One of the benefits of social media is that it can help your organization more visible to the public you’re trying to reach. And one of the ways you can make it easier for more customers to take notice is to share great content, whether informative articles, photos or videos. Social news sites such as Digg, Reddit and Delicious provide ways to promote this content in a way that can attract more traffic, link love and, hopefully, interested new customers to your website.
In a nutshell, here’s how social news sites work: users post content to a social news website, and other users can choose to promote content they like further. The specifics, including how popular articles are determined and displayed, will vary from site to site, but the underlying concept is the same.
In this installment of our Get Social! series on social media, we discuss guidelines and tips for getting the most out of social news sites.
Build a great profile.
As with any form of social media, it’s to your benefit to fill out the provided profile space as completely as possible. Provide your company URL, as well as links to any of your other social media sites, a keyword-rich description of what you company offers and any logos or photos. This way, you let other users know where you coming from and exactly where else on the web they can find you.
Post regularly.
For best results, share content on a consistent basis. Posting regularly makes it easier to establish your company as an authority on a subject and to network with other users that can further promote your content.
Don’t post content that is overly sales-y in tone.
Sharing content with too strong of a marketing bent is a no-no on social news sites, an act that, depending on the site’s terms of service, can get you banned. However, you can still post content that subtly promotes your brand by demonstrating your company’s expertise on news, trends and other important topics within your industry.
Find the appropriate channel(s) for your content.
To help your content get maximum exposure, it’s important to select the right social news sites and site categories for your material. Digg and Reddit are great general social news sites, but there are also plenty of industry-specific social news sites to consider; For instance, Autospies is a social news site geared toward the automobile industry. The readership may be smaller on these industry-specific websites; but with fewer pieces of content and a readership that’s more likely to be keyed in to your message, it’s easier to gain more exposure. For everything you post, make sure to categorize it under as many relevant topics as possible.
Identify power users and interact with them.
Social networking isn’t really a strength of social news sites, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible to build beneficial relationships with key users. For each social news site, look for other users in your categories that frequently post content that agrees with what you post, and get friendly with them. Comment insightfully on their articles (a “great post J†will not do; to be effective, your comments should provide additional helpful information on the topic at hand.) By forging these relationships, these users are much more likely to support your content.
If you have great website content to share, CyberMark can help you share it on social news sites as well as other key places to build your web presence. Contact us to find out more how you can benefit from our social media marketing packages.
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