websites as well such as Things Bears Love
- technorati – The beauty pageant for blogs tracking blog popularity over time. The State of the Blogosphere is an overwhelming study of the interconnections between bloggers and how fast a meme, or a unit or element of cultural ideas, spreads through the blogosphere.
- twitter – This social networking site is the biggest, fastest-growing internet phenomenon right now and about to go mainstream. It allows you to follow users and stay connected by answering one simple question: ‘What are you doing?’ Twitter actually seems really interesting so I am going to create an account and dive deeper into this one. More to come…
Social media is an exciting way to build a following and a professional brand online generating new ideas and influencing others. It is also competitive and unless you are a famous celebrity, it’s going to take a lot of work to build your social presence. If you are interested in blogging as a business or building your brand online, take some time to explore all of the nuances of social media. As for me, I will continue to focus on creating value the traditional way and leave these addictive social media tools to the experts…
Your Ideas
What would you add to the list? Which blogging tools have helped you promote your blog?
Read the full article: The Underworld of Blogging