How to Stand Out from the Gluttony of Content?

Feb. 02 BC Insider, Blogging 3 comments

The gluttonous amount of content being produced, much by automated systems, requires each of us, if we wish to attract and retain readers, to stand out. There is much written on the subject of “standing out” including Seth Godins’ wonderful book “Purple Cow.”

At BC we face the same challenge. The key questions we continue to ask are”

(1) How do we continue to improve BC so that members truly establish connections with each other”

and

(2) How do we make it really simple for bloggers to be discovered and attract more readers to your blogs?

Well how do we?

BlogCatalog is not a new “kid on the block.” It’s a 7 year old site. That makes it a dinosaur in internet ages. This has advantages and disadvantages. An advantage to our members is the community is well known amongst publishers, researchers and bloggers. The disadvantage is that over the past 7 years the site has received over 1 million blog submissions. Many f these blogs have either been converted into blogs for SEO purposes, have been abandoned or have aged to the point where they don’t offer readers much, if any, value.

To avoid becoming known as the site where “blogs come to die”, we have embarked on a massive clean up effort and during the past few months removed over 100,000 blogs. The interesting aspect is we have started to surface the most amazing blogs and discovered certain very specific categories that we have not featured.

We plan to continue to improve the quality of what readers find and reduce the amount of spam and spammers. Once we have completed this clean up, we have plans to improve the way blogs are discovered and “showcase” each of your blogs both on the site and on a few mobile apps.

So this is great though you may be wondering “How can I get more exposure right now!?”

Here are a few ways to improve your exposure on BC:

1. Make certain you have uploaded an avatar to your profile.

2. Upload a custom image for your blog profile page. Go to blog settings and you’ll see a link to upload a blog image.

3. Update your blog description so that it reflects your blog. If it does not your blog may be removed from the site. If that happens please resubmit it with an updated description.

4. Make certain your blog is located in the appropriate categories or move it into them or one of the newer blog categories.

Some of the new categories include:

Kick Ass Blogs This is pretty self-explanatory.

Chocolate We love chocolate.

Eye Candy Who doesn’t enjoy a little eye candy now and then?

Geeks Geeks Rule!

Zombies Definitely anti-geek.

eLearning The changes in education are incredible.

Big Data These blogs focus on how the brightest minds are tackling the massive amounts of data that is being created and using it to create valuable tools and products. Other issues they address include the risk of this data getting into the “wrong hands.”

Wanderlust I want to getaway. These blogs are for adventurers and day-dreamers. They are written by people that have given up their 9 to 5 and are now exploring different parts of the world.

The difference for a blogger that wants to get noticed by a publishing house, food magazine, design firm or whatever other opportunity you may be looking for may just come down to whether you are found on BC or not. This may sound like hyperbole though the fact is that BC is well established and known among PR firms, major publishing houses and other companies looking to connect with top bloggers. If this is your dream, we are working to make certain it comes true.