What can you learn from the Top 10 Most Popular Blog Sites?

It’s getting hard to agree on what makes something “cool” these days.  With so much information swirling around the internet, I would argue that it’s even harder today to be considered “cool” which makes it all the more impressive when  you look at the amount of hard work these sites have put in to get to the top of the list.

The following sites made our “Top 10” most popular list based on a combination of factors including their ranks on Technorati and Alexa, as well as their Google Page Rank (all are 8 or above!).  But the real test of “coolness” is whether or not millions of people follow and read your blog on a daily basis.  And making it to the top of that heap in today’s world is in fact very cool indeed!

Our Top 10 Coolest Sites on Earth:

1. Huggington Post – political news review & comments
2. TMZ - celebrity gossip
3. Engadget - all things tech but cool
4. Gizmodo - more tech stuff
5. Mashable - social media news & web tips
6. TechCrunch - yet more tech?
7. Gawker - political & celebrity gossib
8. lifehacker - tips & downloads for getting things done
9. BoingBoing – pop culture, weird news & fun stuff
10. The Daily Beast – political & news review & comments

What do they all have in common?

It may seem obvious as to what these sites all have in common, but making a list of what makes them great might inspire the rest of us to bigger and better things.  Each of these super cool sites offers:

• Ruthless devotion to being current & interesting
• Unique content you can’t find anywhere else
• Popular topics & subjects.  There are no blogs on boring subjects in the top 10.
• A good reason to follow along including providing:
  • Interesting or fun information
  • Insider gossip
  • News & political discussion
  • “How to” advice
  • Being the “first” to learn about a topic

Did we miss any?

I hope you enjoy our list.  If you think we missed a site that should be included leave it in the comments for others to see!

Is Social media causing the world to “devolve”?

I sat through an interesting presentation this week given by Michael Fredrick of Point 2 Point Central.  Michael is a web developer who has grown up in the online world and has a different perspective on things than those of us who grew up “offline” so to speak.

The presentation was designed to educate business owners about how social media has grown into an 800 pound gorilla; and what they should be tuned in to if they want to keep from falling behind.  He also talked about the evolution of social media and where it’s headed in the coming years.

Some interesting facts from Point2Point about the growing world of social media

• 20% of American’s consume fast food daily and 50% use social networking sites daily
• Wikipedia has more than 14 million articles and 85,000 contributors

Facebook:

• Facebook has more than 500 million active users
• 50% of them are on Facebook every day
• Zynga, the creators of Farmville, is currently worth $5 billion!

Twitter:

• Twitter has more than 100 million users
• Twitter is adding 300k new users per day!
• Twitter gets 180 million unique visitors to the site every day
• Twitter is handling more than 55 million tweets per day

You Tube:

• People are watching 2 billion videos per day
• Every minute, 24 hours of video is being uploaded to You Tube

Word Press

• Over 25 million WordPress publishers
• Over 260 million people visit a WordPress site or blog every month

What does all this mean?

We know from previous studies that the #1 reason people go online is to “pass time.”  But what does the growth of the social websites mean?

For business owners, it means more new things to learn – because they can no longer ignore what’s happening in the online world.

For everyone else, does this mean the world is “devolving”?  Meaning that people are acting less like people and more like machines connecting through the digital world?  Only time will tell!

Unlike other popular social networking websites, LinkedIn only offers a few applications, or apps. As a primarily business-oriented website, these apps are more practical than those offered on a site like Twitter or Facebook, and as such it is easier to see how they can benefit the professionals who are members of this site.

Top LinkedIn Apps include:

1.  WordPress and BlogLink – these apps allow you to connect your blog to your LinkedIn profile, helping those in your network keep up with what you are doing and writing. This also allows you to expose a greater audience to your blogs, getting more value for the time and effort invested in its development.

2.  A Twitter app is also available on LinkedIn. For those who use Twitter, this offers the same advantages that linking a blog to your LinkedIn profile entails.

3.  Through the Google Presentation and SlideShare apps, you can embed PowerPoint presentation into your LinkedIn profile. If this type of presentation is part of your work or a good reflection of some aspect of what you offer, these apps make it easy to share your work without changing the format.

4.   If you travel extensively, the MyTravel application is a way to share your travel itinerary with your network. This can help them meet up with you when you cross paths in a specific town or present more opportunities for in-person meetings with potential customers.

Quality over quantity

There are additional applications available on LinkedIn that you may be able to leverage for your specific company and professional needs. While they may not be as great in number on this site when compared to others, it is still important to keep in mind that any app that you use should be done in a way that reflects your professionalism and qualifications so that you are presented in the best possible light to members of your LinkedIn network.

In previous posts, we have encouraged businesses with Facebook pages to link their Facebook page to other social sites such as Twitter, YouTube, or even blogs. These sites can be connected to the business’s page in a way that allows Facebook to automatically extract the information from them and post it on Facebook. There, it will show up as status update with a brief summary of the blog, video, or the entire Twitter posting and a link to the outside site.

3 Good reasons to integrate your social activities:

1. It allows users who follow your business on one site an easy way to follow it on another site. Facebook users can follow you on Twitter, and Twitter users can easily read your latest blog post.
2. It saves time and money by getting the most out of each post on any of the sites. If you created a great video on YouTube, getting your Facebook fans and Twitter followers to view it is much more advantageous than simply hoping that the same number of people find it on YouTube.
3. Improves optimization. The more times that a given post, video, or status update is published online, the more likely it will be that it shows up in search results. This increases the amount of exposure your company will have for given search terms, bring more people to you as opposed to your competitors.

By linking your social media accounts, you are getting the most out of the time, money, and effort you spend on each of them to promote your business.

Website traffic is one of those things that it seems like you can never get enough.  And for those who are struggling to find the right amount of web traffic this can be a serious pain point in your business.

While we work with clients on some complex internet marketing strategies for building web traffic, there are some simple things that we can offer as tips you can do on your own.

5 Steps You Can Take To Increase Web Traffic:

Step 1: Add local meta data and content to your site.

If you don’t know what “meta data” is read our article “Meta Data Explained for People with Real Jobs.”  However for those of you that know where to find a page title – the first suggestion is to never leave it blank.  The biggest mistake we see is that someone just put your company name there which is an enormous waste of space.

Adding your local information to the website in the following areas can have a big impact on attracting more local users to your website.  Make sure to take advantage of the following on each page:

• Page Title
• Content
• Footer

Step 2:  Get rid of Generic or copied content.

Most people have heard that you need good articles or news on their websites.  However they post other people’s articles or news which really does them no good.  The other big mistake is when companies take “stock” content from vendor sites and put it on theirs.

The bottom line is Google rewards fresh, original content.  So do some writing of your own and you will start to attract more web traffic.

Step 3:  Use free local tools.

There are a whole host of free tools out there such as local listings in Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Creating a good listing in those search engines will definitely bring more traffic to your website.  The same can also be said for creating profiles on customer review sites which are also usually free.

Step 4:  Get serious about social.

There is a whole world developing online of social media outlets for information.  The big 3 are Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.  But there are also sites such as Squidoo, Scribd, Hub Pages and StumbleUpon where you can post and share content with millions of other web users.  And these days you can even hire a social media consultant if you need help in this area!

Step 5:  Write and share your expertise or passion.

If you have any subjects that you have expertise or passion about – start writing.  The online world is full of enthusiasts for one thing or another and the best way to reach them is to write something compelling and interesting that you will want to read.

I hope these tips on internet marketing can help drive more visitors to your website.  If you would like to discuss them further please contact us today at 504-669-3207 or email info@mywsiconsultant.com.

My former CEO was well known for his ability to see the big picture in our industry.  In fact the speech he became best known for was, ironically enough, the “Big Picture Speech.”  The beauty of the Big Picture Speech was that by keeping our eyes on the big picture it made a lot of the details in our work lives easier to manage.

Lessons Learned

The lesson I learned is that by focusing on what was happening on the larger scale, we could always check to make sure our planning and daily activities were helping row the boat in the proper direction.

So with that said, here is my own version of the big picture speech for the online world in 2010:

Digitization of our world

Depending on your technological bent, it’s either really cool or really alarming the pace at which our world is becoming digitized.  What I mean by that is, no matter how you slice it, people are consuming and sharing their information in an increasingly digital format at a faster rate than ever before.  As further proof who would have ever heard of a digital marketing consultant even a few years ago?

Lesson – make sure your marketing efforts are participating in the digital revolution.

Mobile devices

According to a recent study by Quantcast, mobile usage of the internet grew 110% last year.  This should come as no surprise for anyone who has 2 eyes and can see just about everyone using a smart phone of some type.

Lesson – make sure your website and marketing materials are friendly to mobile users.

Local search trends

in the past year or so the 3 biggies Google, Yahoo and Bing have all begun showing you local search results.  If you are searching for something related to plumbing (for instance) they assume your intent might be to find a plumber or a plumbing supply store and will show you a various number of possible results.

Lesson – take full advantage of free local listing services.

There are no shortcut secrets in online marketing

Believeme I’ve tried most of them.  But this $20 per month “do it yourself SEO program” is still my favorite.  A client called me this week and asked me what the difference between my offerings and the $20 “Do It Yourself SEO” package on his host company’s website.

Lesson – if there was a $20 shortcut to success online I’d take it.  However be prepared to work hard at it and recognize these trends if you want to win.

Good Luck with This Program!

Big Picture Summary

Make an Appropriate Investment into Digital Marketing

So stop treating your website like a brochure and breathe some life into it.  Add some content, write some articles, start a blog and get involved in the conversation online.  Find a way to invest some time, money (or both) to making an effort to participate in the big picture changes being discussed here.

I’ve been fascinated by the whole concept of Squidoo. There were so many interesting things there from both a user and seo standpoint that I just had to jump in. So last night in I went.

3 hours later I had what I think is a nice first lens called Copper gas and electric lanterns – fall in love with lighting all over again. Writing the post was easy enough but the really fascinating part was how to present it. Much like web design or graphic work – you have to make something readable and interesting and Squidoo gives you lots of chances for both.

The part which I think makes Squidoo more fun than blogging is the chance to “plug in” fun stuff like polls, big pictures, lists and photos. You can even add a table of contents which really makes it nice for building longer pages – I wish this is something that came default on blogs or websites.

So the end product is informative, a little off beat and, I think, a little more fun than your average blog post mainly because Squidoo readers seem to reward good useful content. And I think if I were searching for information on a topic like copper gas lanterns this type of post would be of use to me. It has a summary, photos, lots of shopping links, related sites and even user generated content. All in all I think that makes a relevant search for just about anyone.