As some of you may already know, Sphinn is the Digg equivalent for the SEO, SEM, and SMM (search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and social media marketing) industry. To many of us industry types, its really important.

Benefits of Sphinn:

For the most part, Sphinn serves many functions;

a) its a training ground for SMM, before we move up to Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Mixx, etc.

b) its a good tool for getting known in the industry, and for starting to brand yourself

c) its good for developing relationships with other industry types, many of which can be leveraged on other social media (hint, hint)

d) its a great tool to stay in touch with the latest news and opinions on industry matters.

Notice however, that 3 of the 4 identified benefits are heavily influenced by one’s ability to have posts ‘go hot’ and appear on the main page. This of course means, many people in our industry stand to benefit greatly by hitting the main page of Sphinn. As is typical too, a few account for a disproportionately high % of the ‘gone hots’.

So, as important as it is, how does someone new to the industry start to hit the homepage of Sphinn to experience all the above benefits and elevate their profile? Its a chicken vs egg dilemma really. Fortunely, Danny and crew have made some changes recently to make it easier for everyone to hit the homepage … if you just know how to use them to your benefit.

So What Has Sphinn Changed? Actually, Sphinn has made a number of changes, but the two biggest are:

1) The addition of the “Top 10 Most Sphunn in What’s New” table to each page

2) The “Latest Comments” table to each page

How Do These Changes Affect Front Page Tactics?:

Essentially, the above changes accomplish Sphinn’s goal, and do make it easier for everyone to make a story go hot. You still need to follow the standard practices (for a great post on these tactics … check out ‘How to Dominate Sphinn in 4 Easy Steps‘), forging friends, voting, commenting, submitting the stories of others, and in general being part of the community, but now there are more tools in your toolbelt. Specifically, here’s how the most recent changes at Sphinn can be used to your benefit.

1) if you’ve got 10 to say 15 votes for your story already and it seems to be lagging (remember you’ve only got 36 hours from time of submission to make your story go hot), call in a few favors to get the minimum number of votes needed to show your story in the “Top 10 Most Sphunn …” table. Once there, and assuming the piece is good quality, I’d suggest 95% of stories go hot. I’m not an advocate of calling in favors on Sphinn, but when you’re new, sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do … just until your profile is elevated somewhat.

2) Use the comment section to your benefit. The first place I goto whenever I goto Sphinn is the Comment table, and I know others do too. Don’t know why, but I love to look at the comments. So … use that to your advantage. Comment more. By commenting more (obviously well thought out comments rather than generic one liners like “nice post”), you draw more attention to yourself and your submissions. At the same time, make certain your comment is catchy, and stands out from the rest of the comments. Ideally, the comment would begin with a catchy ‘sound bite’ that entices people to click on it (see screenprint below … which grab your attention? 2 are mine. Hint … one uses multiple ‘!’s, and the other talks about ‘magic beans’). If you comment on your own submission, you can then draw more attention to it once it begins to stagnate.

Summary:

In the end, these are only tactics, and are no substitute for being a valued and active member of the community. The fundamentals are still the same … participate and make friends. While trying to establish a name for yourself though, sometimes its necessary to resort to more agressive tactics such as those mentioned above.

Drop me a note and say ‘hi’ next time you’re on Sphinn. Happy Sphinning!

The preceding post was guest authored by Jeff Quipp of Search Engine People. Any guesses where I became acquainted with Jeff?

Stage 1 – Research

The first stage of a successful social media strategy should involve identifying industry related areas of the web that will provide opportunities to create a buzz online for your clients industry. These include looking at niche social bookmarking sites, blogs, forums and social networking sites. You should have records kept on file of what sites work well for which industries, this will save you time in the long run, this file will eventually get very large (trust me!).

Stage 2 – Registrations

Once sites have been identified that meet the projects criteria the long registration process entering clients details in profiles takes place. This will usually involve entering a “homepage” URL, company logo and a brief summary of what the company’s goals are. Any additional promotional material would also be useful to help build up the brand within the different communities.

Stage 3 – Building trust

The key to creating a successful social media strategy is the relationships you build and the trust that you earn. When suggesting sites or information it should not immediately be the clients site or link bait, it should consist of industry related material. Commenting on related blogs, starting forum threads about the industry should also be created. This should be maintained for a period of time before moving on to the next stage. You should take a genuine interest what you comment on and write about, no-one likes a fibber!

Stage 4 – Release link bait

Once there is a level of trust associated with the company profile that is the time when the link bait or urls should be posted. Using this method will ensure that the information that is posted will not be labeled as spam by the various site administrators or site owners. By this time the profiles created will already hold some weight within the various communities which will ensure a level of traffic.

Stage 5 – Generate traffic + links

Once the urls and link bait have been posted this should immediately create incoming traffic to the client’s site or landing page. The secondary goal of such a strategy or possibly primary goal depending on client will be the natural links generated as a result of such a strategy. If like minded users find the link bait interesting then by all accounts they should then bookmark the link on their own social media site, be it a blog, social bookmarking site or forum. This will additionally create more incoming traffic to the site and generate a number of links that will help with the clients search engine positions for selected keywords.

Stages 3, 4 and 5 should be maintained over a longer period of time to keep impacting the search engine results positions. If this is not repeated throughout an extended time period then the increase in search engine positions will only be temporary.

By the way it’s my Birthday today so wohoo to me!

Link Baiting – with the paid links debate clearing up, it’s clear that obvious link purchases will result in penalties to your site. Reciprocal linking holds very little weight too these days so alternatives must be suggested for a link building strategy. I won’t go into exact details of link baiting but even a simple piece of interesting information can result in hundreds of one way links to your website.

Blogs – That’s right, corporate and e-commerce websites should have a blog associated with the business name. It’s 2008 and blogs are bigger and stronger than ever online, creating and managing a blog will open up opportunities for one way links, returning traffic and updated fresh content (“yum yum” says Google). More companies are starting to do this as it’s also a nice experience to offer some sort of relationship to your customers. I know I’d prefer to buy a product from someone I had some degree of trust with, be it through brand recognitions or online relationship – writer to reader.

Social Media – I’ve been blogging about this for a while too so just to cover this briefly. Create profiles on all social media/bookmarking websites and hire someone to manage the accounts all day long. It’s an investment that should be considered for a long term strategy, branding, relationship building and link generation are all positive outcomes from investment.

On site optimization – Still a very important investment from an SEO point of view. Seomoz recently posted a great update on title tags, Meta data and URL structures. All traffic increasing methods and should be maintained to the highest standard.

Analytics and traffic analysis – In my honest opinion you don’t need to fork out for highly priced analytic programs. Google Analytics offers a very comprehensive package for the amazing price of…nothing. An investment should be made into setting up clear goals for your website and then using the data to optimise your site structure and content. An increase in sales or conversions will be a guarantee and a clear understanding of where your traffic originates can help producing domain traffic reports.