SEO BLOG

Tamar Kali, not to mix up with Sphinn superstar Tamar Weinberg.

Sphinn is the #1 social news site for Internet marketers with a focus on search currently. Recently Sphinn has grown inasmuch that it’s possible to get 800+ visitors from a front page appearance. Not just any visitors but highly targeted visitors from the search marketing industry. So if you sell services to search marketers you got to be there. As a SEO specialist you can get links and as a SEO blogger you can gain trust and authority over time.

I achieved it at least partly so I’m quite fond of Sphinn for a while now. Although I’ve been quite lazy lately, I nonetheless still am in the top 20 of contributors. In fact I’m user #20 according to the numbers. You will notice though that not the sheer quantity is key on Sphinn.

There are plenty of ways to get to the Sphinn front page, I have tried many of them. Anyways I’m not that fp oriented, I sometimes just want to inform my colleagues about some interesting news regardless of whether it can make it to the fp or not.

The most common are the social media classics:

1. Write about the community itself
2. Link to the blogs of a dozen top users or write about them
3. Make an outstanding list of resources
4. Stir controversy: Declare SEO dead, explain that black hats are devils or make up SEO standards
5. Vote for all the other active users in the community for them to notice you and vote for you too but this takes long on Sphinn

While these methods are quite boring if you ask me, I prefer other ways that are less conventional, with the exception of #3

To really find out how you can succeed on Sphinn each and every time you have to take a look at tamar’s profile there. Tamar is probably the most famous social media connector in the search industry. She’s a blogger, social media maven, internet marketing expert etc. but above all she’s a connector.

The best thing about the connector status is that s/he does not have to be the best, the one with the most experience or authority. Tamar is a few years younger than I am, she’s apparently a woman (what makes it harder to succeed in male dominated geek realms) and she’s not owning a renowned company or something.

Checking out the top users list on Sphinn you will notice that she ranks at #21 one spot behind me when counted by the number of fp apperances. I got 57, she has 56.

So how does she manage to get an outrageous 100% front page ratio? Does she game the system? Well, no she doesn’t, as she even works as a moderator at Sphinn. This shows us that you can excel without “black hat” methods.

So here are several more methods to end up popular on Sphinn:

1. Socialize like Tamar, be everywhere and be active there from time to time, be there in real life too
2. Listen like Tamar (know what’s going on and be able to pick those topics which are cutting edge as well as on point)
3. Publish like Tamar (she does on her own blog as well as on a leading industry publication plus a leading tech blog)
4. Early adopt like Tamar, I’m early myself but Tamar has been there already in most cases, I could outrun her on Browzmi though
5. Be outspoken like Tamar so that people notice your opinion due te the fact that you have one

OK, now you probably decided to ask Tamar to submit your next post, but then read this. ;-) In fact you got to become like Tamar to succeed on social media, not only on Sphinn (she had a 2/3 fp ratio on Digg too when she was active there). So study her behavior like an anthropologist to get there. She’s the next step in human evolution: Homo socio medius.

P.S.: Did you notice the image above? It’s Tamar Kali, a spectacular punk musician. Just compare the number of Google results for her name and the number for Tamar Weinberg. The social media Tamar is at least 6 times more known on the web than the punk musician. In the 21st century social media mavens are the real superstars.