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Apr. 1, 2008 at 12:00pm Eastern by Chris Winfield
How to Make Your Content ‘Submit Worthy’
"Why won't anyone submit my content to Digg? My competitor is always on Reddit but my stuff gets ignored!" Sound familiar? Well here's how to put an end to your woes and ensure your content is submit worthy.
In order to be successful on social media news and bookmarking sites, you have to think like a typical power user. Start by understanding some fundamental truths about the users of these sites. For the most part they are busy. They skim. They want you (the publisher) to do a lot of the work for them. So here's how to cover all of your bases and K.I.S.S.
It all starts with a great title.
In the SEO world most people will tell you that your title is the most important on-page factor. Same thing is true for social media and bookmarketing sites. Your title can make or break your article. On a site like Reddit, there is no description option, so it's all about the title. Take a couple of extra minutes to put some thought into a creative title for your content. You'll be happy you did.
Need help? Try these.
Subheadings are sexy.
You know what your content is about better than anyone. Why not provide a short summary right under your title? This way someone can use that as a description instead of just grabbing the first two sentences (that might be way out of context). Great examples of this can be seen on any story by the BBC.
Pictures are worth a thousand words.
Great imagery can go a long way. On a site like Digg it can mean the difference between success and failure. Digg allows you to have a thumbnail image for any news article that gets submitted. People's eyes are naturally drawn to images. So if users have the choice between a submission with a thumbnail and one without it - well....
Be sure to check this yourself on Digg though to make sure its image spider is finding the correct images. For good examples check out the Wall Street Journal, Divine Caroline, or ReadWriteWeb. Need help? Here's our creative process.
No one wants to flip through 15 pages.
Social media users are a fickle bunch. One thing that most will agree on is that they hate having to read your content spread out onto seven pages. Or check out your slideshow that is on 25 different ones. I know, I know. Each extra page view results in extra ad impressions. Social media users know this too. And they hate it. Would you rather 1,000 people viewing seven pages or 60,000 viewing two?
RSS. It's not just for blogs.
One of the biggest misconceptions I hear in regards to RSS is "My site isn't a blog so I can't have RSS." If you have new content and you want people to be able to find that content easily, put it out in RSS. Make sure people know that you have RSS. Is Time Magazine a blog? Here's a great overview to get you started.
Oh yeah, Pop culture references can also help. Like the one I used as inspiration for this post...
Chris Winfield is the President and Co-Founder of 10e20, an Internet marketing company that specializes in social media & search marketing services and is based in New York & Florida. The Let's Get Social column appears Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.
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