PostRanger.com

Social networks gain in race for growth

Richard McManus, founder and editor of Read/Write Web, has these interesting observations on the rise of social networks inspired by analysis at Compete.

The supposition? The social networks are gaining on the big web portals (Google, Yahoo)

Among the key findings, according to MacManus:

1. In June [2006], 2 out of every 3 people online visited a social networking site

2. Since January 2004, the number of people visiting or taking part in one of the top online social networks has grown by over 109%

3. Social networking sites are now close to eclipsing traffic to the giants - Google and Yahoo

Commenters rightly carp about the apples and oranges approach of comparing 10 top social networks, MySpace through TypePad, even to portal giants like Google and Yahoo!

They also rightly observed that the portals themselves were gaining or at least holding their own in traffic.

I’m not sure I’m ready to believe that all of the functions of the major portals can be replaced by emerging social networks of which PostRanger is only the latest.

Certainly, the search engines and related alerts are still valuable commodities. But even the mighty Google may be displaced in the face of link referrals passed person to person through the networks.

For example, in our own case traffic can be driven to websites based on guest blogger links either back to their own site or to others they admire.

Would you like to contribute an article of your own to this or another stream on PostRanger? Just e-mail us for a free guest author invitation.

Photo Credit: Michelle Kwajafa, MorgueFile

12 key benefits of social networks

As regular visitors are now aware, for two months we have been actively working to build PostRanger.com, what we hope will be the premier multi-topic social blogging community of the 21^st century.

But what makes social networks important beyond the obvious entertainment and self-expression outlet they provide to participants?

In an analysis largely confined to business and large organization models, Howard Rheingold and Lisa Kimball of Howard Rheingold Associates give us some answers which can easily be expanded by thinking beyond the limits of a large corporate structure:

On a global or business scale, effective social networks can:

1. Create an early warning system.
2. Make sure knowledge gets to people who can act on it in time.
3. Connect people and build relationships across boundaries of geography or discipline.
4. Provide an ongoing context for knowledge exchange that can be far more effective than memoranda.
5. Attune everyone in the organization to each other's needs – more people will know who knows who knows what, and will know it faster.
6. Multiply intellectual capital by the power of social capital, reducing social friction and encouraging social cohesion.
7. Create an ongoing, shared social space for people who are geographically dispersed.
8. Amplify innovation – when groups get turned on by what they can do online, they go beyond problem-solving and start inventing together.
9. Create a community memory for group deliberation and brainstorming that stimulates the capture of ideas and facilitates finding information when it is needed.
10. Improve the way individuals think collectively – moving from knowledge-sharing to collective knowing.
11. Turn training into a continuous process, not divorced from normal business processes.
12. Attract and retain the best employees by providing access to social capital that is only available within the organization.

For more on Rheingold and Kimball’s observations see this link.

Photo Credit: Daniel T. Yara, MorgueFile

Would you like to contribute an article of your own to this blog? Just e-mail us for a free guest author invitation.

Libertarians of the blogosphere unite!

PostRanger.com launches our first political stream and I’m sure many more of every partisan stripe are on the way.

If you’re a Libertarian commentator, political activist, blogger or simply have an interest in Libertarian politics, this blog is most assuredly (or at least most likely) for you.

We hope you’ll sign up for a free author account (e-mail for your invitation here) and get started.

PostRanger.com offers free premium blogging for the masses and can help you build traffic for your own site as well if you have one through back links from every article you create.

Libertarianism not really your cup of tea? We’ve got many other topics to choose from. Just check our stream section on the right side of this page and contact us with the topic or topics you would be interested in contributing too.

Photo Credit: Daniel T. Yara, MorgueFile

Let Google be your guide

Want to sign up as a guest author or maybe you already have signed up and can’t figure out what to write.

There’s a great trick that can put loads of post topics in your e-mail inbox daily and keep you supplied with possible subject matter for weeks to come in your particular area of interest.

I’m talking, of course, about Google Alerts and they’re easy to use and becoming a common tool in most professional newspapers so you’re borrowing from the best.

Here’s how to get started:

·        Go to the Google Alert page found here

·        Under “Create a Google Alert” enter the e-mail address where you would like all the Google Alerts sent.

·        If you can, it’s best to single out an individual folder to which alerts are directly delivered. This will keep you from missing important alerts among all your other e-mails and make it easy to bulk erase all older alerts at once.

·        Fill in the search term. For example “World News” if that’s one of the streams that interests you.

·        Select the types of documents on a given subject you are interested in receiving: news, blogs, web, video, groups (It’s generally best to choose “comprehensive” so you wind up with a smattering of what’s out there)

·        Select how often you would like to receive them daily.

·        Create the alert.

Google Alerts can be better than random search info for your posts because:

• The information is generally more timely and allows you to lead your post with something new.
• There is a temptation when searching for information to use the same websites particularly those in your blogroll and in your reader.
• Google Alert searches find you a wide variety of blogs, news releases, websites and other up-to-date information from all over the web.
• The Google Alert function may turn you on to new websites and blogs on your topic that you might never have otherwise found even in a random Google or Yahoo! Search because it is based on updates not just PageRank.
• You are less likely to find out dated and old links, websites and blogs that may contain too much outdated information to be really useful.

To get involved with PostRanger.com as a regular guest author and help build our community while also gaining increased back links to your site and benefit from sharing our traffic send an e-mail with your stream topic of choice. We’ll send you an invitation for a free account to get you started. Join us today!

Photo Credit: Clare Natoli, MorgueFile

News of the world

From around the globe our new feed at the World News Stream serves up stories from a variety of sources.

Check out news from WordPress.org, the LA Times and BBC News on this feed or create feeds of your own using Feedblendr.

It’s easy to become a guest author of this or any other PostRanger.com Stream. Just e-mail us and we’ll send you an invitation for a free guest author account.

We welcome all kinds of guest posts for the World News Stream including news stories, video and podcasts, editorials, rants, commentary, political cartoons, photos, satire, musings. (Just be sure you have the necessary copyright clearance before you post. You’ll be responsible, not us!)

The key thing is that your post deals with the subject of the stream. Please check out other streams listed along the right side of the page in case this subject doesn’t appeal to you.

Be sure to include the stream or streams to which you would like to contribute in your e-mail.

Remember, if you’ve got a website of your own, please feel free to create links back from the articles you contribute. It’s a great and free way to build traffic for your blog or other website.

Photo credit: Somadjinn, Morguefile

Become a guest author and boost your ranking

Do you own a blog or other website?

Would you like to increase the amount of traffic to your site and boost your ranking on the World Wide Web?

Then does PostRanger have a great opportunity for you.

Just follow these simple steps to become a guest author on PostRanger.com, the blogging community.  It’s a great way to bootstrap the marketing of your site without spending a lot of money on Internet advertising.

Here are some early adopters who have already given it a try:

• Entrepreneur and blogger Becky McCray delivered this great post on why you should join your local chamber of commerce and make full use of its services for our Entrepreneurship Stream
• William Keyser of Savvy Business Planning gives this great summary of new business pitch opportunities on line
• Blogger Travis Northcutt of the Flat World Blog gives us a post on migrating jobs at the Globalization Stream
• We’re also glad on that stream to have this post by Andrew Sullivan of The Washington Note
• Finally Sydney Nichols of Sydney’s Vintage Clothing brings us this post for our Retro 40’s Stream

Got a website to promote and something to say to our growing audience. Then send us an e-mail to get started. It’s free and easy.

Photo Credit: Dave Wicks, MorgueFile

Tune in to the past with PostRanger Retro streams

Return to the 40’s with PostRanger’s Retro 40’s Stream.

Sydney Nichols of Sydney’s Vintage Clothing Store provides this great first post for the stream.

The store provides suits, purses, hats, shoes, jewelry and all kinds of accessories and ships worldwide.

Other posts in the Retro Streams include blogs for the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

If you would like to guest post for any of the above or any other available stream (see the right side of this page for a list) creating links back to your own website and building ranking in the process, please drop us an e-mail and we will send out your free invitation to join the PostRanger community.

Be sure to include the stream or streams you would like to guest author for in your e-mail and we’ll do the rest. Or suggest a new topic and if we think it fits in well with our network we’ll create a new stream on that topic for you and others to post at.

PostRanger.com is a blogging community offering free premium blogging on a variety of topics and links back to your site in exchange for the content you create. Build links to your site as you help us grow the community and the network. Start today!

Photo Credit: Carlos, MorgueFile

Try our tasty feed

PostRanger.com is a place for guest authoring. That’s true.

But it’s also going to be a place for reading great posts on a variety of topics and we’re working hard to make it that way more quickly with some entertaining news feeds.

Check out this one on our Globalization Stream with top stories from the World Health Organization, IBM and the Center for Research on Globalization.

Check out the rest of our streams where great news feeds will be popping up soon and if you run a blog with feeds of your own, drop us an e-mail and we’ll include it in one of our future posts.

In the meantime keep reading PostRanger.com and if you’d like to be a guest author send us an e-mail at the above address letting us know what topic you’d like to contribute to and we’ll shoot you an invitation for a free guest account.

Photo Credit: Corena, MorgueFile

My elevator pitch—without the elevator

Elevator Pitch—definition

A slang term used to describe a brief speech that outlines an idea for a product, service or project. The name comes from the notion that the speech should be delivered in the short time period of an elevator ride, usually 20-60 seconds. –Investopedia

Since PostRanger.com is pretty much—for now anyway—a bootstrap venture, practicing my pitch in elevators or anywhere else is not something that occupies a lot of my time.

However, I do find myself explaining a lot to friends and associates just what this thing is and what it does.

Some of the major highlights I usually try to cover:

• A social blogging network
• Offers the opportunity for free guest authoring
• A wide and expanding list of topics
• Builds traffic through link back to contributors’ sites

Here’s where a friend interrupted me during a recent phone conversation.

“I get it. So if you had, say, a place that does alternative medicine you could do articles on alternative medicine and then leave a link back to your site.”

“Yes. That’s exactly right,” I thought. Then I thanked him for his input.

I know a lot of people have written a lot of things about the perfect pitch—how long, how short, what to emphasize, how to start and finish.

To me it comes down to just one thing. Does the person you’re pitching to understand the idea? Can they grasp it and buy into it fully? It’s something that I think has as much to do with the idea as with the pitch.

If you’re having trouble with your pitch maybe there’s something wrong with your concept as well. A good idea should be it’s own pitch---to an investor or a user.

As Seth Godin suggests “Make it remarkable enough for them to pay attention.” Then hopefully they’ll spread the word.

Photo Credit: Michelle Kwajafa, MorgueFile

Share the love

So what does contributing to PostRanger.com really get you?

• Well, if you’re a newbie you get the opportunity to sign up free of charge for a guest author account and use one of the web’s premier blog platforms to post on a variety of subjects that interest you.

• You can gain attention for your on line writing as a precursor to launching your own website then build your audience by continuing to post articles with links back to your site.

• If you already have an established site or sites, you can use PostRanger.com to drive traffic to them by posting on related topics with links back to your homepage or blog.

• As our blog community grows links for our site will generate increasing traffic and better page ranking.

• PostRanger.com has a profile on Technorati now and giving your posts a potential rating on the Internet’s premier search engine.

• If you’re a small business person you can promote your businesses website by simply creating a related article in one of the streams with a link back to your business site.

Photo Credit: Belen, MorgueFile