A quick way to react to media events using social news sites

In order to be effective in spreading news online, you have to understand the audiences you’re after.  Social news sites are, without question, the fastest way to kickstart the viral spread of a story…but where you submit your story first has everything to do with your success.  It all begins with understanding the target demographic and figuring out the best way to use their interests to your advantage.

Although they might all seem similar, social news sites are innately unique. For example, Digg users prefer useful or entertaining news,while Reddit and lifehacker users are more tech oriented. Just take one look at Fark and you’ll get a sense of the diversity you’re dealing with.

Did you know there are over 120 social media sites vying for dominance right now (and that’s not including niche sites…we’re talking mainstream here)? Did you know that not submitting your content through the right channels can create a nightmare for your company? You have to remember, there are social media marketers out there who’ve been dominating their respective homesites for years…and the key is to understand how to work with them effectively.

The trick is to match your content to the audience venue. If you can provide content which is timely, useful, share-worthy, extremely well written with a comedic edge, engaging, and/or absolutely amazing…you’re well on your way.  But typically…this is how we break down our syndication efforts

We start with a review of popurls and the technorati blog index to see if there is already buzz about the given topic (or better yet…the story we’re about to promote was produced as a result of buzz!).  After we investigate the search volume for a given topic…we start looking for opportunities to get our media in the mix.

We target these sites and then move on to more niche opportunities while our PR counterparts go to work in the wide world of print and press releases.

After we’ve made sure the social news sites are picking up and reacting to our content, we move into video.  We target these sites to start, and then move onto niche social video sites as necessary.

Typically, between text and video syndication through social media portals…we get a solid sense of whether the content we’re trying to promote is “share-worthy”.  This is not something you can force.  If you’re story isn’t being picked up, shared, spread, sent, bookmarked, or dugg……there’s a problem with the content you’re trying to promote.  Remember, even if you think your content is great…that doesn’t mean the world at large, or the demographic you’re targeting…cares in the least. You have to make sure, from the begining, that you’ve got information people WANT to read or find interesting in the first place.

Speaking of the “opinions of the masses”, we’re currently experimenting with the techniques to utilize twitter for news syndication.  News spreads faster on twitter than it does on the news-wire….that’s a fact. Finding twitter followers who care about what you have to say….that’s another story.  There aren’t too many social media marketers out there who have succesfully pinned a Twitter Success formula….but there are some really talented minds working on it…and we’ll have the methodology within our reach sooner rather than later.

III. Tracking Your Success
So you submitted your story all across the web and you’re starting to see the fruits of your labor.  You’ve got a couple of diggs, your content got socially bookmarked, you’ve seen some trackbacks start to come in…and you can see a steady increase in interest on technorati.  You’re finished right? Wrong again! Did you remember the analytics!? No!? Big mistake.

It’s crucial to quantify your efforts by evaluating how much traffic came in the door as the result of your actions. This is done easily by using Google Analytics, services like Hitwise, and demographic montoring applications like quantcast. The more careful you are in monitoring trends and the viral spread of your content, the more acurately you can calculate how much bang you got for your buck.