The term "content aggregators" covers a range of services that aggregate content from various places around the web, making it easier for users to find new sites that include content about topics they're interested in. Some use a team of moderators to determine the good from the bad, and some use their user base to filter content for them. The two things about content aggregators that stay the same are:
The challenge for you as a blog owner is getting your content past whatever filtering mechanism is in place. The only way to do that (at least in an ethical manner) is to create truly excellent content, and hope for the best.
More traffic. Depending on the size of the aggregator's readership and the rating that your content is given, aggregators can send a significant amount of traffic your way. As with most traffic generated from social media, content aggregators tend to send you a big spike of traffic on the day the content is listed, and as it tapers off, you'll receive a couple of visitors each day.
Content aggregators don't generally do much for your reputation or credibility. They just send you the traffic. What you do with it from there is up to you.
There are generally two types of content aggregator. One type is run by a team of editors and moderators who actively seek content to add to their listings, or moderate submissions and determine whether or not they'll make it onto the site. If the site has a ranking system or many sub-categories, moderators may determine the amount of exposure your content is given – does everyone who visits the homepage of the site for the next few hours see it, or is it just shown on the category listing?
The second type of content aggregator is run by its users. People submit content of their own or someone else's. Usually these sites are looking for users who curate content that they deem to be interesting as they surf the web, rather than people like us who are promoting our own businesses. That hasn't stopped us from making use of them, though; the main challenge is getting the user base to vote the content up. The secret to that, of course, is to create excellent content and target it well.
Alltop is a popular content aggregator that collects a bunch of sites for each of the categories it has pages for. Unlike most aggregators where content is displayed on a post-by-post basis, once you get your site listed in Alltop, each post you publish will show up in the feed. Sites that are included in Alltop are selected by moderators. The service doesn't send a ton of traffic, but it's one more source to add to your referrers list.
Delicious is a social bookmarking service. It's basically a take on browser bookmarking with social aspects,and the convenience of not requiring you to back up your bookmarks to a file every time you switch computers.
There's no direct moderation, and Delicious judges popularity based on how many people are bookmarking the same page. If a lot of people bookmark a post on your site you might make it to the Popular page and see a surge of traffic. Even if you don't make it there, just being in Delicious' archive will bring occasional visitors.
Diigo is also a social bookmarking service, with a focus on allowing users to annotate pages with notes that other Diigo users can see. It's a bit like Delicious on steroids, and various other pharmaceutical substances.
Digg is a site we discussed earlier, and while it doesn't generally fall under the social bookmarking category, it does constitute a social news site, which is one type of content aggregation. Digg offers varying levels of exposure, the most coveted of which is getting listed on the front page.
Sites like Slashdot are aggregators for a specific audience. Slashdot is a technology aggregator. There are too many to list here for the various niches of the world, so you'll need to do some research to find one suited to the content you create. Slashdot is a moderated aggregator, but there are many sites of each type when it comes to niche-specific aggregation.
Socialmarker is a site that allows you to submit your posts to 215 content aggregation services in under five minutes. If you want the best value for your time, select a bunch of the sites Socialmarker supports that are relevant to your field, and have an assistant make submissions using this service every time a post is published.
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Note: This article was sent to us by: Ethan C. Moore at 02172011
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