Continued from page one...
to begin to log the story. You saw one of these buttons on the front page, and we hope that you'll vote for the story to try out how this system works. If you vote for this story, you will write your own brief on the article, and submit it. The story then appears in lists that other readers surf, and they pick and vote on them. Adding such a button to your news is easy. Just have your web geek add the line of code to your stories.
There are a lot of companies sporting buttons these days. Digg is big. If you want to cover all of your bets, you can go to Add To Any and grab one button that allows readers to add content to DIGG and any of the other major services. The advantage of the Add To Any button is that it helps your content float. If another service becomes more popular, you're covered without having to recode anything on your present, or libary content.
General Interest SSEs
News is not the only way to reach your fans. General interest SSEs like MySpace, Facebook, or Gather have large audiences and then offer the ability for participants to create their own micro-focus discussion spaces.
Sports SSEs
The next wave of SSEs are more interest-specific. Sports SSEs have began to spring up on the web. FanNation is a service of SI, that joins YardBarker, Ballhype, ArmchairGM and SportsMates. There are also sports news SSEs like SportsAG that are like Digg but with a specific sports focus.
Why Use an SSE? I Already Have a Website.
It is some of the best free advertising on the web. SSEs need people and content. You provide links to content, and a little bit of content for their site, and they will reward you with delivery of people and specific information.
You advertise by putting up a billboard, or putting an ad in the paper, hoping to snag someone interested. Scatter-gun marketing that may yield up to 10% reaction on average. On an SSE, people tell you about their interests up front to attract "friends." This is super-targeted marketing. If you work for the Toledo Mud Hens (MH), for example, you can find both Mud Hens fans, and Tigers fans who don't list the Mud Hens as an interest, in the greater metro area around your club. You can provide specials and incentives to the MH fans, and encourage the Tigers fans to become MH fans. The effort that you are putting out is highly efficient, because nearly 100% of the people you are reaching have some level of interest that you can hook.
Why Have a Website if I Have an SSE Space?
The quality level of the layouts on SSEs is very generic and very low. MySpace doesn't read well on all computers, with buttons and layouts sometimes not where they're supposed to be. Your master website still provides focused content, your own branding and message, and ways for you to monetize your web presence. Belonging to one SSE and driving readers to another may also backfire. Not everyone, particularly those with kids, approve of what can be found on MySpace. Parents have fewer objections to their kids going to a dedicated site for the Sacramento River Cats than going to a Cats section of MySpace and drifting off into uncharted waters. Some SSEs may also delete your links if you are referring people to their competitors, but they need content badly and will not turn you away for linking to your commercial site if you do it within the bounds of their rules and regs.
You want to drive traffic back to your site and to your tickets and merchandise sales where you have more content control.
Why Should I Pay Someone to Play on the Web?
This is not play-time. This is very serious direct marketing. You allocate thousands and thousands of dollars to advertising and to your community outreach without knowing whether you're making contact with the right people. A billboard is great vanity, and great visibility, but it relies on the people who care passing by. Making point-to-point connection with real people...
