Sphinn Launches: A New Social Voting Community for Search Marketers

A new project for Search Engine Land, Sphinn is a social website that is designed specifically for search and internet marketing professionals.

Utilizing a Digg-style voting system, Sphinn allows you to share and discuss news stories and articles specifically dealing with topics like search engine optimization and social media/search marketing.

Self-promotion and submission of your own content is actually encouraged. Here’s an excerpt from their submission guidelines:

Yes, you can submit your own stories. In fact, we’d rather you directly submit your own stories you think are of interest to the community than have someone do it for you.

Yes, you can submit your own blog post about a news story you read. However, we’d prefer you only do this if you’ve added something unique to the general news topic, such as an extended opinion or further clarification.

First Impressions: Design and Features

In terms of design, Sphinn looks rather similar to Search Engine Land (SEL). The same overall color scheme is used and the site appears inviting, particularly if you’re familiar with Search Engine Land’s interface.

I honestly think it will be better to remove the ad blocks and event notices on the right sidebar and replace them more relevant social features. Perhaps a news tracker/spy, a list of the upcoming stories, top users, recent submissions or even editorial content from SEL itself.

While they are neatly aligned to the right, they are still pretty in-your-face and do distract me a little from reading the description for each news item.

The features are nothing out of the ordinary but they do seem to work. For a list of the features wishlist and feedback made by other users, check out this thread.


Quality of News Articles and List of Users

There hasn’t been too many submitted articles but I do like what I see. Most of the topics I’ve seen so far were helpful and I do think that Sphinn might possibly become a useful resource you can visit to find all the latest SEO and marketing articles.

I don’t think it’ll eventually be as sophisticated as Bumpzee but that’s fine because I do think simplicity matters a lot when it comes to social voting/networking platforms.

Sphinn actually reminds me a little of PlugIM, another social voting website for marketers although Sphinn has a nicer and more robust individual profile for registered users. Here’s a list of the current Sphinn users: you might find some familiar names there.


Community Building and Networking is Always a Good Thing

I read Search Engine Land regularly and I know many people who do so too. This community will allow all of us and many others to de-lurk and participate openly with one another, away from the constraints of a specific article or comment section.

Social networks provide excellent branding and can serve as a strong source of defensible traffic, particularly for the host website. Digg-style social voting platforms are also avenues of expression for your site audience.

And what better way to encourage visitor loyalty, then to allow them to get some exposure for their own brand, website and content? The lure of free web traffic and interaction with like-minded individuals is a main draw for all social websites.

Building a community is a useful way to expand your reach within any industry and I’m glad that SEL has taken another step up because they’ve already been quite active (and helpful) in the dissemination of search marketing and industry news.

Here’s my user profile, if any of you want to stalk me. ^_^