The three C’s of a strong social news profile are content, consistency and contacts. If you follow these tips, your success on social news sites will become that much easier.

Reliable Sources. Make sure the blogs and news sources you’re submitting from are reliable and have quality information. Make sure they aren’t sending false information to the readers. And if you see that they might be trying to game social news websites don’t submit their content.

General viewpoint. Find a viewpoint in which the majority of the users will have interest in, or even care about. Take a look at the top submissions for the day. Those are basically the stories which most people have interest in. If you don’t find stories for all audiences, the users will either bury your story, or it will just be left unnoticed. Try thinking from a global standpoint. Does your town hockey championship really effect people half way across the world?

Large list of blogs/news sources. If you are just starting out and you want to find some good reliable blogs to submit content from, take a look at some of the top users submissions (what sites they link to.) You can also scavenge the site for links constantly making it on the homepage, and consider putting some of those sites into your RSS Reader. Also try out some of your own sites you enjoy and think have content worthy enough for social news. (Right now, I have about 200 sites which I think have worthy enough content.) In the end make sure YOU have interest in what you are reading.

Fast RSS Reader. My recommendations for RSS Readers are: for Mac Net News Wire (which just went completely free) and for Windows Feed Demon is the way to go. If you’re always on different computers an online RSS Reader would be best. I recommend Google Reader for this. Try read your feeds twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.

Submit often. Aim for about two-three quality submissions a day. That is what I have had the most success with.

Add Friends. Try find users who’s interests you have in common, or if you their posts are the same types as yours. You should then add them to your network of friends. Try interacting with these users either by a shout, a direct message or IM. This is one of the keys ways to make your profile and stories more know when you are first starting out.

IM Friends. IM (instant message) some of these friends you have added, and get to know them a bit. You can then send the odd submission of yours to them – to vote for (make sure they are okay with this.)

Vote for your friend’s submissions. Be sure you actually read the content of the story first and enjoy it. Hopefully next time that user will repay the favor by voting for one of yours.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the 10e20 RSS Feed for more great tips, tricks and how-to’s!

Bookmark this post: