Today and tomorrow I will be covering some of the sessions from the Search & Social Spring Summit based in Tampa, Florida. The coverage is more “note” type as opposed to live blogging format. Here is coverage of the Social Media News & Content session with Chris Winfield, Chris Bennett, Neal Rodriguez, Brent Csutoras moderated by Jordan Kasteler.

Chris Winfield:

Social Media Sites:

Social media sites Chris like include Fark (funny), Drudge Report (right wing), i-am-bored.com (targets users bored at work, best times to submit are during 12pm – 5pm), Extra Mustard on sportsillustrated.cnn.com, Slashdot is the original tech news site.

Tips to Get Syndicated:

Make it easy for mods to post. Make flawless titles based on the community. Know the site’s lingo and play off that. Most content on these sites come from top 5% of their users, because they know the community.

Jordan Kasteler, the moderator said, make sure your server can handle this traffic!

Brent Csutoras:

Social media is not a bandaid approach, it should be a strategy. Don’t use his tips to game the system but it may give you an edge to get some visibility.

Digg Tips:

– Digg short bar gives you views of your article, but it isn’t a 100% accurate. If you have 50 votes but only 10 views, they take note, so make sure to get people to visit the page. Same works the other way, don’t game it.

– Votes should come from the areas that Digg sends people to, such as the recommended section

StumbleUpon Tips:

– Spread out your shares via various methods, not just one
– There is no time limit to being hot on the site, you can do it each day
– There are SU groups on other web sites

Reddit Tips:

– The more you try to promote your site here, the more likely you will hit a filter.
– Instead just try to get 5 votes, and not from the same people.
– Never send people to reddit URL

Kirtsy Tips:

– They simply count views on their site for that title
– This is a women oriented social news site

Delicious Tips:

– Get someone else to bookmark it so you get a link on delicious to share with people
– Once you get popular, promote the popular page

Takeaways:

– Avoid Patterns
– Explore and use their site features
– Know what you are doing
– Control your influence by making sure people don’t congratulate you on the submission
– Don’t Game System

Neal Rodriguez:

– 100 stories later, he became a top user on Digg
– Digg Karma, people who can help you promote it to next page
– Neal does a very entertaining presentation showing the dollar value of social news