Social Network and being a Featured Blog

Blogging has SEO benefits that can give leveraging power to a blog or website trying to come up in the blogosphere but there is a benefit that has yet to be discussed here and that is being a featured blog. This blog stems from some news that reached me just a few hours ago. My personal blog, Goingbigger, has just become a featured blog for the third time by a major network.

The blog is housed on the social networking site of MSN Spaces and it’s approaching it two year anniversary quicker than I thought, especially when I remember how it was when it was created. MSN Spaces is the social networking site that is similar to MySpace but the difference lies in the construction of the Space with tech gadgets and SEO usability. Well the first time the Space was featured was on FoxSports.com one week prior to Superbowl XL for my attendance, blogging and uploading images of Seattle Seahawks game in which I attended. Then it was picked up by the MSN Spaces team for the same thing for Superbowl XL.

Being a featured blog gave the site exposure only dreamed of, in my opinion, and drove large amounts of traffic to the site and generated loads of comments highly relevant to the posts. Now the site has just become a featured blog, again, on MSN Spaces Live homepage under the category What’s Your Story that is halfway down the page.

So what am I alluding to you maybe wondering and it is if a blogger works hard enough and long enough there site is going to get picked up and featured by some major websites.

Being a Featured Blog (s) (er) lends itself to massive amounts of benefits that are not surface level.

1. A featured blog gets PR passed to it from the site that is hosting the feature.
2. A featured blog gets large amounts of traffic from a major portal.
3. A featured blog can gain new readers and subscriptions.

These three items help to encourage a blog to become a authority blog in which gains high search engine rankings and continued traffic. As a blogger it is quite an honor to have such a large site feature a blog because starting out each blog is a small fish is a pond that is exponential growing and content is always being added (this blog is included in that category being less than one month old).

So how a blog can become or reach this type of recognition? For now I will touch on the main three principals of consistency, interaction and time.

Consistency: A blog is only valuable if and only if it is regularly updated. Some recommend at least once a week strategy but I go for the daily position myself. Posting daily trains (might not be the right word) people as well search engines to visit on a highly regular basis to look for new information. If a blog is not regularly updated then people and search engines go else where and that is not good for the blogger.

Interaction: Get involved in the blogging community by reading and leaving worth while comments on other blogs. These don’t have to be blogs in the same network like MSN Spaces, MySpace or ActiveRain but other blogs that are stand alone domains (ex: www.twresourcegroup.com) or parts of other networks like FaceBook, Ning or Squidoo. Blogging is social activity in which participates need to engage in otherwise their blog will die.

Time: Don’t expect to start a new blog up and have it become a featured blog or have massive amounts of comments on it. It takes time, relative as it may be, and being patient will pay off, even if you don’t agree just try and see what types of results the blog gets.

Being part of social networks and achieves the honor of having a featured blog is something that will pay long-term dividends that won’t be actualized until the statistics show up in the results.