12
Jun
2008
Posted by Charles as social media marketing
So, you want to see your story on the front page of Digg.com do you? It’s possible, but it takes some hard work. That’s why you should be careful when trying to use social media news sites like Digg and Reddit as part of your marketing strategy.
According to experts at the SMX Social Media Network event in New York City, the average story making it to the front page of Digg.com generates 129 links and more than 10,000 visitors per hour to the website.
Clearly, such social media news sites can be powerful marketing tools. However, with everyone trying to get their story on the front page, you need to be aware of some of the ways to stand out from your competitors.
1. Determine the most interesting news angle of your story and go with it. Typically the most interesting news angles focus on the unusual or new aspects of a particular topic. Stories that tie a product in with the season or an upcoming holiday are also a good way to get attention. If you are introducing a new product, make a video or provide pictures to demonstrate what’s new. If you are ranked high on a recent list or have breaking news these could also be interesting stories.
2. Research the users you want to appeal to. The more you know about users the more you will be able to write content they like. That means you should read and comment on as many stories as possible and make these comments reflect your personality. This will help you make friends who will also Digg on your stories.
3. Make your story accessible. Don’t fill your story with large numbers or complicated techno-jargon. The appearance of too many complex details may turn people away from your story. If a product or a story has a lot of information, it may be best to include a diagram or a video that breaks down the information in an easy-to-follow way.
4. Be yourself. Remember sites like Digg are still social networking sites. Being social is part of the experience. If you put up a front, people will eventually see you and your stories as untrustworthy. Keep your stories and your comments true to your personality and to your product. That way you will not only gain the respect of other posters, but they will also want to read what you have to say.
5. Have a catchy title. We’ve all clicked on news items that have exciting, strange or shocking titles. Brainstorm a few titles that you think will generate clicks and pick the best one. Just be sure the title goes along with the story. You don’t want to promise something you can’t deliver.
6 Responses
Karen
June 13th, 2008 at 10:27 am
1Thanks for your comments on Digg. The world is a big place and there are a lot of people in it. There are a lot of stories on Digg. There are other ways to get your story in front of the right audience you want. One way is the RSS feed, another is a blog, you can send it to your subscriber list too. I think getting your story first on Digg is like trying to win the lottery.
Gina
June 17th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
2Thanks for the information on how to get an article up and running on Digg. It would be amazing if Salesconx got an article/blog up there. Granted it’s like winning the Lottery like Karen said, but I’m willing to give it a go.
Thanks,
-Gina
http://www.salesconx.com
Charles
June 20th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
3Gina … If you take time to involve yourself in the community, learn how it works and then build a following then it becomes less and less like winning the lottery and more and more like a systematic approach.
The key to Digg for instance is gaining respect from the community by posting good quality stuff. You should use other people’s stuff for a while in an attempt to get the good stuff Dugg.
Your profile will advance because you become known for submitting quality stuff then your friends and followers will digg your submissions… It’s all about relationship building.
Tom Lindstrom
June 26th, 2008 at 7:42 am
4Digg can be a really powerful tool, and you must build up your profile by submitting quality stuff from other people as well, not just your own.It takes time to research and then write an excellent post, but it is worth it even if the chance of hitting the front page is minimal.
Taylore Vance
July 29th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
5It would have to be a broad subject where it would be interesting to a large number of people. I don’t think an alternative healing site like my new business I started last week would get the hits — like a main stream interest or news item.
Now if I had a story about today’s earthquake in LA… it might be interesting to many people.
So follow news items…
Alternative Health Products — Magnesium Oil and other natural remedies
Kanya Vashon McGhee
August 21st, 2008 at 9:51 am
6You may be interested in our new paradigm for resolving innercity educational challenges.
It has worked for the past 39 years but very few persons have truly appreciated the fact that an understanding of Spirituality is the ONLY answer to the many challenges of the New Age of Aquarius.
Brother Kanya Vashon McGhee
http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/Kanya
http://www.NaturalUSA.com/ads/TreeofLife.html
http://www.MiracleMineral.Org
http://www.KanyaWater.com
An Introduction to Brother Kanya & The Tree of Life Bookstore of Harlem.
Kanya at the Tree of Life
- Harlem 1969 -
Thirty-nine years ago I moved to New York City from Cleveland, Ohio in order to get an underwriting commitment from Bache & Co for the Everyman Mutual Fund. Founded by my father in 1966, it was the world’s first mutual fund begun by an African/American .
To make a long story short, I was indeed successful in securing an underwriting agreement for the Fund only to fall victim to the market crash of 1970 which decimated both the Everyman Fund and McGhee & Co., our securities broker dealership similarly founded by my father in 1952.
Now here’s where the fun begins: I decided to take a year or so and experiment with an old dream. A dream I had conceived while teaching elementary school in California back in the early 60’s. It involved gathering 2 or 3 copies of books I loved from my own private collection and making them available to the citizens of New York City in a free reading room on 125th and Lenox in Harlem to see if anyone else would find them as interesting as I did. Also available for sale.
What made these books different was that they mainly consisted of books of Self improvement and inner consciousness like “As A Man Thinketh”, “The Finding of the Third Eye” and “Back to Eden” etc.. Imagine my surprise when the year or two I had planned to give to this experiment almost miraculously extended itself to 10 years and soon we had a store of 12,000 square feet with an average monthly patronage of more than 15,000 persons from all over the world, of all races and creeds. We called the bookstore “The Tree of Life”.
The building was unfortunately torn down in 1980 to make way for a hotel convention center that was never built and on that corner for 22 years was a parking lot! But the concept of The Tree of Life is every much as valid today as it was 39 years ago and I’d like to share the story with you.
It’s particularly valid now because quite a few persons were school drop-outs who learned to read in our “Aquarian Science Free Reading Room” and quite a few drug abusers decided to get “high” off books instead of shooting up dope.
Likewise we extended the same efforts to those in prison with similar results. It is quite a story and I am very pleased to share it with you. For it seems that the same problems we addressed in Harlem are present everywhere. I am looking forward to communicating with you and discussing how we can mutually benefit from an expanded understanding of our different perspectives.
For the past 39 years we have demonstrated successful innovations in Education, Drug Abuse, Crime, the Prisons and entrepreneurship. This is the PERFECT School for today’s New Indigo Children.
Kanya Vashon McGhee
Founder & Director
A Portrait of Kanya Vashon McGhee
By Deardra Shuler
Dr. Kanya Vashon McGhee is a fascinating man. He is a man who has committed his life to learning and the acquisition of knowledge; ALL knowledge — including spiritual, scientific, historic and ancient knowledge. At one time, his bookstore The Tree of Life, attracted 15,000 patrons a month .
Scholars, theologians and wisdom seekers from all over the world came to the Center to take advantage of this vast wealth of information. School dropouts and former drug abusers came to the Center to study in the store’s Aquarian Science Free Reading Room.
The Tree of Life became so revered as an edifice of learning, it was known as UCLA, (The University at the Corner of Lenox Avenue) Harlem’s metaphysical Mecca for seekers of truth. The Tree of Life bookstore was the pride of Harlem until myopic Harlem politicians decided monetary wealth was more valuable than intellectual and spiritual wealth.
These politicos forced the bookstore off the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue even though Harlem Community Planning Board #10 had given The Tree of Life a mandate to remain at the site for 20 years.
Born Norman L. McGhee, Jr., in Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. McGhee ( a.k.a. Dr. Kanya) had an innate spiritual gift that enabled him to tune into his spiritual nature. He was very aware that he was born for a specific purpose. Educated at Cleveland’s Glenville High School, Kanya went on to study civil engineering at Case Institute of Technology but it didn’t hold his interest.
Conflicted, Dr. Kanya was drafted into the Army for a year and a half. After his stint in the service he returned to college and attended Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio.
Berea , Ohio and Baldwin-Wallace were too narrow minded for his taste so Kanya decided to seek his education elsewhere. He ended up attending McGill University ( a.k.a. the Harvard of Canada) in Montreal, Quebec where he studied science and business.
“While at McGill, I learned that fraternities and sororities in Ivy League schools were very different from fraternities and sororities in black schools. In white schools these organizations are about business. They help the sons and daughters of the privileged to place themselves in powerful positions, gain influential connections and marry into the “right” social strata in order to keep the power within a small circle of elites.”
McGhee stumbled upon a book while at the university entitled “Cosmic Consciousness” written by Richard Maurice Bucke, MD , a famous psychiatrist who had attended McGill University. The doctor’s book turned Kanya onto the 3 levels of consciousness and how they are changing. As well as how man’s higher consciousness could be accessed.
These books left Kanya thirsty for knowledge and set him off on a quest to obtain greater understanding. He followed his quest to England where he sought to study under Dr. Sarvepelli Radhakrishnan, an Indian professor at Oxford University, but unknown to Kanya on leave of absence to be Vice President of India.
His area of interest then became psychology and philosophy. However, Oxford did not offer him the spiritual philosophy he sought. Eventually, the roving scholar heard that the American Academy of Asian Studies, founded by Alan Watts in San Francisco (a Graduate School of the University of the Pacific) was offering MA’s and PhD’s so he pursued courses which eventually earned him a Masters degree in the Study of Comparative Philosophy.
After securing his degree, Kanya realized he would need to pursue something more practical to earn money. Because his father was the first black man to found a mutual fund (The Everyman Fund, 1966), he decided to move to New York where he formed a partnership with Wall Street’s Bache & Co., in an effort to underwrite the Everyman Mutual Fund. The funding effort was successful until the stock market crash of 1970.
“In 1969, I started the Tree of Life bookstore as an avocational experiment,” stated Dr. Kanya. I founded the bookstore, because at the time, I discovered 80% of the kids in Harlem dropped out of school before completing high school. I found out that many of these kids got into drugs, crime & violence and into prison.
I began seminars in San Quentin Prison in California and discovered that many of the men in prison were highly intelligent. Initially, I set up a booth within the African Market right next door to the famous Michaud’s African National Bookstore. Most of the people going into Michaud’s went there to read the works of black authors. My books were metaphysical and focused on the invisible inner man rather than the visible outer man.
“In the process, these books turned on so many people that we ended up subletting the entire African Market which was 12,000 square feet of space. That marked the official beginning of The Tree of Life Bookstore of Harlem.
The Tree of Life was in operation 10 years when Congressman Charles Rangel decided he wanted to put up a $100 million dollar Trade Center Hotel Complex right on the corner where the Tree of Life was located,” alleged Kanya.
“Finally, these politicians and forces that be got together, accused me of being a squatter, suppressed the information I showed them to prove I wasn’t, took me to Court, evicted me, and tore down the building that housed the Tree of Life leaving a Parking Lot there for 22 years!. As a result, a serious project to aid and educate our black community in Harlem was temporarily lost.”
Kanya was bankrupted. “Therefore, I decided to move to Atlanta in 1993 where I could live rent free with my aunt. I thought a bookstore of the Tree of Life’s caliber might have a better chance in Atlanta. I started doing radio and TV shows, seminars and classes and set up the store in the basement of my aunt’s home. However, to date, for lack of funds, I haven’t been able to reinstate the Tree of Life in a way that would be most advantageous and beneficial to its long term growth and survival,” explained the educator.
Kanya is the host of The Tree of Life Show on http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/Kanya , an Internet radio station, where he features guests and subject matters such as Consciousness; God; Karma; the New Sexuality; Life, Death and Reincarnation; Enlightenment; Astrology; Drugs; Mind Control and a myriad of subject matter to enlighten and influence mankind.
Married to his work, Kanya sees his patrons as the children of his mission in life, which is the opening of knowledge within each person. “I am not a teacher per se but rather a ‘nudger’ that enables people to find the wisdom within. We have a saying that says: “The books at the Tree of Life contain knowledge that you know but that you do not know that you know,” states Kanya.
Dr. Kanya is presently seeking partners to enable the Tree of Life to continue its Mission of educating the New Indigo and Crystal Children
Please View these Important Websites:
http://www.naturalusa.com/ads/treeoflife.html
http://www.KanyaWater.biz
Kanya Vashon McGhee
1701 M. L. King Drive SW
Atlanta , GA 30314-2227
Email: drkanya@GMail.com
404-753-5700 Toll Free 1-866-840-5700
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