A beginner’s guide to running the perfect hashtag competition on Instagram

Instagram is the easiest social media platform to run a competition on. Constructing a post is simple, all posts are shown in the newsfeed, and a hashtag friendly community makes increasing post reach a possibility.

This guide will take you through each step of running a simple hashtag competition on Instagram. There are several ways to run a competition on Instagram but this method makes  monitoring entries and selecting a winner hassle free.

The rules

A hashtag competition requires entrants to post a picture and use an established hashtag (that you have decided) in the caption.

It’s also a good idea to ask users to follow your account as a condition of entry. This is standard practice for an Instagram competition and will broaden your audience for future Instagram marketing.

Before you start

Before you publish the competition it is imperative that you have planned every aspect of it. If the contest doesn’t run smoothly, you risk losing favour with entrants- which defeats the entire object of running the contest.

Determine what you want to gain from the competition

An Instagram competition can; increase brand awareness, help you gain more followers, promote a product, celebrate a company anniversary, achievement or milestone, celebrate an occasion. Decide which of these things you want your competition to do.

(Of course, you may have a different reason- but these are the most common).

How to decide what the prize should be

*The prize should reflect what you are looking to gain from the competition.*

If you want to increase brand awareness, or promote a particular item- it makes sense to give away an item from your store. If you simply want to attract as many followers as possible, a prize that appeals to a wider audience will work better. Similarly, if you are celebrating an occasion, make the prize appropriate for the holiday.

How long should the competition last?

Although it may be tempting to run the competition for a long time, a lengthy competition can be annoying for customers; especially if the prize isn’t of high monetary value. Ideally an Instagram competition should last no longer than a week. A shorter time period will push entrants to take action immediately.

The Instagram Post

The picture

Choose a picture to post. The picture should be; a picture of the prize, or a piece of artwork that displays the competition rules/ hashtag etc.

(This will depend on what resources you have).

The hashtag

Think of a hashtag that is appropriate to your business. For example, a hashtag for an ekmPowershop Christmas competition could be #ekmChristmas. If you plan to make competitions a regular feature of your account, a hashtag that could be used for all competitions would be work well, such as #ekmComp.

Captioning the picture

The caption should clearly detail the conditions of entry, the prize and the closure date. See these examples, below.

 

Things to remember

Always stick to the terms and conditions. Ensure that the winner has completed all entry conditions, end the competition exactly when stated and announce the winner promptly.

How to choose a winner

Depending on the nature of the hashtag you may want to choose a winning picture personally, or select a winner at random.

Search your hashtag to see the number of people who have used it, and choose the picture that you want to win. Ensure that the person is following you- if following your account is part of the entry conditions.

To select a winner at random, enter the names into an online randomiser like this one.

*If you have a lot of entrants, Iconsquare is a great place to copy and paste the entrants from.

How to announce the winner

Announce the winner on all social media that you have promoted the competition on. If appropriate, post the winning picture. See an example from ekmPowershop, here.

Marketing the competition

If you are running the competition for a week, post the competition each day on one of your business social media channels. Stagger the times each day to reach as many people as possible. If you have a larger following on particular channel, target those users with the competition. Depending on the size of your budget, you could boost the post on Facebook.

After the competition

Now you’ve built up a rapport with your followers, use the opportunity to target them with regular posts to your Instagram. Once a month is a good frequency to run a competition at.

Grow your business by following the right people on Twitter

Joining in with trending hashtags, following other users and making regular tweets are the best ways to quickly and organically grow the Twitter audience for your business. However if you want to build up a valuable audience (one that will actually listen to your tweets and hopefully make a purchase) you need to be strategic about the accounts that you follow and interact with. Here’s how to build a valuable audience on Twitter that will help your business grow:

How to begin

To follow this strategy you are going to join in with hashtag hours, follow the right accounts for your business and interact with other users. But first, you need to establish who your target audience is. Your target audience is twofold; users that are interested in online business and users that are interested in your area of business (i.e. gardening, fashion etc).

Following other users

Following other users is important because doing so will get your account found by people who are also looking for users to follow. You should be searching only for users that have a large amount of followers (typically anything above 2k) and are either related to your area of business in some way, or business in general. This is because users who are looking to follow as many people as possible will target accounts with a large number of followers, and follow that account’s followers. You should ensure that each user you follow has an active account (tweets regularly) and has more followers than the number of people that they are following.

The best place to start when looking for these accounts is with your competitors. Depending on how you feel about following competitors on Twitter, you could follow them (this is where your main pool of potential customers will be) or follow accounts that they are following. This will kick start your Twitter profile, but always keep in mind that you should only be following accounts that are loosely related to what you do.WeFollow is also a great tool for finding accounts related to a subject area; just search for a topic and find users ranked by popularity for that subject. From there you can also look at the people being followed by and following this account.

Although it may be tempting to just go to a competitor’s Twitter page and follow all of the accounts that are following them; this way will not guarantee you an engaged audience. Be selective with who you follow.

Joining in with hashtag hours

Hashtag hours are an arranged meeting during which users tweet using an established hashtag to join in the conversation. These meetings act as a networking event for the subject area of the hashtag. Most of the hashtag hours that get a lot of activity will have an account that details what day and time the hashtag meets (these are also very useful accounts to follow) and if necessary what the hashtag discussion will be about. Check out this account for an example. These meetings are a great place to interact with a wide range of users with similar interests to those of your account and will help to build up a network of people that will be interested in your tweets.
The easiest way to find hashtag hours is to search for them on Google. There are many lists that detail hashtag hours according to subject area, such as this one but they can often have some hashtags that no longer exist on there too. You can check if a hashtag is still active by searching for it using the search bar on Twitter; if the hashtag has a lot of live tweets then it’s still active but it it only has a couple of tweets a day then it isn’t worth joining in with. Start a document or spreadsheet to keep track of all the hashtags that you want to join in with.

Carrying out the above two strategies daily will see your Twitter follower count grow quickly but will also fill your Twitter account with users who are interested in your content. They will therefore be more likely to retweet or reply to your tweets.

What should I say during the hashtag hour?

During the hashtag hour it isn’t a good idea to just tweet a link to your business out and hope that it gets some traffic. The hashtags that have a lot of users that do this don’t generate much conversation and therefore aren’t as useful because no one reads anyone else’s tweets. Either ask the audience a question or reply to tweets from other hashtag users. If the hashtag has a topic (this is quite rare) then stick to the topic but if not, just make friendly conversation. Ask questions about current events of popular interest or related to your business; or if you’re stuck ask users how their day is going. Friendly or engaging questions will usually get a response during lively hashtag hours because everyone is looking to make conversation. When you’ve talked to a user, it’s a good time to grow your audience by following them.

Should I follow back?

With these activities you will quickly gain a lot of followers. A lot of these users will be looking for a follow back but will then unfollow you again once you follow them back so it’s best to assess how useful the account is to you. If the account has a lot of followers or is of genuine interest to you, follow back but if not, don’t return the follow. Initially, it could be beneficial to follow every account relevant to your needs back because it will encourage more users to follow you for a follow back, but the long term goal of your business is to have more followers than the number of people that you are following.

The end goal

The aim of this task is to have an audience that will respond to your tweets and buy products from your online shop, thus using Twitter as a free tool to grow your business. Ideally you should end up with more followers than you are following. When you are approaching your goal number of followers, begin to unfollow any accounts that you don’t want to see updates from.

Many of our customers have a great Twitter presence. If you have any tips about Twitter use, share them with our community below. Or if you’d like to see an article about any other aspect of social media, let us know too.

Why does nobody like my Facebook posts?

You built a Facebook page for your business and gained a substantial amount of followers, but when it comes to making a post you end up waiting for likes and comments that never come. Was it something you said? Well, not exactly. Organic post reach on Facebook has been declining fast and it is becoming virtually impossible to get followers to see your content without paying to promote it. So it isn’t that your customers don’t like what you are posting; they just can’t see it.

Why is this happening?

Facebook is growing. More users are posting a variety of content on Facebook and a wider variety of content is Facebook appropriate (e.g. trending news and viral video). With such an increased amount of content, Facebook has more choice to make in regards to what content a user will see and what content will be left out. The Facebook algorithms will select posts based on how interesting they think the user will find the content. A business page is the type of account most likely to spam users with content that they do not want to see; and will more often than not find its posts pushed to the bottom of the pile if the posts aren’t structured to beat the algorithms.

Facebook (similar to other searchable indexesthat are overloaded with content) selects content to display on an individual’s news feed based on over 100,000 complex analytical data readings relating to what a user, or the majority users interact with; i.e. does the user want interact more with videos or news stories? Photographs or posts from business pages?

What can I do?

The first answer is to keep at it

As the algorithms work to show Facebook users what they want to see; try to do exactly that. Post a variety of content in order to assess the types of content that get the most engagement. The type of posts that get the most engagement will most likely be the type that Facebook determines relevant enough to display on your follower newsfeeds. The higher the engagement with your posts is, the more likely your future posts will be seen as interesting by the algorithms.

Pay attention to trending news

Is there something trending on the Facebook news sidebar that is relatable to the nature of your page? Join in and post about it too. This is content that the mysterious Facebook algorithms will be more likely to class as interesting to users. Posting about news that is not relevant to your followers, however, may lose some of them.

Time is of the essence

Schedule your posts for times that your followers are most likely to be on Facebook. Figuring out the most common times that your followers use Facebook is done using a combination of common knowledge and, of monitoring the times that you receive the most engagement. For example; if your target audience is stay at home mums the times that they get home from the school run and the peak times that your page receives user interaction would be the times most beneficial to post during. The times will vary from day to day and peak during different times of the year; this gives you many opportunities to attempt to target your audience with content.

The end game for Facebook seems to be to leave businesses with no choice but to pay to promote their posts. However with perseverance and an analytical approach, organic reach can certainly be improved.

Handy tools for social media management

When running your own business it is often difficult to find time to manage your company social media accounts. Here’s a list of useful tools that will help you to keep up to date with making posts and how well they’re doing.

Buffer

Buffer lets you schedule posts for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Pinterest, all from one page. It is a great resource for anyone short on time that wants to tackle social media content in one session and, is perhaps the best free social media organisational tool on the web. Making a post works in exactly the same way it would do on the respective website and allows you to insert the pictures, videos and links that would usually be allowed. Buffer is split into tabs- content, analytics and schedule. From the Buffer content tab, posts can be made for all of the platforms linked with Buffer. They can be sent as a blanket post across all platforms or sent to specific ones. You can add as many posts as desired to the schedule, it’s easy to edit or delete them and, once scheduled they will appear on your content feed in chronological order. Buffer also has an analytics tab that provides a brief look into the analytics of posts made using Buffer, however it is very basic. The schedule section offers a list of suggested times for posting on each platform that can be filled with content for quick scheduling. Buffer also has a premium option called the ‘Awesome Plan’ that lets users add up to ten different accounts for each social media platform and see a more comprehensive version of analytics.

Buffer is available online or can be downloaded as an app.

Iconosquare

Iconosquare allows you to view, interact with and see analytics for your Instagram account from a computer. Its is one of the few tools out there that allows Instagram to be used on a PC (although it still doesn’t allow the posting of pictures/ videos) and provides an overview of all Instagram activity. As with Buffer, simply allow Iconosquare to access your Instagram account from the website to get started. Although the design looks different, Iconosquare has a similar layout to Instagram; it displays the newsfeed, likes, followers and a popular page through which you can perform all of the interactions available on the Instagram app (again, apart from make a post). The most useful part of Iconosquare is the statistics section; it details unique stats that can’t even be accessed on Instagram such as engagement/ reach percentages and the number of lost followers. The search page is also a very useful tool for following a database of customers/ clients.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a very handy Twitter application that posts tweets, views interactions and monitors any accounts or hashtags in a customisable column format. The app is perfect for any business that wants to monitor its own hashtag or a hashtag to join in with. Columns can be dragged and dropped into any desired order and easily deleted once no longer of any use.

Facebook scheduled posts

If you are simply looking to schedule your posts to go out at a later time or date on Facebook, the schedule post option found on Facebook pages is the most simple option. The great thing about Facebook is that everything that you want to use it for (i.e. analytics, scheduling, competitions) is usually available without leaving the site. To schedule a post on Facebook, write the post as if you would normally and click the dropdown arrow on the ‘Publish’ call to action, from there you will be prompted to schedule post. The Facebook insights tab will also provide a higher quality of analytics than you will find on any free third party Facebook website.

Twitter analytics

Twitter analytics is a branch of the Twitter website that provides a detailed overview of tweet and account stats. The analytics provided are again (as with Facebook’s analytics) better than any free third party app will provide and break down the activity to different tweets, days, weeks, months, types of interaction etc. Paying attention to these analytics can really help improve the success of your social media marketing campaign.

Special mentions

Padagram

Instagram does not have an app that is optimised for tablets. Padagram operates in the exact same way as Instagram but fits to your tablet screen.

Social Rank

Social rank can be synced with Facebook or Instagram. It gives free stats on followers and tells you who is the most popular and what is most popular with their fans. It’s an excellent tool for anyone looking for information regarding what their own fans would like to see.

Tailwind

If Pinterest is the social media platform that you use the most, Tailwind is one of the only analytics sites around. It isn’t free but the website does offer a free trial. A couple of years ago there was several popular third party Pinterest sites but Tailwind appears to be the only one that survived.

How do you manage your business social media? What are your favourite tools? Feel free to share your tips and comments below.

Measure Social Media Efforts More Effectively With Google Analytics

One of the things that I hear very often from new clients and prospects aboutSocial Media is that it doesn’t work, it’s a waste of time, and money.  There are a few reasons why they feel this way: 1 – they have been told to do it because you need to, 2 – they never received any business from those efforts, and/ or 3 – just don’t understand social media.

I’m not going to tell you why you need to be doing it or that you’ll generate a ton of business from it, or even explain social media to you.  What I am going to show you below is how to better measure and track the effectiveness of your social media efforts.

What I like to do and what we do at Recon Media, Inc is for every single link we share on social media that links to our website we add tracking.  The reason for this is that we’ll be able to see the data in our Google Analytics under campaigns and see how each channel performed for a certain campaign or post.

After collecting data we are able to see which social media channels we should focus on.  We look at a number of different factors to determine where to focus.  A few things to look at would be the time on site along with page views per session.  You really want to look at goals/ conversions; most importantly.  Now that doesn’t mean drop everything else and focus where the money is.  You need to look at the data and adjust your strategies accordingly.

Now, how do you get this data?

The way you’ll be able to see this specific data is by adding specific tags (code) to the link that you share.  That link with the code will tell Google analytics that it’s a campaign, where it came from, and other data you enter into the code.

Well, if you’re like me (not a coder) and don’t know what to add to the links; Google provides a Free tool that will create Google Analytics Tracking URLs for us.  Here is how you go about creating a Google Tracking URL:

Visit:https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en scroll down to “URL Builder Form”Enter in the URL that you’ll be sharingFill in the fields (this is how I fill them out, you can fill them out as you like)Campaign Source – Where it will be posted (ex: company facebook, Facebook Campaign, Company Twitter)Campaign Medium – Is it a post, ad, banner (ex: Twitter Ad, Google Group)Campaign Term – I don’t use for social mediaCampaign Content – what is the link about, I don’t use muchCampaign Name – Name the campaignHit submit and you’ll get something that looks like this:http://ReconMediaInc.com/?utm_source=Example Blog&utm_medium=Blog Example Link&utm_campaign=Campaign Tracking Blog

That is an example of what you’ll get.  Pretty ugly, right? You wouldn’t want to share that in a Tweet or on a post.  So that the link isn’t so hideous I use bit.ly as my URL shortener – http://bit.ly/1IFUqWp.  There are many options for URL shorteners that you can use.

You then repeat the process for each different source you’ll be sharing the link on.  Keep the campaign name the same for the one link.

That is how you’ll be able to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts.  This process can really be used for any type of campaign that will be driving traffic to a website that you want to be able to track how it performed.

How Can Social Media be used as a Marketing Tool?

The explosive growth of social media in the last few years has been well documented, and for many, a life without Twitter and Facebook is inconceivable. It’s hard to believe that social media as we know it has only been around for little longer than a decade and it has already fundamentally changed the ways people communicate and interact with each other. This is not only true for conversations with friends and family, but also, increasingly, for companies looking to discover the value that social media can add to their marketing operations.

For many businesses, using social media to market their brand has been a challenge. In recent years, the public has not only grown savvy to established marketing techniques employed by companies, but has also almost become immune to these tactics. Ads, leaflets, direct mail and email just don’t have the same impact as they used to have. With this awareness increasing amongst target audiences, companies have to come up with new ways to make an impression and differentiate themselves from the competition.

One thing’s for sure: by using social media, brands have the chance to create a strong media presence by interacting with customers online. Social tools can also help to strengthen brand perception by communicating core values to a wider audience. This, in turn, opens up the opportunity to start conversations, grow business partnerships and expand the online community to win new followers and potential customers.

To do that however, it is key not to fall in the same trap as with traditional marketing tactics – repeating the same old strategies over and over again. Businesses need to harness the possibilties online platforms have to offer and present the audience with fresh and original ideas. It is important to consider that, after several years of social media, people have grown accostumed to the new media.

Today, one of the most characteristic traits of both social media, and its users, is its fast-moving nature. Organisations today know that is no longer enough to tweet every so often or update their Facebook page with their latest press release. The audience consistently craves news and innovation.

What’s clear is that as part of the ongoing quest to stand out from the competition, companies must listen and learn from their audience and have to map their findings against what else is going on in the social media sphere. They have to go above and beyond what already been there and translate their corporate objectives into exiciting and original social media activities.

For example, at HCL we’ve recently used as an online recruitment tool, not only to uncover new talent, but also to build brand awareness. Another campaign saw the launch of a LinkedIn application aimed at encouraging users to go above and beyond the scope of existing contracts. The application allows users to log in and acknowledge professional relationships that they feel have gone ‘the extra mile’ by adding a personal note of appreciation.

This shows the direct impact social media tools can have on modern businesses and is a creative way of demonstrating digital savviness and innovativenes to a large audience. It also shows how thought leadership on social media can take B2B engagements to the next level and help forming meaningful business relationships via social media.

Actively using social media is one of the easiest ways to reach a large audience and get the company or brand name in the heads of exisiting or potential customers. Not only does an already established network help to create new contacts, it will also help to deepen connections that have been formed. Even though this sounds very familiar to traditional marketing techniques, social media has given them a new twist. Companies that fail to adopt to a new more connected and interactive market, will inevitably fall behind.

 

By Krishnan Chatterjee, Senior Vice President at HCL Technologies. 

How to increase social media engagement with branded with images

How to Increase Social Media Engagement with Branded Images

Word on the street is that people are more drawn to visual content. Sooooo, of course it’s a great idea to share a slew of awesome images and funny videos to all your social platforms. People will be sure to notice you then! Right…right?

Not so fast, my friends. I mean, you would sure get noticed, but most likely as the obnoxious person who gets hidden from people’s news feeds.

While several studies prove that visual content is more engaging, you still need to create and share the right  visual content.

If you haven’t heard this one enough, here it is again…share content relevant to your audience.

Here are four ways to use custom, branded images to engage your audience and grow your brand awareness.

1. Use Quotes that Trigger an Emotional Response

When we see a video, image, or saying that makes us laugh, smile or even cry, we are driven to share. We enjoy the warm feeling in our chest created by such content and want to give others the opportunity to experience the same feeling.

If we are successful in passing happiness on, our own will continue to grow. And hey, who doesn’t want to feel happy?

The findings of astudy conducted by the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicineprove even more interesting. Not only do emotions have the ability to spread across social media, but also positivity permeates better than negativity.

We saw this in the social media campaign that Lab3 managed for Give Day Tampa Bay, a 24-hour day of giving to various charities in Tampa Bay. The enthusiasm leading up to the event was overwhelming and contagious.

I was tasked with creating branded images for the Facebook page that encouraged people to participate in this giving extravaganza. And boy did they get a lot of attention.

Below is an example of one of the images I created for the campaign. The quote is short and sweet but carries so much meaning.

The image got 57 Likes, which is great, but what was amazing was it got almost as many (56) Shares! That’s huge.

People are telling us that they like what Give Day Tampa Bay is sharing so much that they want to share it with their friends, spread the word.

The image carries even more weight for the campaign by including visual branding and a unique hash tag. This way, no matter where people find this post, they can connect it back to Give Day Tampa Bay.

2. Use Images of People (Shiny Happy People)

People love to see images of other people. Why? Being part of the same species and all, we can easily relate to what others are doing or how they are feeling.

The first characteristic we typically notice about another person is their face. Therefore, this is how we best identify each other.

As an extension of my previous topic, the face is also connected with emotion. In 1964, following the hypotheses of Charles Darwin, Silvan“Tompkins conducted the first study demonstrating that facial expressions were reliably associated with certain emotional states.”

The emotions translated through the face are just as contagious, if not more, than feel good sayings. When I see a picture of someone smiling, I find myself smiling right back. Don’t you?

Another reason pictures of people perform well on social media is the human desire to be part of a community. We feel a stronger connection with a business or personality when we can see the person behind it.

For Lab3 Marketing’s client Bay Stage Live, a family owned and operated entertainment technologies business, I create custom birthday and work anniversary images.

Their audience often feels naturally compelled to engage with these posts when they see a familiar face, especially when it’s cause for celebration.

Similar to how I smile when I see a picture of a smiling person, I want to have fun when I see others having fun. I want to get in on the action! And so does Bay Stage Live’s audience.

3. Create Announcements of Local Events

If you own a company that relies on local business, then you want to attract the local audience. A great way of doing this is to share news and events happening in your area.

Creating a unique, branded image to announce an event helps contribute new content for the event as well as promote your business.

This works especially well for Lab3’s client Hilton Tampa Downtown. It’s an ideal location for people to stay during big events happening in Tampa.

One of the many events that we have promoted using branded images is Gasparilla. The organic reach proved successful because the image is relevant to our client’s audience. 

Even though the paid reach was a whopping 32x  more than organic, more than 40% of the engagement was from the organic reach!

Sharing information about local events also adds value to your business by saying, “I know and care about what’s going on in my community.”

4. Create Images That Ask Questions

Something else people love is to share their opinion.

Social media marketers often talk about prompting people to do just that by asking questions in a post or comment. But, what about posing your question right in the image?

For Lab3’s client Agape Diamonds, I created images that show three different styles of rings with the simple question, “which one do you like best?” The comments came rolling in. The post below got incredible engagement before the client even added paid reach!

Don’t be discouraged if your post doesn’t get great engagement the first time. If it does, that’s fantastic. It probably means that your audience is already paying attention.

Sometimes, however, it takes a little more time for people to catch on to these new opinion polls you are creating. Keep at it and the number of comments will increase with each effort.

Wrapping Up

Basic marketing techniques involve people seeing and interacting with your logo, content and product. The more exposure people have with your brand, the more it will be at the front of their minds when they are in need of your product or service.

Also, by sharing images of happy employees, motivating quotes and local events, you are building a positive reputation with your audience. You are sending messages about your work environment and values.

If this sounds like a lot of work, don’t get overwhelmed. Start by choosing one technique that fits your brand and give it a shot. Play around with different image styles and calls to action to find out what resonates with your audience

50+ Social News Websites: Notes about this list

;50+ Social News Websites: Notes about this list

I spent some time going through hundreds of social news sites and came up with a list of sites which I think are worth exploring. Each site on this list is evaluated according to various criteria, including the no. of votes for each story and the frequency/date of submissions, all of which are indicators of user/viewer activity.

This list is not meant to be comprehensive. It doesn’t include every social news website out there but only the ones which I think has potential for providing you with relevant/fresh news while giving exposure to your ideas, brand or website.

Some of the sites on this list have a broad topical focus while others are created to cater to a specific niche. I’ve divided the list into two portions: General Social News or websites which cover a wide variety of news and Niche Social News which refers to specialized sites that only focus on a limited range of niche topics.

This list purely consists of English social news sites. There are no social bookmarking or social network sites included. I’ve not included video sharing sites because I’ll be writing more on them and video marketing in a future article.

Here’s a brief definition of social news sites, in case you’re unfamiliar with them:

Social News websites are communities which allow its users to submit news stories, articles and media (videos/pictures) and share them with other users or the general public. Some of these articles will be given more visibility, depending on various factors such as the number of user votes for each item.

Apart from counting registered user votes, some social news websites employ human editors to determine the visibility of each news item. Certain stories will be removed from the website while others may be given a ‘featured‘ position if the story is highly relevant and news worthy.

General Social News Websites

1. Reddit: Popular social news website with a large user base. Covers a wide range of news. Includes several topical sections called subreddits, which focus on specific topics like programming, science, politics and business.

2. Digg: The largest and most popular social news website on the internet. Covers all topics including politics, entertainment, technology and general news. Includes a separate video and image section.

3. Propeller: A social news site that covers all topics from technology to politics and entertainment. Operates in a similar fashion to Digg.

4. Fark: A community news site which allows users to comment on news articles. User submitted links will be posted on the main page once they are approved by the administrators.

5. Slashdot: Primarily a tech news site, Slashdot also covers topics like books, games, politics and entertainment. Users can submit stories and they may be published after editors approve it. A popular site that can send a large amount of traffic.

6. Metafilter: A community weblog which allows users to share links and discuss interesting websites/topics. Moderation is done through editors as well as peer pressure in order to prevent gaming.

7. I am bored: Covers general topics with a strong focus on weird and offbeat news. You can submit a link which may be posted after the editors approve it.

8. Mixx: A general social news sites which has a category for all types of news. Topics covered include business, entertainment, sports, health and tech. Includes the ability to create groups to share news with other users.

9. Shoutwire: General news site that is well populated with a loyal group of users. Topics covered include technology, politics, entertainment, lifestyle and sports.

10. Newsvine: A website consisting of community-driven news stories and opinions. Users have their own blogs and can write articles, save links to external content and vote/comment on other user stories.

11. IndianPad: A general social news site that with a large indian userbase. Topics covered include entertainment, sports, videos and tamil news.

12. Linkfilter: Covers all sorts of news. All links are posted and moderated by users. Links can be ranked on several levels: clicks, votes, age, or a combination of all three called points.

13. NewsCloud: A general social site with a focus on news in all topics. Similar to Newsvine, each user has their own blogs and can publish content to be voted up by other users.

14. Hugg: Hugg is a social news site with a strong focus on environmental issues. Also includes other categories like politics, science, fashion and technology.

15. Plime: A general news site which features a wide variety of topics ranging from religion and sports to technology or business. Odd news performs best in this community.

16. C2NN: An active social news site with a variety of topics including environment issues, business, politics, animals and offbeat. Similar to Hugg in focus but much more populated and active.

17. Kirsty: A general news site with a focus on fashion, entertainment and design on top of other topics like technology and food. Has a strong female user base.

18. Nowpublic: A participatory news network which focuses on citizen journalism. Each user has their own individual profile blog/page and can upload videos, images and news stories.

19. Stirrdup: General social news site with four broad categories: politics, technology, news and entertainment.

20. Searchles: A hybrid social news sites which covers all topics. Includes a video section and offers personalized filtering features and the option of joining groups made up of other users with similar interests.

21. Linkinn: A social news site that specializes in pictures and video. Covers a broad range of topics, particular offbeat and weird content.

22. Earthfrisk: Covers topics like humor, politics, entertainment and business. Combines a social network and group features with digg-style news voting.

23. Truemors: A social rumor news site which focuses on the publication of “true rumors that are relevant, informative, and interesting.” Users can post links anonymously via text, voicemail, web or email. Editors moderate content.

24. StumbleUpon: A social network and browser toolbar which allows users to channel surf the internet. Technically not 100% a social news site, although users can submit webpages to be rated by other users. Here is a guide to StumbleUpon.

25. Linkswarm: Covers a wide range of topics from celebrity gossip to funny media, science and politics. Focuses on pop culture and bizarre news as well.

Niche Social News Websites

Here are social websites which focus on a specific niche. For best results, only submit to them when your site falls within the same niche or covers the same topics. Or else you’re likely to be marked as spam.

26. Sphinn: Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It’s designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.

27. Dzone: DZone is a free link-sharing community for developers. Other topics commonly featured include web design and programming.

28. Tweako: A user-powered site and social network with a focus on guides and tutorials in all categories like computing, technology, and the Internet.

29. Autospies: A social site that focuses on automotive news, car reviews, auto show photos and videos.

30. Design Float: A social news site for design-related content. Topics covered include business, freelancing, advertising, digital art and branding.

31. Ball Hype: A site that aggregates content from thousands of sports blogs. Users can submit stories and votes will determine if they make it to home page.

32. YCombinator Hacker News: A news site that focuses on technology, startups, business and entrepreneurship.

33. SWiK: A community driven resource for people who use open source software.

34. Buzzflash: A user driven progressive political news website that allows you to submit political stories.

35. DNHour: DNHour.com is a user-powered news portal built specially for the domain name industry. Most members are generally from the domain name industry, which includes domain name owners, companies or professionals.

36. PlugIM: PlugIM is a user driven internet marketing community. Topics covered include search engine optimization, products, business and marketing.

37.Showhype: Operates in a similar way to Ballhype. Stories come from two sources — users and aggregated content. Users can also submit a link to a story that they’ve found or write their own article on ShowHype.

38. Small Business Brief: A niche social site which focuses on small business news. Topics covered include marketing and sales, website development, management and entrepreneurship.

39. Hypediss: Social news site with a focus on design, fashion, urban culture and art.

40. Chictini: Product-oriented social site which a focus on new trends and styles. It’s possible to submit news stories although most of the submissions feature products from online retailers.

41. DotNetKicks: DotNetKicks.com is a community based news site that focuses on topics like NET development techniques, technologies and tools including ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET, C++ and Visual Studio.

42. Lipstick: Reddit-style social news site for celebrity gossip.

43. Hubspot: Social news site for marketers, entrepreneurs and business professionals.

44. Winelifetoday: A niche social site for wine lovers. Topics covered included news and opinion articles to do with wine.

45. iliketotallyloveit.com: Allows users to publish and share products with the broader public which they find cool, innovative, exceptionally beautiful, or just weird. Included with every item is a link to an online shop where it can be purchased.

46. Wordsy: A niche social news site for people who love reading and books. Topics covered include small presses, fiction writing, authors, book awards and poetry. (Note: Wordsy has suspended its site since Dec 2008)

47. Value Investing News: A niche social news site that covers stocks and investment news. A small but active community.

48. Teenwag: Focus on celebrity gossip. A hybrid social network with digg-style voting. Users can submit links to be voted up by other users.

49. Muti: Muti is a social bookmarking site inspired by reddit and Digg but dedicated to content of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa.

50. Tip’d: A social media site for finance, investing, and business topics. Tip’d users vote on stories they like by clicking the ‘Tip it’ button that appears next to each story, and then can comment by pressing the ‘Discuss’ link below the story.

This list is a work in progress. I’ll be updating it with new sites over time and I plan to include my own opinions of each site when I have the time. Right now, I’ve only written a very brief description of each site along with their niche focus. Know any quality site that should be included?

Email me instead of leaving it in the comments.

Pick the sites on this list which are relevant to your website or interests. If you haven’t already, register as a new member and click around the site to check out its features/stories. Submit a few stories and introduce it to some friends. If you enjoy the community, start using the site more frequently.

Feel free to bookmark this page for future reference. In the next article on social media marketing, I’ll talk about how you can participate in these social news sites.