“Lida Dai Dai Hua Jiao Nang Seo Yarışması”

A little more than year ago I presented you 7 social browsing services that will kill Digg and SEO 1.0 - most notably StumbleUpon but also Yoono or Me.Dium.

The decline of Digg seems unstoppable and at least blogs by now have far more visitors from StumbleUpon than Google so that SEOs had to adapt and embrace SEO 2.0 methodology.

The web is still a lonely place though. We’re still alone staring at the screen and often get angry for reasons we wouldn’t be in real life.

This is due to the lack of contact with other people during prolonged work hours at the screen. Sites like StumbleUpon do not really help here as the social aspect is still rudimentary. It’s more common that you get spammed or flamed than getting “social” with other people.

Like it or not, a new generation of social browsing services is already there and in future people won’t believe how you could ever walk the Web alone instead of “web together“:

1. Browzmi
2. Socialbrowse
3. Trailfire
4. Hooey
5. Kiobo
6. XPanity
7. Slingpage

Many of these advanced social browsing apps are or require browser add ons. Some of them offer chat functionality for real time social browsing and contact to other users. In most cases you won’t be alone anymore browsing the web. It can’t make you as happy as meeting real people face to face but it will at least make the Web a better, a more humane place.

Finally there are social browsing plus Second Life combinations emerging. I don’t think these are ready for prime time yet but probably they sooner or later will.

cc: Whiskeygonebad.

The “Social Media Insider” over at the Invesp Blog recently wrote a post about StumbleUpon called “StumbleUpon: 3 Most Important Things To Keep In Mind” about promotion on SU. I found it on Sphinn and while I was eager to read it my face quickly turned grim when I read the posting.

Then I checked it at StumbleUpon and noticed that it was huge there. The Invesp blog is a legit source for good marketing information so I was the more disappointed to find such flawed advice. I don’t say that it’s bogus but it’s wrong on many levels and people who follow it might even get banned from SU.

Most importantly though the post is the outcome of the wrong mindset, a mindset I call the SEO 1.0 mindset where people exploit social media instead of actively contributing to it in a positive manner.

Now who I am to teach a “Social Media Insider”? Some would perhaps refer to me as “power stumbler” as I have more than 11.000 pages “liked” and ca. 700 fans on StumbleUpon after more than a year active participation there.

So now I will debunk the myths spread in this post. While it attempts to sound legitimate between the lines there is the “SEO 1.0 mindset” shining through. He states for example:

SU’s algorithm is a very smart one so you have to make it look what you are doing is pretty legit.

Do Not Pose as, Be a Legit User

This above sentence is a fundamental mistake. When you attempt to pose as a legit user you’ll never be one. It’s about being a legit user though what makes you successful. I never had to pose as a real user because I was from day one. How you can accomplish that?

1. Be yourself.
2. Stumble what you really like not what you think others will like.
3. Do not stumble only work stuff like business and marketing, stumble arts, photography, science pages as people on SU are mostly there to discover such stuff not for business reasons.
4. Express yourself.
5. Do not stumble for numbers but for quality.

Now this is obviously a SEO blog so you probably wonder where the promotion comes in. In SEO 2.0 we don’t do obvious, sneaky or posing self promotion. SEO 2.0 is not about exploiting social sites, it’s about using them to the max in accordance with the rules and to please the community.
Do Not Promote Yourself to Promote Yourself

While SEO 1.0 is about aggressive self promotion SEO 2.0 relies on human nature.

Those who give the most are the most popular. Ever wondered why presidential candidates promise tax cuts before each election?

The more accepted you get on StumbleUpon the more people will trust and follow you and the more you’ll get stumbled. Often I’m amazed at how even the least SU compatible posts at SEO 2.0 get submitted and gain some traction. Also sometimes I get submitted even before I can fix my typos. A while ago I made the mistake of adding an image after publishing a post so that I was submitted without the image on the preview thumbnail.

I don’t have to “rotate my network” or something. The only thing I have to do from time to time is telling my most eager readers and fans to NOT stumble me anymore as 3 or more stumbles in a row rather hurt me than help. This is no joke. Also some people who ask me for a stumble feel obliged to stumble me back and then I always say “only if you really like it”. I don’t need vote exchange or anything like this.

Also I never actively send instant messages to a group of people to stumble me. This is crap advice as SU of course notices that someone enters the site from outside instead of just stumbling naturally via the toolbar and discounts such votes. It only works when the fans of the people who reviewed it like it too. You will sometimes see a post with 10 or more reviews and less than 20 thumbs up due to lack of real popularity. A post with one or even zero reviews but lots of real thumb ups can get much more popular in terms of traffic. You have to find a topic that most people are interested in. Such topics are of course:

• StumbleUpon
• Humor
• Internet
• Internet tools

Some of my most popular stumble success stories with more than 10k page views covered those topics. The Internet lies post took me just an hour to write but was viewed more than 10k times with most people coming via StumbleUpon. It combined both Internet and humor. My social media friends largely ignored it btw.

Finally there are 2 pieces of advice in this article that are really true but are often abused by people too eager to promote themselves:

Reviewing other stumblers and sending messages to those sharing interests with you.

I recently get more “targeted” messages like “Hey You, I see you like aviation too, check out my [insert sales pitch here]!”. In case it’s a sales pitch or it sucks for other reasons I won’t stumble it. I might even report you as spam like the guy who wrote me “I see you like Digg” just because I used the tag a few times. I hate Digg!

So now for the heroic reader I will disclose my mind boggling secret StumbleUpon promotion tricks!

There are of course some methods I use sometimes to speed up or enhance the process of being stumbled. They are very low key and are in no way directly self promotional but they work.

• Often I will announce a new post on Twitter to my 300 hundred followers. I rarely ask for a stumble but I almost always get discovered minutes after the announcement.
• I will submit my postings sometimes to Sphinn and then people will notice it ans stumble it too.
• After getting submitted I will tag myself. Tags and categories are the most important factor of success on SU. Most submitters fail to use them correctly though. So I will tag and categorize my posts without thumbing myself up or reviewing my post. Especially users new to SU will submit everything to science or Internet where nobody cares for it unless it’s really about science or the Internet (like the Internet lies post mentioned above).

The key for success on StumbleUpon is being known as a legit social media user throughout several platforms and of course SU itself plus being able to cover topics everbody cares about. Any artificial way of posing as someone else or feigning interest in other people will hurt you in the long run.

So don’t pose as a legit user, be one!

cc: broken by confusedvision.

Some of the so called social media sites are broken and a waste of time. In fact they are not social at all, they are anti-social. So you not only waste your time using them you also get viciously attacked, deleted or banned for no reason.

Many bloggers and webmasters still cling to the past where some social sites have been hailed as a democratic web. Those hopes have often been disappointed. Anonymous down voting, raging mobs and top down solely profit oriented teams behind the sites have wreaked havoc to our hopes.

Still there are plenty of social sites that work and do not fall it into these pitfalls. So whether you want to get popular there or simply contribute just for fun there are much better alternatives.

Digg vs StumbleUpon, Delicious and Mixx
Digg has deteriorated more and more in recent months:

• Less and less traffic
• random power user bannings
• crap on the front page

and the infamous bury brigade that will trash otherwise popular content for no apparent reason have made this site an Eldorado for the ugly and desperate. Those ugly who hate everything that is not Apple, Linux or WII and those who are desperate to get the server crunching Digg traffic (for the ensuing high number of links).

While there are still many genuine users over there and many of them even submit my blog posts unaware of the Digg ban on all things SEO, they can’t compete with the bury brigade and the Apple fan club.

Even environmental sites get buried and flamed as Spam. My blog got submitted more than 30 times and did not get popular once. Even if it did (once it appeared it would gaining 120 diggs in 4h etc. before it got buried) the traffic would crash my server and bring dozens of flame comments. The bounce rate is above 90% anyways as the traffic is “one size fits all” thus very untargeted.

• Do you want significant traffic? Focus on StumbleUpon instead. Here you don’t have to hurry either. No “one day” time frame of getting popular.
• In case you like Digg for the links, use Delicious instead. While Digg is only abut fitting in the mob (you can still succeed over there just adapting to the lowest common denominator, especially “tits and ass”) Delicious is about real value. Many of my posts are really popular there. Those who bookmark you will often feature your link automatically in their blogs.
• Users who are just into social news for the fun of it switch to Mixx. The community there is outstanding, the team very helpful and there are no blacklists for topics not fitting the mob.

Reddit vs Stumbleupon, Mixx
Just yesterday I got somewhat popular on Reddit. I got 47 “up” votes and 46 “down” votes. So in the end I got “1 point”. Guess how many referrers I got from Reddit? 4! Four people visited me. It means that at least 42 people voted me down blindly! OK, I’ve been popular on Reddit a few times and you get some visitors from time to time, even if you have just a small blog like mine. Those visitors do not even look at your site though. They disappear right away when they see no boobs or something. Reddit has one of the highest bounce rate of all referers - 94%! Those who really bother to read will just spit on you. Reddit has one of the most obnoxious crowds, it’s as vicious as Digg. They’re infamous for sexism also, so women keep off.

If you like bursts of traffics even as a non-celebrity site focus on StumbleUpon which is good for 200 visitors even for noob users. It has the lowest bounce rate in social media with 30 - 40% as long as you’re relevant and fit the category. In case you rather enjoy the simple allure of social news, Mixx is your friend. Very civilized and positive community, see above. No flamewars etc.

DZone vs Hacker News/YCombinator
A few days ago I was, for the first time ever, submitted to DZone by one of it’s power users. I had the DZone button displayed on SEO 2.0 for at least 4 months and nobody ever bothered back then. I was amazed to find out that DZone users are the same as Reddit users: They don’t read (bounce rate 93%) and those who do leave vicious comments. Unless you’re a hard core nerd whose tutorials are only understood by a chosen few, do not bother with DZone.

A much more positive and well-balanced site is Hacker News/YCombinator. Here both developers and entrepreneurs convene.

Hugg vs MindBodyGreen
Recently I submitted 3 postings to Hugg. Two very interesting ones from highly acclaimed green sources. One from my blog, the Blog Action Day poverty post. The first two got zero votes beside mine until today while my post got flagged as Spam (probably SEO = Spam over at Hugg) and never even appeared on the site.

A possible alternative for a green social news site is MindBodyGreen.

SEO TAGG s Sphinn
I joined SEO TAGG even before Sphinn existed and was very disappointed from the start. This site has no active user base whatsoever. I revisited it recently and nothing has changed even though they now do Adsense revenue sharing 50/50. Sphinn in contrast is by now a source of up to 800+ targeted visitors per submission and has a great community. Everybody who is serious about search marketing should get involved there.

Moreover sites like Social|Median, social browsing service Browzmi and niche social sites are another option for early adopters and people who are into targeted news.

Disclaimer: Don’t get me wrong if you are a genuine contributing user of one of these above sites I criticize. You can’t ignore the ongoings there though. Also you will notice that you can’t change these sites as they are not really democratic in most cases, they’re run by companies and you’re their non-paid workforce.

So before they sack you like Digg does with it’s most acclaimed users, just use the alternatives. It breaks my heart each time someone submits my postings to Digg. He might as well print them out and throw they away. Have you noticed that there is no Digg it button here on the SEO 2.0 blog? It’s because it’s a waste of time for me and you.

You can find me at StumbleUpon, Mixx. Do not befriend me just due to the fact that you do SEO or read my blog. I will only “friend you back” if you’re genuine and contribute great stuff which is not solely related to my work. In case you like solely my SEO stuff check me out at Sphinn, Delicious and Social|Median.

While “one size fits all” social news sites like Digg lose more and more ground, great niche social news sites appear everywhere. There are at least 5 new niche social news sites business people and Internet pros should be aware of.

Tip’d
This new financial social news service is a great community from the start. No wonder, the legendary social news user Muhammad Saleem is one of the leading figures of the project.

EarnersClub
This is an Internet marketing social news site that focuses on the “make money” niche which grows bigger and bigger it seems. I love the colors.

BizSugar
This is a site a few of the social news power users I know from elsewhere spend much time at. I like it very much.

Design Bump
They are around for a few months already and their not only design related news are a great inspiration.

LogoSauce
LogoSauce is a site that has a very specific purpose and succeeds at it. Both logo designers and businesses looking for a logo find what they need.

As more and more people, especially serious business people and Internet pros get banned or simply bored by Digg they look for better alternatives. They find Mixx but also excellent niche social news sites like the above.

Flagship blogs, that is business blogs with really valuable content often have either an obvious or underlying business model. After more than one year in the blog business or rather watching it I have noticed some patterns with professional bloggers. Aside all that “make money online” (please click my affiliate ads) crap there is real business value in blogs I want to outline.

So what are the most common blog business models?

1. Selling your blog
There was a spectacular blog sale a few weeks ago. A blog run by one single blogger was sold for 15 million Dollars. This is of course an exception but many bloggers sold their blogs. Some of them started at the same time when I did.

2. Offering consulting or other services
This is what many a-list bloggers do it seems. There are also many less popular ones of course who do that and also company blogs often fulfill that purpose. Especially my colleagues in the SEO niche continue to follow that path. In fact, I do a little consulting due to my blog too by now.

3. Becoming a blog network/full time blogger
A blogger who amazed me this year is Steven Snell aka Vandelay who started as a blogger offering design services with his company and ended up as the head of a 3 flagship blogs empire. Skellie is another example, after getting extremely popular with her first blog she just added a second one.

4. Serving niche products to your audience
This is a trend I see all over the place, people offering products for their audiences once they accumulated enough readers and subscribers and gained enough trust to be regarded as an authority.

5. Blog as resume and becoming a writer elsewhere
This is a business model I’ve seen with many of the brightest lights among last years blogging upstarters. Ann Smarty of SEO Smarty who writes for Search Engine Journal is one the best examples but also Skellie whom I have mentioned in #3 already. She’s a writer for Problogger among others. Last but not least, me too. For several months now, I’m a contributing writer to the SEOptimise SEO blog.

So I’ve seen more than a few good examples for each route and it seems it worked for all of them more or less. So here are my questions to my fellow bloggers:

• Did you choose one of these or another business model?
• Did you succeed or fail with it?
• What worked, and what didn’t work?

Why do I ask? One reason is that I’m still very fond of blogging or rather more than ever. I consider many ways of expanding my blog business which still is more a hobby than anything compared to my SEO work. So inspire me! You already do, but make me feel it!

In case you suspect I want to sell this blog: Hell no! I might rear up some new blogs though and sell them after a while, who knows…