Web Design Ireland

If you are an avid reader of any blog, you will notice the bigger players in the blogosphere are inherently good at creating a blog post about news which has recently hit the web. Often, the news is so small and apparently uninteresting that the rest of us think ”How can I make  a freakin’ blog post about that?” - not the big guys, instead the minute they see something, they pounce on it.

The reason being, that sites such as Technorati have bloggers actively discussing the product / concept / idea and as a result there are traffic gains to be had. Social Bookmarking sites also give a serious amount of traffic, off the back of new news.

Also with the Big G indexing content faster on blogs, the chances of getting a top ten placement for the new product, or concept is pretty good, so you could see yourself getting ranked highly in the SERP’s simply by adding something to the existing press release, even though the product has nothing to do with you or your company.

I’ve seen this recently with Michael (jumping on Google Knols) , and Darren (Jumping on the new Google Analytics features.). There is obvious interest in these sort of things judging by the Digg Count. Read Write Web, also jumped on Knols. Again getting a reasonable Digg Count. Lesson to learn? When you see something new, post about it, and attempt to inform the world quickly, via social bookmarking. The quicker you get your stuff out there, the more likely you are to gain traffic.

So how do you flesh out the content?

1) Twist it.

Take the announcement, and ask the question to the blogging community. What can we learn about (Google’s strategy),  What does the recent release of Product X mean for Bloggers, etc,etc.

2) Slate it.

Tell everyone why this new product x is inferior to product y, or why you preferred version 1 over version 2. Make sure your arguments hold true, and that you aren’t just being controversial for the sake of it.

My mother often taught me “If you cant say anything nice, dont say anything at all.” But it can be successful if your opinion either already carries weight or if you are definitely right.

3). Love it.

Tell the world how the new product x is going to changes their lives for the better, and how much you really love the product or announcement. Who knows maybe your post will get picked up by that particular companies marketing department.

4). Poll it

Ask your readers what they think. Often the best way to get interaction is to simply ask a question. If you haven’t already got a good blogging plugin for polls, go grab one.

5). Explain it.

Often this is the single best way to capitalise on a certain announcement. Explain the system in detail, how it works, how to use it. Use diagrams and photos to explain it. In software development often the documentation is lacking substantially, so make your site the manual. This is one of the best ways to gain backlinks as well.

Is it a case of first post first to gain traffic?

Sometimes. But not always. I’ve seen many occurences where bloggers have been slower off the mark, and marketed their content better, gaining the additional traffic.

How to find decent press releases.

RSS RSS RSS - If you haven’t already got a good list of people inside Google Reader, start subscribing now, the more blogs you read, including official company blogs, the better chance you have of seeing something posted recently that is worth posting about.