Puzzled about it all?!?!  

Which brings me back to social media sites. When you’re giving the masses the ability to submit, vote on and promote any sort of content from across the entire web, what do you think they’ll do?

Sure, some people will want to know about the latest news in the Middle East while others are interested in Obama, and lots of people are are paying attention to Jerry O’Connell’s ‘Life in a SPEEDO’ wtf, howabout the economy, and other relevant or non-valuable information.

And yeah, niche social media and social news sites will have a focus (Digg leans towards technology, BallHype is sports-oriented, and Linkswarm focuses on Pop Culture & bizarre news).

But when you sift through the crap most of the general social media site that allows anyone to participate, you’re gonna see a lot of mainstream, general crowd pleasing stuff. Pictures you can easily glance at and laugh about stupid rants that have no discernible point and won’t make any sort of positive impact other than the fact that they made you smile or laugh for five minutes out of your busy, hectic Facebook day.

Similarly, great content still exists on the web just as it’s always existed, and it’s easy to find it if you know where to look.

Don’t take a cursory look at social media and reduce a vast, entire Internet’s worth of content to the stuff you see being featured on LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, Facebook, and MySpace profiles, etc.

Just because the “crappy” stuff now has a magnifying glass being held over it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before or that the “good” stuff  is drastically declining.  That’s the beauty of the Internet–it’s a comprehensive resource created by humans, for  humans.  And it’s for every and all kinds of people–freaks, snobs, dummies, juveniles, women, men, geeks, liberals, conservatives, and porn stars.

Today, I’m wondering why you engage in social media marketing -  is it personal, on behalf of your company (or clients), or some combination of the two?

Why do you have social media accounts?

What do you use them for?

Agreed, there are a great deal of social news sites on the internet, sometimes too many.  Most of them are dormant and no longer active or you forget about them and the usernames and passwords, perhaps it’s largely because they are poorly marketed and hence, never had an active community of users in the first place!

Just my opinion but most of them are a waste of your time: they are riddled with spam and possibly will never attract a critical mass of viewers and participants so know your sites and don’t bother.   hmmmm

YOU don’t have alot of time on your hands.

YOU want a community that gives you fresh news on topics that appeal to you.

YOU want somthing that sends prospects and traffic while ‘branding‘ your website or business.

YOU want a social news site with a long term return on your investment!

Here’s my TOP  5 General Social News Websites in no particular order..

1. Reddit-popular social news website with a large user base. Covers a wide range of news. Includes several topical sections called subreddits, which focus on specific topics like programming, science, politics and business.

2. Digg - the largest and most popular social news website on the internet. Covers all topics including politics, entertainment, technology and general news. Includes a separate video and image section.

3. Propeller – A social news site that covers all topics from technology to politics and entertainment. Operates in a similar fashion to Digg.

4. Fark – A community news site which allows users to comment on news articles. User submitted links will be posted on the main page once they are approved by the administrators.

5. Slashdot – primarily a tech news site, Slashdot also covers topics like books, games, politics and entertainment. Users can submit stories and they may be published after editors approve it. A popular site that can send a large amount of traffic.

But don’t take my word for it try them yourself!

1) Set up a WordPress blog okayyy it’s FREE:)

 2) Make your blog post.

3) Post social news snippets. okay a snippet is a tiny piece or part of your test, a sampler just so ya know. 

 4) Social bookmark your social news snippets.

5) Ping the bookmark RSS feeds.  In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated.

The social news snippets give your blog post a couple of strong incoming links. The social bookmarks provide some link juice to your social news snippets. It’s like a Red Bull in Vodka,  5 Nespresso shots , Titanium & Graphite to your Driver… well… you get the idea.

 So it’s important that you do the “social media” promotion right after you posted your blog

 
It’s because spiders (search engines)  get “excited” about finding links from your bookmarks to the social news sites.

They want to find out what all the commotion is about – that you’ve created – and finally arrive at your original blog post, WOOP WOOP!

What happens is the process of ping -> bookmark -> social news -> blog post – acts as ‘RED BULL’  I mean  leverage, a catalyst that will usually boost the original blog post to the top of the rankings.

Finally, to get the maximum search engine benefit, it’s important to do the steps in order

Blog, Social news, Social bookmark, and PING! And it’s best to do them quickly. One right after the other, within minutes of each other.

So you might want to open your text editor and write up your post. Write what you want to say in the snippet pages as well as the the bookmarks. Then just copy and paste in a hurry.

But do keep in mind… Different social media are used for different things. Be careful to understand the type of content that each one wants.

Social news – Propeller, Digg, Reddit
Social hosting – Squidoo, Hubpages, WetPaint
Bookmarking – Diigo, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Mixx
Social networking community – Facebook, mySpace, LinkedIn
Microblogging – Twitter, Tumblr, Friendfeed
Social video & picture - Youtube, Metacafe, Flickr

So the skinny:  Write the blog, ping the feed, take out the garbage, rinse, wash, andREPEAT!