How to Get Noticed on Newsvine?

NewsVine is an interesting system. It takes information and creates a social-style analysis of content making it ebb and flow depending on people's attention, time of day, whether top users seeded something to eclipse everything else, weather, etc. What can you do about it?

Actually, you can do several things. The main idea here is that you want to get exposure for your information. One thing that I've learned when doing marketing is that spam is only spam when it offers someone something they do not want. When it is valuable information, all of a sudden instead of being chastized, you are welcomed with open arms. You are not selling, but improving information delivery.

So what is this all about? It is about improving the flow of information. Dennis made some recommendations on how to establish yourself on the site here. His solution is that one must work hard to gain recognition and momentum within the system by way of writing and establishing relationships with other users (getting placed on watch lists). And he has a good point - there is nothing like reputation (although I really have to wonder whether reputation is the right word to use given the seeding patterns of some of the top usres). But his approach is more passive. How can one become more pro-active about getting noticed?

The answer to this question lies in the fact that this is NOT a fully automated system. Newsvine is a comparitively simple framework lacking a bit in transparency. But its simplicity is also its strength - if you deliver information where it is sought, you can move up in rank and get exposure relatively fast.

The key is eyeballs. To get them you can do the following:

• Join groups - groups are collections of people who are interested in the certain subject. You know what these people are interested in and they will be very receptive to new relevant information. There is, however, little benefit in seeding to groups - from my observation, they do not work quite as probably originally intended - as journals which, by themselves, become points of entry for users. However, they create an opportunity: once you publish an article, you can get people from your group to check it out by starting a discussion, which can send an email to all people in that group. However, beware that If you do not use this feature responsibly, you will likely piss people off and the owner of the group will boot you.
• Start a "Friends Discussion". This works in much the same way as starting a group discussion except this emails all of your friends. Again, must be used carefully so as not to piss off your friends - if they feel like they are getting garbage, you'll simply be defriended.
• Another technique is to comment on your own relevant articles placing a link to the new content. People who participated in your discussions will likely be interested in relevant material.
• Finally, you can reference your article by placing links in comments on other people's articles. However be ready to be chastized even under the best of circumstances. Especially if this is a heated political argument, you may be accused of profiteering, or of referencing irrelevant information, or of killing babies. Unlike other techniques, this opens you up for attacks from the "other side" (wheras in previous techniques, your audience was usually confined to your friends or people interested in the subject of your new article).

Note that you are trying to position yourself as a resource to other users on NewsVine. So any action you take, you should ask: will this be interesting to them? NewsVine is a great new medium. Use it responsibly.

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