Is It a Big Deal To Be on Yahoo Top Buzz ?

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So I am writing back to back posts about Yahoo Buzz. I apologize, but this is the first time one of my writings was in the “top post category” in any social network. I have had posts which brought me over 1000+ daily Digg hits but none of them went even near the Digg Front page. Before proceeding to the analyzing part let’s see what I have experienced so far with Yahoo buzz.

My previous post titled “Will Yahoo buzz kill Digg?” had it 5 minutes fame in the buzz “top 10” page.

yahoo buzz Spent 3-4 hours at the No 1 spot in the “up and coming” section. (This was the second day of Buzz launch. Now I have noticed they don’t keep posts in the “up and coming section” for that long. )

impact of social media networksIt spent more than 8 hours in the top 1-2 places in the business category.

yahoo top buzzSpent another 2 days at the No 2 spot according to voting count.

Overall, pretty good achievements. But the all important question is, did that have any kind of impact on my blog? If you think getting around 400 unique visitors is an impact, okay then there was an effect. Any kind of traffic is worth for a small scale blogger like me. Traffic is Traffic. Isn’t it?

But I have seen what 100 diggs, dozen Stumble up reviews, few vote ups in reddit can do to your traffic level. I have to admit, if there was no stumble upon and no reddit I would have said good buy to this blog long time ago and focus on my other businesses full time.

Yahoo Buzz is worth the effort for small time publishers. But it comes no where near the impact which other social networks, Digg / Stumble upon and reddit can give to you. That might be the reason why most of the industry giants do not have the yahoo buzz button in their web pages. But in the long run when Buzz attracts more readers this story might be changed. Yahoo got many things wrong in the recent past.
i.e
Sending out emails promoting you tube. You know, yahoo has their very own video sharing web site, what’s wrong with yahoo’s thinking machines? mmmm…Not thinking….Yeah, that is what’s wrong.

[ad#ad-16] Featuring spammy type, made for adsense web sites in their top Buzz is not professional at all.

Did you notice the web site which was under the topic “India VS Srilanka ODI Live telecast”? There was nothing more than huge adsense blocks and few comments in that particular web site. That site made me realize it is really possible to game the Buzz system. Other wise no way in earth that site could come to the top 10 posts and stay there for 8 hours.

And there was another article in the top 10 which directed to a missing link. Yes, it said “the link you followed is not a valid link”. But it was in the top buzz under business category. Wonder how it ended up at the top.

So, Should you devote your time to get a limelight from yahoo buzz? I have a mixed feeling about this. Although they did not send me mind blowing traffic, the quality of the traffic is great. They have stayed on the site bit longer, clicked few ads, few even subscribed for my RSS. So I am not planning to remove the “yahoo buzz button” from my site any time sooner. But all posts will not do well in this system. Specially the posts in the niche MMO. I submitted few from my old posts but did not do that well. If you cover current stories, you have a much better chance of ending up at the top and to get more visitors.

To answer the titled question,” Is It a Big Deal To Be on Yahoo Top Buzz ?” I’d say NO. It is a decent achievement. But not a big deal.

For me the top 3 Social media networks in terms of impact is,
1. Stumble Upon – Give a fair chance to every one.

2. Reddit - You will start getting traffic from the minute someone submit your post to Reddit.

3. Digg – Will crash your servers if your post hits the top. But unless you have a huge following at the Digg community it is getting harder and harder to reach the top.

These days you cannot simply ignore the impact of social media networks. If you are running a product promoting web site or an online store then you do not need the attention of social media much. PPC will take care of your sales. Otherwise try to master at least 3 networks. It would be wise to get familiar with my recommended top 3 social media networks.

I feel, I went out of focus from my blog overall goal last week. It is time to get back on the right track and be back on turning cats in to Lions :-)

From tomorrow, I will be running a series of inspiring success stories of entrepreneurs who made it to the top of their lives. Real people who started from zero to become a hero. There will not be anything on morans who claim to made $10000 over night with affiliate marketing, Or with adsense. All the articles will be on real people with real identities who can inspire us with their true life story.

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Will Yahoo buzz kill Digg?

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Yahoo buzz, which was on beta for only few selected publishers has open their doors to the public now. With a Digg like voting system and with a desperate need to catching up with the times yahoo has done something which was much needed for the survival of Yahoo inc. Did people need another social media network? Absolutely no. But we should not be stupid enough to simply ignore a system introduced by the world’s no 1 internet company. Yes, Google is still playing No 2 to yahoo in terms of page views and visits.

Yahoo buzz
is now open for billions of web masters who are already in the rat race for bringing in more traffic. All the top Gurus are now looking for a way to game the buzz system. Just like they did with Digg. Which explains why digg is showing the same content of same popular web sites again and again. No matter how many friends you have ,No matter how many shouts you send for a particular article, if you are a small publisher it is very hard to get to Digg’s front page these days. It is like Digg has already chosen all the publishers they want in their Front page.

gaming the yahoo buzz system

Will it be possible to game the yahoo buzz system? You only need a yahoo account in order to vote. I know people who have dozens of yahoo accounts. And almost everyone have friends using yahoo accounts. Personally in my country I do not personally know anyone with a Digg account. But everyone is using yahoo mail accounts. Which is just what the system needed for a vote.

But Yahoo has done something smart. They do not consider votes as the only way of moving stories to the home page. They take the search volumes and the emails shared when choosing the stories to be featured in their home page. And most importantly these stories will be in the yahoo home page. Not just in the yahoo buzz. Which will be an amazing boost for the publisher since yahoo is the No1 visited web site in the world. I would trade anything to be featured in the yahoo home page. (hmm. I did not really mean that.)

yahoo buzz trends

When considering how yahoo buzz acted in the last 24 hours since the launch, we can see the similar trend continuing as with other social networks. Fun stories and latest news are most voted by the users and are featured in the “top Buzz” category.

So how we add our posts to yahoo buzz?

There are no 3rd party widgets at the moment. But I am sure all existing services are in the process of adding yahoo buzz to their code. For the time being you have too add it manually which is not a difficult thing to do at all. Go to the yahoo buzz buttons page here, and select the button image you want to use.

Scroll down to the end of the page to see the yahoo buzz button I am using.(which is the best in my opinion.)

adding the yahoo buzz button

Once you select the button you will be given the script code which you have to paste in your site. Not like in Digg you will have to manually enter your post’s URL here. Replace it with the line “ARTICLEURL” in the button code. That’s it. Now, anyone with a yahoo account (Literally the whole internet population.) can vote for you. Within the next couple of weeks internet marketing gurus will publish ebooks on “how to get traffic from yahoo buzz”. And most will update their existing books with a new chaptor on “yahoo Buzz”.

But will all this hype be enough to kill Digg,the Already established No 1 voting system online. I cannot predict the future. But there is no such thing as “established No 1″ in this world. Who knew China would give USA a hard time like this in Olympics medals table. I say Yahoo buzz have a fair chance of beating Digg in the long run. With that said, if Digg can make their system more democratic and if yahoo failed to capitalize on opportunities (Common trend in Yahoo for the past few years.) Digg will be emerged the winner.

While the world is figuring out who is the best, I am submitting my stories to both Digg and Yahoo buzz. Helping my self to become a winner.

If you enjoy the post please digg and give a buzz on yahoo :-) And if you own a web site do not forget to add the all important “yahoo buzz” button to your posts.

—–New Update —–
It is being 2 hours since I publish this post. Yahoo Buzz started sending me quality traffic for this.
For the time being it is 6 times more than the Digg traffic I am getting. I will post the latest results after 24 hours. Buzz me up till then :-)

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