AdesBlog.com

I am sure many of you already know about pligg. But for those who do not know, it’s an open source content management system that allows you to set up your own Digg style website (e.g DesignFloat).

You can see the list of sites that were developed with pligg at pliggsites.com. Currently there are 234 pligg sites in the directory.

Have you used pligg? If yes what is your website?

November 23rd, 2007

Manual: How to be successful Digger

Posted in » Marketing, Social Bookmarking - by Ades

5 Comments

Top Digger Muhammad Saleem has written a Digg Manual for all the people who are interested in Social Marketing phenomenon. Muhammad Saleem is No.3 in Digg Rankings, his submissions hit Digg’s front-page over 1000 times. So what better way there is, except learning it from a pro like him.

Obviously, for most things, there is no shortcut to succeed. If you were expecting something fast, then this article is not it. Author says it takes time to succeed in Digg, because you need to build reputation and friendship with other members in the Digg community. Thus the name “social marketing“, because you need others’ help to succeed. And that, takes time… So it’s a long process. At least it was for him, he started digg’in in late 2005.

In the beginning, try to read as much “popular” content as you can, to get an idea of what kind of content people want shared with them. Follow that by posting comments on these stories, making sure that you are being objective in your commentary. Subjective commentary can be interpreted as a personal attack or excessive fanboyism, neither of which is good. Only post comments if you have something substantive to say, and don’t try to use comments to drive traffic to yourself or otherwise hijack a comment thread.

Try to submit and share in moderation. Always start with sources that are already popular with the community so that you can minimize errors in judgment and accidental submissions from less-respected sources.

Total of 8 Advices

Article is at Search Engine Land, I strongly recommend you read it. Author’s own blog is located at MuhammadSaleem.com

5 Comments

September 1st, 2007

Twitter, Tuning Twitter for Value

Posted in » SEO & Promotion, Social Bookmarking - by Ades

Chris Brogan has a good article about Tweeter, where he discusses the different ways people use Twitter. He argues that, while general public is using Twitter as daily online diary, there are people who are reaping the benefits of this new tool. Here are some of the examples of Twitter usage mentioned in his post:

Use it as a promotion engine - use Twitter to promote your blog posts, products, services etc.
Use it as a social outlet, a place to communicate and build relationships, and converse
Use it as a news room - become your own CNN

Recommendation

For those who want to start blogging, maybe you can try Twitter first? Because with Twitter you don’t have to buy a domain name, hosting or install a blogging script. Also with Twitter you can write posts that contain 140 character at a time. Later if you are successful and if you think 140 characters is too short for you, then you can start your own blog. www.twitter.com

August 24th, 2007

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Posted in » Social Bookmarking - by Ades

You might have already seen “RSS in Plain English” before on YouTube. Here is a new video by the same author, known as leelefever on YouTube. Very Creative!

July 17th, 2007

One Click Submit To 19 Social Bookmarking Services

Posted in » Social Bookmarking - by hongkiat

Ades has gone for a trip overseas, so hongkiat is here to help keep things going. Heres an advantage to be writing on a PR7 blog, I can link link link and keep on linking to entries in hongkiat.com. Any PR7 links should be really good in helping me on the next PR update, but Im not that evil :-p

Im sure most of us use social bookmarking sites; either to bookmark really good articles or sometimes, bloggers use them to bookmark own entries to create more exposure. No matter what your intentions are, heres a way how you can submit articles to leading social bookmarking sites with 1 click.

Onlywire is a free service that helps you submit your article to these social bookmarking sites with just one click.

Wink Read more »

July 2nd, 2007

Effective advertising strategy using StumbleUpon

Posted in » Online Advertising, SEO & Promotion, Social Bookmarking - by Ades

44 Comments

This strategy works only on sites that have good content, something that people will love (usually people love free stuff). It will also work on specific pages of your blog or site, that specific page, of course, should be something spectacular. Maybe you have a highly popular blog post, if that is the case, you can promote that page. I hope, I have stressed enough that good content is the key here. If your site has bad content, then you can forget this strategy. You will just waste your money. (Because every one will “thumbs down” your site).

Multiplier Effect on StumbleUpon

Why this is an effective way of advertising? Because StumbleUpon has the multiplier effect that other advertising media do not. It works this way, when your site is shown to the StumbleUpon user, he or she can give “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down”. When your site gets “Thumbs Up”, it will be automatically recommended to other users. So the more “Thumbs Up” it gets, the more popular it will get. And a lot more people will see your site (for free).

The Cost and Return On Investment

The cost of displaying your site to one StumbleUpon user is 0.05 cents, so if the user likes it, he or she will give you “Thumbs Up”. That means you don’t have to pay for the second display. Because the second time, it’s being shown, because StumbleUpon user has recommended it. So, do you get the idea? The more people “Thumbs Up” your site, the more free advertising you will get. That means, if your site is really interesting, you might only have to advertise, for the first few days only. And the rest of the advertising will be done by StumbleUpon users. (Please note that, one “Thumbs Up” is not equal to one “free display”. This (1:1 ratio) was used for example purposes only. I am not sure of the exact ratio for it.)

Campaign Creation

You can create the campaign in almost any category. Payment is done through PayPal or Credit Card. All campaigns should be approved by the StumbleUpon staff first, before they go live.

You can set daily budget to your campaigns, you can also pause/resume your campaign anytime you want. As I said, this works best for interesting, useful, cool, great…etc sites. Bad sites will just get “Thumbs Down”ed and eventually disapproved by the StumbleUpon staff.

Demo: How StumbeUpon works - screencast here.
Advertiser Section: http://www.stumbleupon.com/ads/

44 Comments

May 4th, 2007

Digg says: no more removing of HD DVD key

Posted in » Social Bookmarking - by Ades

Few days back, Digg was forced to remove a story that contained a serial key (decryption key) that could remove copy protection in HD DVDs. Using this key users could decrypt the movies from HD DVDs.

After these posts were removed from Digg, Digg users revolted. There were thousands of (anti Digg) posts and thousands of more comments against Digg’s decision. There were also tons of Photoshop Creations similar to the above photo that contained the HD DVD key. There were even T-Shirts containing this key in CafePress. All of these, forced Digg’s founder Kevin Rose to make a serious decision, here is what he says in Digg’s blog:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, youâ€™ve made it clear. Youâ€™d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we wonâ€™t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin

Wired’s Blog reports that Google and WordPress has also warned its users to remove the hex-codes from their pages.

What is HD-DVD
HD-DVD (for High-Density Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical media format which is being developed as one standard for high-definition DVD. HD-DVD is promoted by Toshiba, NEC, and Sanyo, and backed by four major film studios.

March 3rd, 2007

AddThis.com - creates bookmark button to any social bookmarking site

Posted in » Social Bookmarking - by Ades

add this to

AddThis.com is a free service that you can create a small button that will enable to bookmark your blog or blog posts directly to popular social bookmarking sites.