Socializing your blog or application is something that is becoming more and more of a requirement these days. This is not because it is a trend, either. The actual value of adding social media elements to your site is becoming recognized and expanded on by many of your competitors and they are seeing results. In effect, social media makes a web site ’stickier’, that is people coming to the site will stay longer and make a greater committment to it. While you can add no end of widgets, Ajax and Flash to a site, what really keeps people around and coming back is a sense that your site is, in some capacity, an authority. Below is a look at the different kinds of authority you can develop for your own site as well as the pros and cons of each. As you read, keep in mind that the approach you take for your own site will most probably be a mix of the items listed below. This is a function of your own abilities, interests and time constraints. Also, remenmber that it is important to experiment with each, and evaluate your competitors based on how they are implementing what is below. The idea is to find a zone where your abilities and time committment match up with a gap in the market.

Free Report: Ten Innovative Ways To Use Twitter For Business

Free SAP Report – Six Mistakes Companies Are Making Today and How You Can Avoid Them

1. Numbers

   A large amount of traffic is an asset in that it can draw contributors that have a fair amount of valuable insight. This can be the case until someone else comes along who can reach out to these people more effectively. What a socialized blog owner would like to do is enourage and facilitate productive discussions between two people who met at your blog. This send the message to those not commenting that your space is where these conversations can happen. As in Twitter, numbers are good, but you have to do something with them. Focusing only on numbers, however may end up with you hitting a ceiling. There may be a finite number of people willing to look at content that is designed to appeal to a more general audience. The web is specializing, not generalizing. Therefore, now is the time to think about going deeper, as you go wider.

2. Content quantity – Scope

   A socialized blog can have alot of content in one place that is easy to find and comment on. This makes it a great source of constant newby traffic as well as a fine resource for more experienced people who need some basic info that they have forgotten. The focus here is riffing and compiling information on a wide variety of content it can get a fair amount of traffic but may not be able to retain people once they find out that there are other sights going into greater depth on a given subject.

3. Content quality – depth

   This is the kind of authority that retains people because rather than looking at your list of links or scanning headings that describe things that they already know, they will actually read the article and frequently comment on it. The comments, coming from people who are looking for more than just surface knowledge will frequently contain some great insights. Eyes on pages like this are the ones that advertisers want since people here are far enough into a topic that they are considering one or more purchases as they read.

4. Associations

   Having the ear of someone big, whether as an associate or employee of an organization or as someone who frequents events like SXSW or Web2.0 expos will definitely give you some kind of clout in the social media space. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who think that hanging out with tech-celeb A or B will somehow drip some kind of trafic Mojo on them and they will be hard paved on the road to El Dorado. It’s true, a mention from Guy Kawasaki drove 500 people to my new site in an hour, but this isn’t something I’d be willing to rely on. This kind of clout is a lot like numbers, you’ve got to do something with it. Having authoratative name dropping rolodex might work to drive occasional spikes, but the thing that builds long term sustainability is actual value. Speak less about having spoken to, tweeted with, met someone famous than about what you were able to learn from them.

5. Resource Authority

   Your site may have less to do with educating and informing than with pointing. There are many sites, tweeps and Facebook accounts not that focus on pointing people in the right direction. This is a valuable service in that it can be a huge time saver for anyone who is looking for something specific. Traffic tends to move quickly either from page to page within the site or off the site to the actual location of the widget or tutorial. As such, not much in the way of insight is hosted on the site itself and a stong community doesn’t really develop. Comments when they do appear are more of the ‘Thanks!’ or ‘Great list!’ variety. Such lists might be able to drive traffic, but since many of those same resources are quickly linked to by other similar blogs, you will be basically running in an ongoing footrace to stay ahead of or catch up to competitors who are also cutting and pasting links and pictures. While this kind of work might not be particularly gratifying, some use of it can work well to drive in new traffic and expose them to the things that do differentiate you.

Free Report: Ten Innovative Ways To Use Twitter For Business

Free SAP Report – Six Mistakes Companies Are Making Today and How You Can Avoid Them

No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post)




Related posts:

1. The 10 Types of Social Media Sites You Need to be on and Why Microblogging Leader: Twitter – Everyone knows this service. It’s...
2. 6 Steps To Developing Authority With Social Media Developing authority in your social media niche Answer Social media...
3. Generate Social Authority, Leads and Income with Powerful Whitepapers. Click here and download the E-media whitepaper What is a...
4. Word Press Plugins For Social Media Yet Another Related Posts Plugin for WordPress To social...
5. The 7 Currencies of Social Media The currencies of social media: As search, bookmarking and messaging...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.