Swarmed by an unenviable number of tasks, and running short on time, I have made the decision that I am no where near as good at foretelling the future of real estate as the boys here at Sellsius and our friend Joel over at FOREM. My strength, especially when pressured to have one at all, is seeing the strategy in the now. So that’s how I am bringing it in this second (and final) blog swapping post. Today has been a ton of fun for all of us, and we hope our audience has enjoyed it as well.
Participation is a huge part of success in the rapidly expanding Web 2.0. It is so important, that 3 of the 12 hours in my Success Sessions Training Course are dedicated to getting out there and becoming a part of the community as opposed waiting for it to come find you. One of the potentially most effective efforts one can make is participating with a social bookmarking website called Digg.
The basic idea of Digg is that registered users will submit an item (news story, video, picture, podcast, tutorial, website, blog article, etc.) to be reviewed and ‘voted upon’ by other users. All items are categorized by either News, Videos or Podcasts, and then into sub-categories such as Tech, Science, Business, Sports, Entertainment or Gaming.
As items are submitted they appear in the Upcoming Stories section of the above categories. And finally, as they are reviewed, and voted upon (if worthy), they will begin to climb the chart, hoping to make it to the Popular Stories section. If an item is less than exciting, it will never make it out of the Upcoming section, and eventually ‘die on the vine’. If an item is deemed interesting or funny or newsworthy it will be reflected in the amount of times that said item was ‘Dugg’ (voted for). Once an item reaches the Popular Stories section, it can take on a life of its own. You now are in a position to expose your item to literally hundreds of thousands of visitors. The audience that reads from Digg is growing daily along with the audience that submits, so the competition is getting stiffer, but the rewards are increasing as well.
Worst case scenario (read: most common scenario) is that your item will be viewed by dozens as it makes its brief appearance in the Upcoming Stories section. If it is not deemed ‘Digg worthy’ there’s no harm or shame, it just means that it didn’t strike a chord at that moment.
How does all this relate to the Real Estate Blogging Community? I have read some truly fantastic articles written by real estate bloggers that should not be limited to the vacuum we exist within here. Take a chance, submit your best work, and see if you can’t get some global recognition and ultimately increase your readership and exposure. Your potential audience is not out looking for you, you need to jump in front of them.
Related articles around the blogosphere:
New Digg Features O’Plenty
Use Social Bookmarking To Promote Your Blog
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Social Bookmarking Sites….
I’m sure you’re aware Digg is plagued by professional marketers who have attempted to hijack the site, and that there are some questions about their claimed audience.
But there’s no doubt Digg is powerful or people wouldn’t be trying so hard to game it.
Give a tomato a day and he breaks the whole blog. My guess he is just too wordy. Pushing the right navigation right off the top the blog.
I can see the headlines tomorrow, Tomato Break’s Sellsius Blog, Sauce at Eleven.
Dave -
LOL (for reals)
I guess the top image was a bit wide for the blog space…