Nongeek Perspective

Social websites are known for their marketing potential. However, you may know that it's not easy to get promoted to the main page of Digg or del.icio.us, for example. But don't worry, there are some blogging focussed social sites where you may have better results, provided your posts are good enough.

Since these communities are smaller than the famous ones, a lower number of votes is required to be promoted to the main page. They also usually are more focussed on niches or are exclusive for blogs and it's more likely that people interested in a particular subject discover your posts and vote for them. On the other hand, they will not send you as much traffic as the bigger ones.

Important note: Remember to contribute to the communities you're submitting stories

1. Submit only valuable content. If your post is lame, it never will reach the main page of any voting site. Besides that, submitting non-valuable posts may be considered as spam.
2. Vote for interesting articles from other blogs. These communities are helpful for finding valuable posts and knowing where is the buzz. Do vote for those interesting articles.
   
3. Submit articles from someone else's blog. Read an interesting post while surfing the net? Submit it.
   

Digg alike sites

There are a some alternatives to Digg:

• Blogg-BUZZ. From the front page: "a blogger driven site, exclusively for bloggers like you, to share, discover and promote blog posts that you find interesting!". There are many categories for blog posts but the most active seems to be the blogging category.
• bVibes. It's a new site with a steadily growing community. The main page says "is a Digg-like social bookmarking website focussed on blogs".  Every member get credits to submit a limited number of posts weekly.
• Combust. A couple of months ago there were some articles available for voting. Now, it seems to be in maintenance. I'm keeping an eye on that site to watch what will happen.

You can find tons of niche focussed digg-like sites in this digg-style application list from 3spots and Digg-like sites, a Digg alike site for Digg-like sites ;-)

Blogger communities

It's amazing the similarities between these sites. They all offer similar services like blog stats and widgets like recent visitors. Nevertheless these sites are good to keep in touch with other bloggers within your niche.

• MyBlogLog. I don't know if it's the most active community, but their recent visitor widgets is widely used. Have you see it in a blog recently?
  
• BUMPzee.com. Similar to MyBlogLog. Good communities, in special No Nofollow.
  
• BlogCatalog. It's a blog directory and community.
• Peopleized! A new site which main goal is to put bloggers in contact to give interviews each others.

There are many other digg-like sites and forums focussed on blogging, but the list I'm sharing here is what I consider the most relevant to blogging. I left some apparently inactive sites out of the list, like Blog Reporter, for example. If you know any other site, please let me know to include it in the list.


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