Finding hot topics with StumbleUpon and Digg
This past week Nicole Dean has been guest blogging on one of my other blogs and her topic for the week was How To Get Ideas For Your Next Blog Post.
I will be going into more detail on occasion here. Today we will look at this tip.
19. StumbleUpon and Digg.
If you’re not using StumbleUpon and Digg yet, you’re totally missing out on my favorite tool for watching what’s hot (and you’re missing out on boatloads of traffic). I love my StumbleUpon.com traffic, but I also use the site to research interesting ideas for blog posts and Twitter tweets. Check out the site.
StumbleUpon and Dig can be an excellent idea platform and let you know what is really hot in your niche. First go to StumbleUpon and login.
You will see a search box in the upper right. Add in your topic and click search. Because I like blogging I will use that as a keyword.
I used a very general term and the first thing you will notice is the ability to apply a filter with options listed of related filters. Because I write about WordPress here I will use that as my filter..
Then I can either browse those results and I did the top topics was plugins so I can drill down a bit more by clicking the plugin filter.
Next I can sort the list by either ratings or reviews.
Looking at these lists I can see that the strongest ratings and the most reviews are consistently plugin lists. So if I am looking for a topic I would now look to do a post on one of the following.
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Top 10 Must Have Plugins
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8 Plugins Every Review Blog Must Have
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5 Plugins To Reward Your Commenters.
Now it only took me about 3 minutes total going through StumbleUpon to find these topics and come up with potential blog posts with my slant that I know have a good chance of being popular.
You can sort through Digg in the same manner but StunbleUpon is my personal favorite for ideas.
Once you know the keywords you are looking for finding ideas that have a good chance of being popular is easy. If you do not know how to create your keyword tree and find profitable keywords check out the Keyword Call this Wednesday with Steve Roye and myself.
Mike Paetzold
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7 comments
Doug Champigny
Twitter: SuperAffil
on August 16, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Yes, the ability to use powerful Web 2.0 sites for trending topics, then to extract keywords from, is probably one of their most under-used benefits. But it’s the little tricks like these that turn a good keywords researcher into a great one – which is exactly why people should be on your call on Wednesday!
Doug Champigny´s last blog ..Downloaded Your Free ClickBank Commissions Blueprint Yet?
[Reply]
Earl Netwal
Twitter: EarlNetwal
on August 16, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Thanks, never was really too sure about how to use these services. I will play around with stumble for a while on my new niche.
Earl Netwal´s last blog ..Five Steps For Quickly And Easily Writing Content
[Reply]
Joel Osborne
Twitter: JoelOsborne
on August 16, 2009 at 4:13 pm
That’s an excellent idea! Simply see what others are saying is great content, and write on a similar topic and post it to the same group of people. Nicole has had some very cool ideas, I’m glad she stopped by your blog.
Joel Osborne´s last blog ..True Quality PLR from Jimmy D Brown – Prime PLR
[Reply]
Brett McEllhiney on August 17, 2009 at 7:35 am
Great tip Mike,
Have been on StumbleUpon’s website numerous times and had not even noticed this before.
Looks like a great tool. Definitely going to check this out as I need all the help I can get in coming up with ideas for blog posts, tweets, email’s, you name it!
Brett McEllhiney´s last blog ..Affiliate Marketing with Clickbank Pirate – Case Study – Week 1
[Reply]
Andre Arnett on August 17, 2009 at 7:01 pm
I use StumbleUpon all the time for commenting but would never have thought of using it as a search tool. This is good information to have.
Andre Arnett´s last blog ..Happy Birthday Mike Paetzold, But You Get The Present
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Lonnie Minton on August 18, 2009 at 1:36 pm
I have used StumbleUpon a little and Digg even less. You have pointed out a different way to use these two Web 2.0 sites. Thanks for the tips.
Lonnie Minton´s last blog ..Building Your List With Email Swaps
[Reply]
Luca Di Nicola
Twitter: rsonline
on August 18, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Good point about the search feature. I use Onlywire to bookmark my favorite sites and I do ckeck both of these but find that I get distracted with all the good stuff in there. The search tool should give me a more focused experience
[Reply]