Using Technorati’s WTF as a Promotional Strategy for Your Blog : An Experiment
I’ve never tried Technorati’s Where’s the Fire (WTF) service until yesterday because I’ve never thought of it as a social website that can drive traffic towards Dosh Dosh.
There doesn’t seem to be many articles about using WTF as a promotional tool and so I decided to come up with a little experiment to examine WTF’s ability to generate exposure for an individual blog.
Will it be an effective way to get more visitors and potential readers? Maybe. It all really depends on how many users actively use WTF or Technorati’s search engine to find information they need.
Included in this post is a mini-tutorial which explains how to use WTF, along with some observations on WTF and social marketing.
How to Get Started Using WTF
Here’s all the really basic stuff about how to get started.
- First, visit Technorati’s WTF homepage
- Then click on the Write a New WTF tab
- After which, fill in your WTF topic details. I usually copy and paste a short excerpt from blog posts I want to use because it saves time.
- Click on Submit and you’re all set. Your entry will be recorded under the My WTFs tab and will be available for public voting.
- Apparently the more votes from Technorati users, the more likely it is to show up under the Today’s hottest blurbs section.
- Get friends to vote on your entry and see it rise or stay at the top!
How WTF Topics are structured and ranked
Topics are ranked on WTF according to the number of blurbs written about it, the more blurbs about a topic the higher it will rank on the WTF Topics page. Currently Anna Nicole Smith is the most popular topic on WTF because there are 65 blurbs which were written by various Technorati users.
This also means that if you start a WTF topic about Punk Rock Fashion, your blurb will be the only blurb available and the topic will be pushed all the way to the last page.
Testing WTF: Building a WTF Topic around a Blog Post on Dosh Dosh
I started a WTF Topic about Stumble Upon and inserted my comprehensive guide to Stumble Upon as a reference. The whole process was very easy and the WTF blurb went live immediately. You can see the blurb here.
Apparently my WTF blurb on StumbleUpon was the only one available at the moment so the entire WTF Topic was immediately relegated to the last few pages on the website. That’s not really a problem because I’ve also noticed a pretty cool thing.
I did a search for StumbleUpon at Technorati’s homepage and noticed that my WTF blurb on StumbleUpon showed up as a featured article above all the other Technorati blog posts about StumbleUpon.
Why is this so? Because Technorati includes WTF topics on top of the normal search results and the WTF topic of StumbleUpon only had one blurb (mine!). In more competitive topics such as iphone or Youtube, the WTF topic blurbs are rotated according to freshness.
What does all this mean for my blog?
Two main things of importance:
- Creating a WTF topic can immediately bump you to the top of any Technorati search results page, regardless of your blog’s link authority.
- This also means that the more unique the topic, the more likely that your blurb will be the only one featured.
This leads to two main questions: Do enough people actually use Technorati’s search engine to look for specific content? Also, will being listed as under WTF’s Today’s hottest blurbs section bring any sort of traffic or exposure to your blog?
I’m not sure if there is any way to determine the number of times anyone searches for a specific topic and I wish there was some sort of an keyword selector/measure like Yahoo’s Overture for Technorati.
However determining how much the traffic will result from getting on the WTF frontpage will not be difficult. I’ve submitted this post to WTF, so please vote for it here and we’ll try to see how much visitors this article will bring over the next 48 hours.
This will allow one to examine the potential of WTF as a social marketing tool for your blog so please participate if you can.
Thanks to all who have voted so far!
Update: I’ve written a detailed report concerning the traffic I’ve received from being on the WTF Top spot. Do check it out and leave your comments. Thanks!
Voted!
I found technorati’s wtf very weird. Technorati is all about blogs, so if wtf says ‘no blog required’ what are we talking about? it this some kind of google notebook with votes? is this some kind of digg that wasn’t well-executed? is this a community and open blog? I don’t know, but I know that technorati did a really good decision chosing the name
Thanks for voting Francesco!
Roberto, I’m still trying to figure out WTF myself. This experiment will probably indicate if a large portion of bloggers actually care about or use WTF actively.
Still this is a smart idea. I’ll be curious to hear how it turns out.
Thanks for the tutorial as I’ve been looking to look into WTF myself, but just haven’t the time. I’m curious to see what kind of numbers you pull in, even though I do have a feeling it’s going to be pretty good.
Voted! Good luck Maki!
You are at the top!
It works for me.. thanks Maki
Hi there,
A quick note for those of you a little confused about the voting process on Technoratis WTF.
Firstly, it brings little if any traffic, especially in a niche scenario (indeed, a very popular term will drive a little traffic, but not really that much).
Next up, the persistence of a WTF blurb as a featured item when ppl search technorati is related to its popularity.
Thirdly - and most importantly, you’ll notice that an article can have just a few votes yet retain top spot, while an article with 19 votes can slip to the bottom.. this is because its not about total vote counts, but how quickly people vote for the blurb.
ie if 3 people vote for a blurb within seconds or minutes of its addition, vs 19 over 24 hours, its deemed particularly popular.
If you want to make a blurb popular, it really is just a matter of lining up a few friends from kickoff
Oh, and to qualify this approach (a valid one I might mention) its important to understand that this is typical social behaviour when popular blog posts are published (see white paper:”Cascading Behaviour In Large Blog Graphs” - look it up on G).
Hope I’ve contributed positively - and its about time someone considered the marketing potential - well done !
I tried that with my Blakeize.com blog. It didn’t work as planned. I think you need moer then a few friends.
Michael
Thanks John for your tips on how WTF worked. That’s what I’ve been noticing as well.. this article currently has the highest normal of votes but is ranked lower than others. Freshness is a criteria I think.
@BeachBum Michael.. actually you don’t need a lot of votes to get a decent amount of traffic. If you haven’t voted for the article, try doing so because it’ll help me to better understand how WTF works. My update tomorrow on WTF should be rather interesting for you
I voted when you first posted. Also wrote a post about your article.
The experiment is interesting but is this not essentially destroying its usability? As more people catch on, the less useful the tool will be. It’s the old Shrodinger conundrum…will this really help your audience to make more money if everyone’s using it? It’s kind of like going to a seminar hosted by Donald Trump. If everyone got rich, no one gets rich.
@Digital Nomad,
Thanks ! I’ve read the post on your blog.
Job,
First of all, thanks for over estimating the reach of Dosh Dosh.
Only a very small portion of the blogosphere reads this blog and I’m sure it won’t lead to any earth shattering effects on WTF’s usability.
There are many social networks which can drive traffic towards one’s blog and WTF is one of them. Like I said, I have a personal interest in social media optimization and this post is a result of that interest.
Publishing the results would motivate more users to use WTF which might lead to more competition but at the same time, more information sharing and interaction through Technorati, which I think is the initial purpose when WTF was set up.
You are very clever, and I admit that I admire your verve in doing this.
(1) I am linking to this post in my blog, where I reveal how I added “blogocombat” to the Technorati WTF page.
(2) I am using your “Using Technorati’s WTF as a Promotional Strategy for Your Blog” as a promotional strategy for my blog, because I am a Derrida-driven deconstructionist.
;^)
Fascinating stuff…it was my first visit to WTF, I saw your article in the top spot and arrived here. When I voted you were still up there. I’ll be curious to find the results of your experiment; perhaps they are posted elsewhere on dosh dosh
I’ve been intrigued by WTF since I first noticed it. I think for it to survive it has to amount to something more than a pointer to porn and splogs.
I voted for sure! I discovered this feature some days ago but i was afraid about it so i didnt give it a try until today
You cleared the things up! Thanks pal!
Cheers from Argentina!
We are not sure how Technorati work. Since all our articles are not featured. We will try your system out