Dec
13
If you have a blog and want to raise its profile, there’s no better way to get lots of traffic quickly than to use the social sites. However, the trouble is that multiple submission of your own posts to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and others is frowned upon. At best, you will stop attracting traffic; at worst, you’ll be labeled a spammer. It’s a Catch-22 for blog owners who have great content that they want to showcase. What bloggers need is a way to legitimately promote their own blog content - and there’s a new site that does just that.
Blow Your Own Trumpet
It’s called BloggingZoom and I’ve been testing it out for the past couple of weeks. What attracted me to the site was that it is okay – in fact positively encouraged – to submit your own content. It’s a site where no one minds if you blow your own trumpet.
Post Submission
Like many other social sites, you have a profile page where you can describe your blog. BloggingZooom also has a limited friends’ network. Submitting a post is a three-step process which is made easier by using a handy bookmarklet. Just click on this when you’re on the post that you want to zoom. This takes you to a page where you can edit the post title, write a description (at least 4 sentences and 350 characters) and add tags. You preview, then you click ‘submit’ and you’re done. Your post has just had its first zoom. There’s also a Wordpress plugin which makes it easy for readers to zoom your posts while on your blog.
Getting Promoted
The post you submit goes into BloggingZoom’s upcoming queue which all members can view before being promoted to the front page. With any luck other people will zoom it giving it a chance to appear on the list of popular content. The front page features published posts, upcoming posts, hot posts, tags and a very nifty random post link. Members are also able to comment on your posts on the BloggingZoom site, which helps with creating a network.
BloggingZoom Secrets
The secret to attracting attention on BloggingZoom, as on many other sites, is to have a great title (short and catchy) and a useful description. I usually pick a few interesting sentences from the middle of my post. Be warned. If your description is too short, you won’t be able to submit the post. While I found this quite annoying the first couple of times it forced me to think more about how the description helped others to perceive my post.
Building Traffic
So far, I have submitted nine of my own posts. All but one of them have gone hot which I think means that at least four or five other people have also zoomed the post. The interesting thing is that unlike StumbleUpon where you often get a flurry of interest at the start which dies away as suddenly as it started, with BloggingZoom interest in the posts has developed more slowly.
What is also interesting is that BloggingZoom has brought a steady trickle of traffic to the posts that I’ve submitted. I’ve also seen interest in my profile from a number of BloggingZoom members. I expect that if I took the time to find out which of my online friends are members of the site, I would get even more traffic from it. Until then I’m more than happy with the new readers I’ve already gained. BloggingZoom is still at an early stage, but I like what I see so far.
Do You Zoom? - BloggingZoom Review
multiple submission of your own posts to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and others is frowned upon. At best, you will stop attracting traffic; at worst, you’ll be labeled a spammer. It’s a Catch-22 for blog owners who have great content that they want to…
Great information, I’m just beginning to experiment with BloggingZoom. In fact, I’ve only had an account there for about a week but I guess it’s time to get a little more involved there and see what it offers.
Thanks for the review!
giving it a little more time to get more popular first
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll go check it out!
“What is also interesting is that BloggingZoom has brought a steady trickle of traffic to the posts that I’ve submitted.”
That’s actually because BZ listings tend to rank very high in the SERPs very quickly. It’s really not the BZ users clicking to your blog; it’s actually the search people…
Huh, interesting point Ruchir, thanks. So your posts on BZ could potentially rank higher than your own (original) posts in the search engines? I guess if that original post you submitted to BZ didn’t rank on the first page of google, then BZ’s ranking would be a good thing, although I wouldn’t submit any of my high ranking posts to BZ. Maybe I wouldn’t even submit brand new posts until I see where they fall in the search engines.
Thanks for the tip Sharon, I’ll check out the service.
Thanks to Google’s PR slap, every one of my BZ posts ranks higher than my own. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues, or if I can regain lost PR and get ahead of the BZ
Yeah sometimes, BZ can rank higher than your posts. However that’s not bad always. I have both, my original post and the BZ post ranked in the top 10 for a keyword and I get traffic from both
So, it’s not necessarily bad that BZ will outrank your post. Just think about it: 2 results in the top 10 leading traffic to your site
I signed up for BloggingZoom the first day it went active on November 1 and I must say that I’ve never looked back. It’s been the best thing I’ve done to promote my blog, hands down. I’ve gotten hundreds of visits from BZ users, but those users also tend to be StumbleUpon users which has sent me THOUSANDS of visitors.
Waiting until BloggingZoom gets more popular is the wrong way to look at it. It’s a ground floor opportunity now where you have the chance to get in and make a name for yourself. It’s still a relatively small community where you can meet and communicate with a lot of different bloggers who are all willing to help one another. It’s a great community and well worth the time and effort it takes to participate.
you just changed my mind, I’m signing up now ^_^
Thanks for your comments, everyone. I hadn’t thought about that, Ruchir, but now that you mention it I had noticed some of my Zoomed posts in the rankings. I think Jason makes a great point about getting in now. It’s still quite easy to gain visibility, and the traffic is much better than Blogrush, which I’ve also tried.
I love blogging zoom. For a blogger, it is absolutely the best social voting site that you can participate in. Everyone there is a fellow blogger.
Look me up and add me as a friend.
http://bloggingzoom.com/user/view/profile/fredpeters
I just started using it recently. I do like what i see - thats for sure - and for everything I submit there - there are a lot of links built back up to my site.
Sounds like an interesting site Sharon I’ll check that out
Sue
I have a BZ account but haven’t been on the site very much yet.
I’ve actually never tried BloggingZoom, I’ll have to take a look and see what it’s all about. I like the fact that it’s an audience of fellow bloggers, it’s nothing like Fark where the attitude is, “we don’t care about your blog”. Thanks for posting this.
Yes, agreed, Roberta. That’s one of the great features.
Steven, I’m starting to use it more now, because it’s so effective and I keep checking to see if anyone has commented.
Matt, I think it will get even bigger, but one of the things I like is that the people who come to the blog via BloggingZoom are interested and stick around for a while.
Fred, you’ve been added.
Sue, it would be great for your blog. Some of your recent posts are worth zooming.
I have been using BloggingZoom for a few weeks now and was about to do an updated review when I came across your article.
Though there hasn’t been a touch of ‘gold fever ‘about the amount of traffic it has brought to my site, I have found that it is the interaction with other bloggers that I have found more valuable. The feedback from the comments can be just as much fun as the post itself.
One feature BloggingZoom could do with is email notification when someone does leave a comment. On occasion, it can be a few days before I notice that someone has left a comment on a post, which I don’t like.
However, many of the bloggers I have met on BloggingZoom also have profiles on MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog, which can make up for some of the inter-blogger communication gaps in BloggingZoom.
So thanks for a great article, I really enjoyed it. I will put a link to it on my site if that is ok?
Thanks again!
Pablo
Yes, email notification would be great, Pablothehat. It’s a work in progress, though, so I’m sure there will be new features soon. Thanks for the link love.
Your welcome !
It doesnt have the traffic for me to actively promote it yet. I’ll stick to sphinn
Zoomed the article though
I guess not, Blogging Tools, though I’m sure that will change. Thanks for zooming
I’m glad I found this post. I will try bloggingzoom for my blogs sometime. Thanks for the great information.
Have a great weekend.
I also use blogging Zoom, but because of the topic of is just about blogging, it doesn’t really match my blog’s niche.
I would like to clear something up. Blogging Zoom is not about blogging!! Blogging Zoom is for blog publishing only. I have been scratching my head that peeps just do not get it. The blogs that are doing the best are the blogs that have nothing to do with Blogging!
Folks their are no searches for Blogging! Write about plumbing and their are over 2 million searches for plumbing every month but their was only 45k searches last month for the word blogging and the rest are even less.
The less about blogging you write about the more beneficial Blogging Zoom will be for you. If you are not ranking high in competitive terms then you can use Blogging Zoom as a bridge for SERPS. I will be writing another post on this trying to explain.
Just to add my two-pennies worth, the added bonus I got from BloggingZoom was not so much direct traffic, but that it introduced me to three tell-it-like-it-is bloggers Vic, Courtney and Grizz (and some others) who’ve been there and are still doing it. Reading their blogs is like going to school. I’ve increased my adsense and targeted search traffic thanks to these guys (and on a non niche blog).
Good point, Stirlyn. I discovered Vic’s blog through BloggingZoom and have read some posts that I might have missed otherwise.
BloggingZoom.com has the potential to be the best thing for bloggers since sliced bread, digg, and adsense combined
I don’t use Bloggingzoom yet, but it could be very nice to use it in future, because I need one review like my.review.
I’ve been looking at a few of these and have just found your review. Thanks for the balanced thoughts, I will give it a go and report back on the outcome.