Bigshot Blogging Contest

Want to win some free advertising?   I’m more than happy to give it away, seeing as how I can not sell it.

Here’s the deal!

I’m giving away 3 125×125 or Sweet Link ad spots for the person who does the best “buzz” piece on my FREE ebook - Bigshot Blogging.  Posts should include a quick review, some features, and a link so that they can visit One Man’s Goal, to download the ebook.

All it takes to enter is a quick post, and a comment on OMG that gives me the link to the post.  I’ll choose the best three. The articles must be completed and submitted by Sunday, July 27, and the prizes will be announced Thursday, July 31 and the ads will be put up for the 2 months (Aug and Sept)

Help me help you.

Who Wants A Free Blog???

The Deal - I want to rank higher for more keywords = You want a blog

The Trade - I will register a domain for you and set up a blog on my hosting account, that only you will have access to (via password). I will host your blog for 6 months on my hosting plan and at the end of the six months I will push the domain to your own godaddy account and setup a wordpress blog on your hosting plan and the site will be completely yours = You need to write 3 articles for me. Now don’t worry, I’m not looking for masterpieces here, just fresh, original content. Also, you will need to confirm with me that you have in the past or currently have downloaded bigshot blogging. This is a requirement because I want to you succeed.

Simple enough??? Comment with any questions.

Fantastic Forums

Whether your just starting out or a pro, there are opportunities to be had by embracing the many wonderful internet forums.

In history the Roman Forum was the center of the community, it hosted commerce and administration of the city in addition to being a communal meeting place and source of knowledge.

Today internet forums catering to specific topics and industry’s could also be seen as the centers of these communities as well.

There is bound to be one or more for any interest you have, with a raft of like minded people who you can chat with and learn from. There are so many more opportunities they present.

Forums can be a tremendous source of traffic and the clicks start rolling in almost immediately. Many will allow you to add your website to the bottom of each post you make, as well as making posts introducing your website and seeking advice on it.

They can also be a great source for story ideas, if its worth discussing in a forum chances are its worth writing about in a blog post.

You can also see needs for products you can create. Look for people discussing problems they are having and things they don’t understand, then create a product to sell or give away that solves that problem.

Of course forums are also great source for networking and creating mastermind groups, you’ll be exposed to plenty of people with similar passions and goals.

To get you started here is a few blogging and internet marketing forums to get you started:

SitePoint Forums

Digital Point Forums

Blogger Forum

Performancing Forum 

The WarriorForum

Talk Blogging

True Blogging Forum

If you cant find a forum to suit your tastes, consider creating one. There are even a few blogs around with their own forums where the blog writer can discuss matters with their readers. This takes things beyond simple comments made by readers. It can not only provide more value to your readers, keep them coming back to your blog, but also give you greater feedback

So get out there, meet some new people, get some new ideas and inspiration. Your blog will thank you.

Why You Want to Stumble

Now, we normally do not want to stumble in business, but StumbleUpon has become an internet phenomenon deserving of a business owner’s attention. StumbleUpon is a website that helps to discover valuable internet resources and websites. One of its biggest benefits is that it will provide true resources to people who have specific interests.

Have you ever typed a search, clicked on the first website that popped up and then been frustrated with its content? With businesses fighting for search engine placement, some have highly concentrated keyword content on their sites, giving them top Google rank. While this can be great for relevant businesses and topics, it can be frustrating for consumers if the website does not have the specific content that they were searching for.

StumbleUpon provides website resources on specific topics, making it easy for people to find information on the topics that they are interested in. Part of the social networking phenomenon, StumbleUpon provides true value to those who are a part of the site. Visitors can rate websites, automatically sharing them with other like minded people.

The Stumble site works differently than a search engine site, as when a user searches, they are only matched with websites that have been rated by like minded individuals. The goal is to provide great content to searchers that they would not find otherwise on the typical search engines.

When you think about this concept and your business, you not only want to be “StumbledUpon”, but you want the members to keep coming back again and again to read your site’s contents. One of its most powerful attributes is the ability to quickly create a viral phenomenon with your business.

Viral marketing is one of the most intriguing business marketing methods available. This is one virus that you will want your business to catch. The way to create something that will become viral is to create content that is either a totally new concept, controversial or very intriguing. When someone comes across content that fits any of these 3 descriptions, they want to immediately share it with others.

In the past, when someone wanted to share something, they would send it to their small group of email friends. While this is certainly helpful, it pales in comparison to the effects of social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon.

Once your content gets posted and highly rated on StumbleUpon, you have the opportunity to instantly reach millions of people. If your content is well read and the readers have a way to find your business, you will instantly get website clicks of people that are looking for more content and that are looking to learn more about your business.

This is how you can boost your business revenues and is an essential business tactic for growth. So, in this business case, this is one instance where it is a great concept to stumble and something that you should begin implementing into your marketing plan immediately.

For more social networking, web 2.0 and viral marketing techniques, please visit http://ryanshamus.com/category/web-20-techniques/

5 Tips To Leverage The Power Of Social Networking

While you may have heard of social networking, you may not be 100% sure how to leverage this online tool to build your business. If you are not sure of what social networking is - it describes the use of online sites to connect people together with like interests. While the phenomenon started out as a purely social medium, there are now millions of businesses leveraging its power to market and grow their revenues.

When you are looking to grow your business through social networking, there are several keys to success that should be tapped into, including: leveraging each site’s advertising opportunities, utilizing any free marketing opportunities, learning how to properly use the tools that are available on the site, targeting the right demographic for your business and ensuring that you have a regular presence on each site that you are participating in.

1. Leverage the Sites Advertising Opportunities

Many of the top social networking sites offer numerous advertising opportunities. After you have chosen the sites that you would like to participate in, start your marketing efforts by researching the advertising opportunities. What are the costs? How do they target specific groups? What are the current users suggesting as tips? What is the effectiveness - can you find data? Ensure that you look into each of these areas and evaluate the free marketing opportunities before you spend any capital.

2. Free Marketing Opportunities

Each social networking site offers free marketing opportunities to provide incentives to new and existing business owners to expand their relationships. Your profile page is one of the first opportunities that you will have to market yourself. What you choose to post and what images that you choose to upload will set the stage for your interaction on the site. Beyond your profile, search for groups to join, events that the site is sponsoring and how to network on the site. The more personal connections that you make, the increased chances you will have to market your business.

3. Learn How to Use the Tools on each Site

Understanding the site and how each tool works is a primary key to success. Search the site to understand the full range of ways that you can interact with other site members. The name of the marketing game is - touch as many people as possible in a meaningful way on a daily basis.

4. Target the Right Demographic

Before you start launching marketing efforts, research the site’s demographics and the subgroups within the site. Each business is different and you need to select the best niche market for you and your business. Working deep within a smaller group of markets will yield better results than launching a more widespread marketing effort across the site.

5. Have a Regular Site Presence

Probably the most important thing to do when you are using social networking to market your business is volume of participation. The more visible you are, the more credibility that you will build, the more links that you will have to your business website and the more money that you will make.

The Power of Viral Marketing

Admit it. Being called a viral marketer sounds offensive; it seems synonymous to being called a virus. Yet a lot of people admire viral marketers because they have a way of being secretive until their impact affects thousands or millions of people. But what exactly is viral marketing? Basically, viral marketing is the kind of strategy used to pass a message to others. It has the ability to grow exponentially until its sheer number force people to take notice.

Viral marketing is most effective on the internet. Big names such as Gmail use viral marketing to promote their brand and services. Consider the Gmail example; this will give you an idea on how you can use viral marketing yourself.

1. Google gives away free e-mail addresses through Gmail.

2. Users have the option to invite their friends to use Gmail as well; Gmail services used to be limited to those who were invited by users.

3. Google just needs to stand back and watch as people invite their network of friend and acquaintances when they see the new features provided by Gmail.

4. Those who were invited sign up and invite others to join Gmail.

This process will go on. It started out with “little waves” that had spread from the single pebble that was dropped until it became so huge that almost every other person you know is using the Gmail service today. I’d call that a successful campaign. Viral marketing doesn’t stop there though. It seems every internet marketer that sets up an opt-in page so that you can download that wonderful FREE report, also asks for the email addresses of your friends. Google might not have created the business model, but they certainly brought it to the masses and attracted others to the power of it.

Think of how that grows exponentially… If for one email address you can get them to give you three more email addresses, you’ve just grown quite a mailing list in a fraction of the time of a traditional opt-in form. Essentially, you can grow your list exponentially off of that first email address you received. The first gives you three… each of those three add three more… and so on. See the potential for exponential success?

But not all viral marketing strategies work. The reason? There are many of them, poor timing, poor execution, just insert any of 100 reasons here. Viral marketers also have the virtue of patience; they are not in a hurry to become popular as fast as possible because the end result is the most important factor for them.

21 Free Ways To Generate More Traffic

Everyone could use a little extra traffic, let’s explore some ways to get it.

1. Comment - This will always be first on my list of ways to generate traffic. Although there are plenty of methods that will produce faster results, commenting produces the BEST results in terms of quality. Although it’s slower, it gives you a chance to catch up on what’s going on in the blogosphere, and to network with other bloggers… which may be the most important traffic building technique of them all.
2. Visit Forums - This ties in with commenting. You need to be visiting forums on a regular basis and interacting with other bloggers. In order to survive in the blogosphere you need to build relationships. There are no better ways to build a relationship with a blogger than to comment on their blog, or chat with them via your favorite forums.
3. Write Quality Content - I’m sure by now this goes without saying, but quality content is what keeps people coming back. Any idiot can get someone to visit their blog, but a good blogger will be able to keep them there with riveting content. You need to be able to catch, and hold peoples attention using nothing more than the words on your page.
4. Take Advantage Of SEO - Search engine optimization will bring you a ton of visitors, but it takes time. I’ve managed to secure some SEO help here at OMG from Robert Holland, who is my guest blogger & SEO consultant here at OMG.
5. Social Bookmarking - Every post should be submitted to at least the “big three” social bookmarking services. The big three are Digg, StumbleUpon, and Del.icio.us, but you should also add Reddit to the mix if you have time. You may be missing out on a ton of traffic just by skipping this easy submission process.
6. Linkbait - Get bloggers attention. Whether it be something controversial or a helpful list, get someones attention. Successful articles can generate hundreds or even thousands of backlinks. And having that many backlinks out there is bound to get you a few more readers. My first big linkbait success at OMG can be found here. It’s an article that took a lot of research, but it got me a lot of attention, including my first link from an A-List blogger… Darren Rowse from Problogger.net
7. Encourage Your Readers - Whether they be new bloggers, or seasoned professionals, everyone appreciates a little recognition. Make sure to congratulate people for accomplishments, and make sure to let your readers know how important you are to them. Another one that doesn’t sound like a traffic building tip, but let me assure you that this is one of the most powerful methods of all. It’s more about retaining readers you do have, but a happy reader is always quick to tell friends about you, link to you, etc.
8. Respond To Every Comment - Whether you respond on your blog, their blog, or via email is up to you, but you should be acknowledging those that take the time to leave comments on your blog. It may not sound like a traffic building technique, but it certainly works out to be one. It ties in with #1 (commenting), and allows them to return the favor by (again) commenting on your blog. Plus you’ll pick up the occasional straggler from their blog and convert them to a long-term reader or yours. You can also read this - How To Get More Comments.
9. Write An Authority Article - If you are an expert on something, write about it. If not, do an experiment of some sort. My experiment - Paid Traffic Deathmatch - involved a healthy sum of cash, but yours doesn’t necessarily have to. Get out there and find something to be an authority about.
10. Write An Ebook - Write an ebook about something.
11. Get A Sponsored Review - You can get one on OMG for the low sum of $60. It appears to over 500 Rss readers, and everyone that visits the site, and it remains on the homepage for at least 5 days. You can get these on just about any blog, and they are a fantastic way to find new readers. Ok, this isn’t free… but effective! There are ways to get free sponsored reviews though… you could always trade reviews with another blogger, or simply ask them to plug a post or product for you.
12. Guest Blog Somewhere - You’ll never know how powerful this method is until you’ve tried it.
13. Write Titles With Numbers In Them - People like to read, bookmark, and link to posts with numbers in the titles. For example - 51 Great Places To Find Wordpress Themes, 9 Reasons Why I’m Cooler Than John Chow, 101 Wordpress Plugins That You May Not Have Known About, The 7 Types Of Visitors, and a big one… How I Generated Over 3,000 Backlinks In 6 Weeks. Notice a trend here? If you look in the sidebar and click on the “popular” or “comments” tabs, you’ll notice that most of the posts that are featured there have numbers in them.
14. Blog Carnivals - A great way to build backlinks and generate new traffic. Read more about blog carnivals.
15. Spend Hours On A Huge List - The two posts that took me the longest to write, miraculously still bring traffic to OMG to this day. And both of them are at least a few months old. It’s worth the work!
16. Offer A Free Resource - You can use an Ebook, a report, a plugin, a Wordpress Theme, or a giant list. Anything you can think of that will provide value to your readers falls into this suggestion. Try it!
17. Link To Other Blogs - There is something in a bloggers mentality that remember those that link to him or her regularly. They are often quick to return the favor, which may bring you new readers. Do unto others…
18. Have A Contest - I had my first contest within a month of launching my blog, and the results were fantastic. It still falls into my “popular” category to this day. It’s also one of my most commented posts.
19. Interview A Blogger - It doesn’t have to be an A-Lister, just someone that you find interesting. Chances are if you find the blogger interesting, at least some of your readers will too.
20. Submit Articles - By now, I hope you are using the Article Submitter from IM Wishlist to submit all of your articles. I use it here and I preach about it daily to other bloggers. Not only does it generate quality backlinks, it brings in traffic from time to time when your article is picked up by a huge source.
21. Create A Podcast - I have created exactly ONE podcast for OMG, and it’s something that I need to do more often. My one and only podcast is still getting downloaded to this day, and it is a few months old now.

Web 2.0 Marketing - Are You Missing The Bus?

One of the more advanced strategies that I’m working on for my next blogging ebook, is the ability to market your blog using Web 2.0 sites. Web 2.0 is truly the direction that blogging, and web publishing in general, is heading, as it gives sites a great way to generate buzz and market themselves effectively to millions of other users.

When I say Web 2.0, the obvious choices of using Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit come to mind, but I be you didn’t know that there are thousands of these sites in existence. Although the big three are all sites that you should be submitting your articles to, you should take the time once a week or so to submit to the smaller ones. Although the smaller services aren’t going to bring you the traffic of a Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, or even Del.icio.us, they will provide valuable incoming links to your blog. And the best part? They usually come in the dozens!

The hard part about submitting to all of these sites is that it can be extremely time consuming. That’s why I recommend Bookmarking Demon. It’s a tool that allows you to create random user names to some of the best social bookmarking sites on the web, and submit your articles. Being that it automates the process, this saves you a ton of time, and you don’t have to worry about submitting your own articles and getting your accounts deleted… this software allows you to create new usernames on the fly so that you can avoid detection and possible deletion.

Remember, don’t miss the bus! Start submitting to social bookmarking sites immediately! Here is a list of Web 2.0 sites, courtesy of Lifehacker, for you to utilize.

i89.us offers a free service which allows you to submit and save your favorite articles, news, websites, and links at one location that can be accessed from anywhere. Here you can save your favorite online music/radio stations, save links/websites for cheap online shopping deals for your favorite items like dvd,ipod,computer,books, save links related to news, business, travel, entertainment, education, science, health, sports, technology etc.

Backflip.com -build your world on the Web. You can save all the Web pages yuo want and instantly find them again. From anywhere.

BibSonomy.com -is a system for sharing bookmarks and lists of literature. When discovering a bookmark or a publication on the web, you can store it on our server. You can add tags to your entry to retrieve it more easily. This is very similar to the bookmarks/favorites that you store within your browser. The advantage of BibSonomy is that you can access your data from whereever you are.

BlinkPro.com makes all of your vital Internet-based data available from any computer at any time: at work, at home, or on the road. And because its a subscription-based service, BlinkPro doesn’t bombard you with advertising or annoying email marketing. Today, BlinkPro is managing millions of bookmarks for its rapidly growing member base.

BlogMarks.net is a collaborative link management project based on sharing and key-word tagging. Build on a blog basis, BlogMarks is an open and free technology. Now, you can access your favorite URL’s from any computer. And with BlogMarks, you share your favourite with other users.

Bluedot.us a site about websites that are rated and organized by real people into a wide variety of topics. Dots have tags and ratings so they can be organized and prioritized across any number of topics. The content on Blue Dot is high quality because it has been rated by the Blue Dot community.You can also assemble your own community by inviting people to be your friend.

BmAccess.net is a bookmark a site where you can add tags, when you look up a tag, you get the names and a little thumbnail image of the site along with it.

BuddyMarks.com offers a storage for all your favorites on-line. You can import your current browser favorites in a snap, get to them from anywhere, add new favorites, share some or all of your favorites with your friends, use tags or categories or both to organize the web the way you want.

Buzka is a free and easy way to share your favorite web stuff. You can save and organize all your favorite web pages by creating Spots on any interest or topic. Each Spot is a collection of pages that can be shared with family, friends, colleagues and anyone on the web.

Chipmark.com allows to get your bookmarks from any computer, anywhere, whether you’re at home, work, a library, or at school. It is a place where people can share their bookmarks with friends, family, and co-worker. Chipmark is a fun, flexible, and fast alternative to standard browser bookmarking.

Complore provides 10MB of file storage, public and private sharing, tag cloud, popular feeds and more. With it you can easily manage your research work online.

Connectbeam.com helps organizations and their employees increase their productivity and the quality of their work by solving these problems. Connectbeam is a simple new addition to the software tools you use every day to communicate and get your job done.

Connectedy is a web site where you can upload your bookmarked/favorite links from your browser into a free account. Connectedy users enjoy the convenience of keeping all their links online. It is indispensable if you change computers often or use multiple computers at home, work, and school. You can sort your links, search through them, and collect new ones as you surf the web. It is free to sign up, and you don’t have to install any new software.

Connotea.org is a themed social bookmarking site specifically for researchers, clinicians and scientists.

Diigo.com provides a virtual highlighter and digital sticky notes, so you can highlight and jot down your comments directly on any part of a webpage and scan through all your research findings quickly. Tags and full-text search on everything make it extremely easy to organize and find stuff - no need to fumble with folders and subfolders. Your bookmarked pages are archived to insure they are always available as originally seen.

Excites.com is a social bookmarking site. You can save and manage your bookmarks online and have access to them from any internet connected computer. Share your bookmarks with family, friends and the whole excites community while discovering new and exciting websites at the same time.

Feedmelinks.com stores your bookmarks online so you can get to them anywhere. Import your favorites and share your links with friends. Add tags to organize your links. Discover new things. Open-source your interests.

GetBoo.com is both a social and private bookmarking website which can be used to keep links to your favorite news, blogs, music, games, and more on GetBoo and access them from any computer on the web. You can import/export these links from your browser’s bookmarks and view them with the same hierarchy. Share favorites with friends, family, and colleagues.

Givealink.org is a social bookmarking site where people can donate their bookmarks to the Web community and to science. As an ongoing academic research project, our goal is to analyze bookmark files to build new Web mining techniques including new ways to search, recommend, personalize, and visualize the Web.

Hyperlinkomatic.com is an alternative to lists of favorites and bookmarks. You can grab links, makes notes, set multiple categories, search links, import links from web pages, upload bookmarks, create bookmarks files, share links, publish links. It is, in short, a place to keep your links.

Lilisto.com lets you store, manage and find your favorite links (or bookmarks) and removes the need to maintain them through your browser. Use Smart Categories to create custom link sets. Equipped with a multitude of search options, you can be as vague or specific as you want. Sort links by number of visits, date of addition, date of last visit and much, much more.

Linkroll.com is a free link blogging service.At a personal level you can bookmark, categorize and comment on all the great web pages/links you find. All your bookmarks are then sortable and searchable by category and date. All bookmarks are also accessible, by category and/or user, in the form of RSS feed (for your news aggregator), or JavaScript (for syndication on your own web site).

Ma.gnolia.com allows you to access your favorite websites from anywhere. Bookmarks in Ma.gnolia are more than just entries in a database. Each one tells a little story about the websites that they help you find again.

Mister-Wong.com allows to bookmark and tag, search for tags that interest you, make buddies with people who have interesting saved sites.

Netvouz.com is a social bookmarking service that allows you to save your favorite links online and access them from any computer, wherever you are. Organize your bookmarks in folders and tag each bookmark with keywords. Access them quickly on your own personalized bookmarks page. Share your bookmarks with others or password protect them for your own privacy. Netvouz is a great way to discover new interesting web sites.

Nextaris.com provides up to 100MB storage for free. It helps you search the Web, save what you find, share what you find, create journals (blogs), comment on what you find and have saved, and to optionally publish the information you have gathered.

StumbleUpon.com lets you “channel surf” the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great sites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations.

TastyCooks is a place to store bookmarks of your favourite recipes online. Discover new recipes based on your preference.

Unalog.com enables you to look at what various people and groups of people are reading on the web here. You can get an account and add your own links, and create and join groups here too. If you get an account, or create a group, either one can be made private, so nobody but you (if a private account) or your fellow group members (if a private group) can see your links.

WireFan.com is a search based and free website that contains the best information technology with a combination of social blogging, bookmarks, non-heirarchical editorial control and RSS. This is very exciting for account users since they can submit their own news and stories. Wirefand makes locating stories trouble-free so no need to jumble up stories in the web.

Xilinus.com lets you organize yours bookmarks by folders and unlimited sub-folders. Drag and drop directly on the main page to reorganize bookmarks and folders with no refresh.

Yahoo! My Web with one button click you can add your bookmarks to the search engine giants system, features duplicate detection to help you keep your bookmarks tidy.

AllMyFavorites.net allows to share your favorites/bookmarks with your friends. Just give your friends the link to your allmyfavorites web page and they can browse your favorites.

Social Bookmarking Sites With Clipping

BlinkList.com -lets you save sites for later reading, share your list or keep it private, even send your saved pages to your blog for wider sharing.

Clipclip.org is an online version of scrapbooks: when you find something on the web, you can cut out only the most interesting part preserving the look and feel rather than bookmarking bunch of links.

Clipmarks.com - Allows you to clip just the chosen bits of a webpage. Everything you clip is added to your own fully searchable library of things you find on the web. Clips can be saved privately or publicly. You can organize your clips by adding tags (keywords) to them, or by putting them in Collections.

del.icio.us is one of the most popular social bookmarking website — the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

Furl.net provides an easy way to save and share your online discoveries.With Furl, you can find Web sites that others have Furled, save a copy of any web page with one click, share anything you’ve Furled — or keep it private. Furl also lets you store and organize all of your bookmarks.

Linktopia.com is a free utility where you can keep all of your “favorites”, bookmarked web pages, and notes online. Create a “Friends List” and share your links exclusively with those members.

RawSugar.com is a place to save, share and discover your favorite content in an organized and highly flexible way. You can use RawSugar to bookmark, share and tag your favorite content. You can save and tag content (any URL) to your account in RawSugar. You can access your bookmarks anywhere in the world with just a web browser and an internet connection. You can share your bookmarks or keep them private. Organize your content in flexible hierarchies. You can think of hierarchies like the folders in your computer, but RawSugar hierarchies have lot more flexibility. For e.g. one of the feature is RSS feeds for a single category in the hierarchy (think like RSS feeds for a folder)

Simpy.com is a social bookmarking service. With Simpy, you can save, tag and search your own bookmarks and notes or browse and search other users’ links and tags. You can be open and share your links with others, or keep them private. Simpy also helps you find like-minded people, discover new and interesting sites, publish your bookmarks, detect and eliminate link-rot, etc.

Spurl.net is a free on-line bookmarking service and search engine. It allows you to store and quickly access again all the interesting pages you find on the web from any Internet connected computer.

SyncOne.net Your favorite web site, webclips, books, music, links, podcasts, feeds, images and more in one place, organize and access from anywhere anytime. You are free to add a banner, adwords or any promotion to your page.

URLex.info enables you to leave a comment regarding any Internet link on any site. The comments are available either only to you and your friends, or anyone visiting the site. You now have an opportunity of expressing your thoughts regarding any information placed on the Internet. The system enables you to leave notes on the pages and sustain the conversation on a selected topic. You can enter communities, or create your own, exchange links there. You can restrict the access to your comments by creating a closed community and providing access to the information by issuing special invitation.

Social News

Blog-buzz.com is a blogger driven site, exclusively for bloggers like you, to share, discover and promote blog posts that you find interesting. After you submit content, other bloggers read your submission and buzz when they like it. If your post rocks and receives enough buzzes, it is promoted to the front page for more bloggers to see.

Digg.com is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.

Netscape.com is a a social news aggregator with voting of stories similar to Digg.

Newsvine.com is updated continuously by citizens like you. Newsvine is an instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment.

Reddit.com - vote up or down on a story making it move around on the home page.

Shoutwire.com - Similar to Digg, except instead of “Digging a story”, you “shout it”. Still a way to vote on unique Internet news stories.

Stirrdup has a unique system that promotes the interesting and controversial stories you guys discover. Stirrdup is about promoting content that encourages spirited conversation. You submit all the great stories you find on the internet. We calculate interest in them using our passive-voting system and promote the ones that are stirring the proverbial pot. The system is designed to eliminate the group censorship and stagnation that plagues other sites.

Thoof.com will show you interesting news, websites, videos, and other links, personalized to your individual tastes. Just click on the stories that interest you, and let Thoof do the rest. If you don’t like the way a story is described, just click edit and propose a change to it.

Get Your Stumble On

I have to admit, I’m asked regularly how I build traffic to the sites that I flip as fast as I do. Well, there are quite a few ways to do it, but I’m going to let you in on one that will improve your traffic by 100% + in just a few short minutes once or twice a week. The secret?

Get Stumbled!

But how? Well, that’s the hard part. If you are doing your job as a blogger, you should be networking daily. You should always be running into new contacts, and renewing relationships with old ones. You are the chameleon of the blog-o-sphere, and you can blend in anywhere. But none of this matters. Your friends obviously don’t like you enough to Stumble your posts. So then what?

Well, I’m sure this isn’t a groundbreaking technique, but it works quite well… ASK! You may notice that some posts on OMG have text on the bottom that says something to the effect of…

If you liked this post, please stumble it for others to enjoy

Ok, it’s that simple. I’m going to go watch a movie now and I want all of you to marvel at what a genius I am.

Okay, okay. So that’s just one way. But it is an effective way. And you’ll notice, that I don’t do it on every post. I only do it on posts that I feel will do well on the social bookmarking sites, such as StumbleUpon. If I did it for every site, you guys and girls would become completely oblivious to the fact that it’s there. Just like when I ran Adsense, nobody seemed to notice. But by dropping that last line in occasionally, I am able to skip right past the pleasantries of ad blindness. Which sadly, all of you suffer from.

So you can ask for a Stumble, but isn’t that kind of lame? Yep… it’s 100% lame. But guess what? I’d rather be lame with a pocket full of change than awesome and asking to borrow $5 for my next value meal.

Asking for a Stumble is the best way to get one. But are there other ways to get them? Uh huh.

What if I told you that there was a secret amongst wise bloggers to get more Stumbles by asking people that were there for the same reason as you - to get more stumbles…?

If you are a member of this secret place, you can get reciprocal Stumbles daily. They Stumble your page, you stumble theirs. Ready to know the secret?

It’s a forum (EDIT: LINK REMOVED DUE TO FORUM OWNERS REQUEST). And this forum allows you to post the URL to any link that you want Stumbled by it’s members. There are quite a few people that take advantage of this daily, but I recommend only submitting your best stuff. Remember, you want a “thumbs up”, and these members aren’t required to give you one. So if you start posting links to posts that are about what you had for breakfast yesterday, you’ll probably get buried very quickly. You only want your best, top-notch stuff here. Getting a thumbs down would be quite counter-productive don’t you think?

You HAVE to register for this forum in order to see the “hidden” categories, which include Digg and Stumble requests. Make sure to register, and then read the rules before you submit ANYTHING. If you break the rules, you’ll be sitting on the sidelines. Also, this forum runs on good faith. So if you submit a link, you better be willing to Stumble everyone else’s link. And it’s real simple to tell if you haven’t. So go, register, have fun. Get your Social Bookmark on!

How To Be A Technorati Superstar (Part 2)

How Do I Improve My Technorati Rank?

You have to get out there and build links. Since Technorati bases their rankings on incoming links, the only thing you can do is get more of them! Incoming links are like Technorati currency… the more of them you have, the richer you are.

Here are a few simple ways to build some links.

1. Do a link exchange. Contact your friends, and fellow bloggers in your niche asking if they’ll do a link exchange with you. You put their link in your blogroll… they do the same for you. I don’t recommend attempting this if you haven’t already established a relationship with the blogger though. Make sure and comment on their site regularly before even asking. Some bloggers (like myself) don’t do link exchanges. The reason for this is because I get so many requests that I can’t possibly exchange with everyone… so if I can’t exchange with everyone… I exchange with no one. I don’t want to pick and choose who I exchange with.
2. Try viral linking. Viral linking is controversial at best. Although it delivers phenomenal results, you may want to avoid it completely. Google has been handing out penalties and we aren’t sure why… so try this at your own risk.
3. Become a pro at linkbaiting. Linkbaiting is the ability to write something something that people are willing to link to. The best linkbait techniques are long value posts. These posts take forever to create, but they are often linked to by many others. Some examples are 101 Wordpress Plugins, 51 Places to Find Wordpress Themes, and Does Monetizing Your Blog Cost You Readers? Linkbaiting can also be funny. Like this post for example… 9 Reasons I’m Cooler Than John Chow.
4. Link to others. Bloggers are a curious bunch. Whenever I see a new incoming link, I always check to see where it came from. When I see something nice that is written about me, I am more likely to link to that person in the future. Flattery gets you everywhere! Try out something like my “Sweet Reads” that I do on Saturdays.
5. Try a Blog Carnival. These are a fantastic way to build links. Blog Carnivals can build links virally too. It starts with one person posting your link on their site (the Carnival organizer), and before you know it others start checking out your story and linking to it themselves. It’s an easy way for a few links because there is no extra work involved except for submitting your link to the person having the Carnival.
6. Use article submission services. This won’t get you a lot of backlinks, but it’s worth the few that you do get out of it because they have a potential to be high quality sites (such as MSN, CNN, etc.). I got an article linked to by an SEO magazine and then I also got my article printed in one of their monthly releases. Article submission may pay off in more than just backlinks!
7. Be a guest blogger. This only gets you one or two backlinks at a time, but it could potentially deliver a bunch of new visitors to your site. More visitors = More backlinks (if the content is good).

Is There Anything Else I Should Know About Technorati?

Yes! I should probably let you know that for your “authority” ranking - Technorati deletes incoming links after six months. So if you start dropping in “authority” then this is the reason.

This isn’t an overnight success guide. Use these methods and remember, it’s a marathon… not a sprint. Getting to the finish line first won’t get you any extra points either. Just enjoy getting there!