What are the hottest topics floating around the world wide web? What are the basis on which users of Digg. Reddit, Stumble Upon, Mixx and other social bookmarking sites pick their favorite blogs posts, pages and sites? How could you create something that will stand out amongst a crowded virtual world of endless knowledge and entertainment venues?
Since its beginning, Stumble Upon has proved to be unique…But what is the material worthy of stumblers’ thumbs up?
- Originality: Originality is key! Unique sites with original ideas and implementations such as arms12.swf are very lucrative! Taking the idea of the ball catch game most of us played as kids and transforming it into an virtual game is just brilliant. Another example is time beat and how it changed the simple clock into yet another intriguing online experience.
- Creativity: Well executed creative designs and approaches such as phatterism.com are always favorable! Notice how the display of content is fun and interesting and even coupled with a full system to handle responses and feedback.
- Spiritually-oriented: Spiritual sites discussing religion or matters of belief namely 400monkeys.com also turn heads! People seek answers. A well guided and managed site/blog discussing issues of interest to large groups of people is likely to attract many thumbs up!
- Audio, Video & Illustration: Sites and blogs containing truly captivating, interesting or just purely fun pictures, videos and illustration proved to be reviewed and voted up by many! Take outdoor-photos.com for example, the blend of photos it contains of landscapes and such or antilimit.com and the high resolution image variety it displays.
- Value-Oriented: Sites and blogs which offer benefit to their visitors and add value to their time spent surfing the web have proved to be very likable! Check out this shopping website where costumers are offered a chance to buy and sell unique handmade items online.
- Educational: Sites and blogs which provide information regarding different topics of interest such as technology, health and business related tips and stories seem to attract visitors’ ratings and reviews almost always! Visit hackaday.com and check out there tips and guides to different types of online hacking! (No, we don’t support hacking as such but the idea behind the site).
- Community-Based: Social networking is about community building! When you have your own specialized community, it is quite easy to create a wide buzz for your blog and obtain high ratings for it.
- Targeted Content: As a rule, creating the “right” content in the “right” manner will bring you more readers. But it doesn’t end there! You need to be able to write targeted articles with useful information within an easily read format in order to gain higher ratings and get more reviews.
- Breaking News: Well organized and up-to-date news resources seem to be very attractive to stumblers and social bookmarking lovers just as well.
Brilliant Clock Screen Saver
Phatterism Brilliant Portfolio
AntiLimit: Creative Imagery
Etsy: Buy/Sell Everything Handmade
Stay tuned for my post about the mistakes many great site owners and bloggers commit! Hint: The first mistake I’ll be discussing is: Neglect.
