The role of social media in content syndication

1. www.technorati.com, one of the top content aggregators, rates new posts in blogs and feeds and tags help your content to show up sooner ,and higher, in the Technorati rankings. To get more visibility for your content in a feed, make sure you have the ability to add Technorati tags to the articles. This means that Technorati will be alerted the moment you add new content to your feed. It also lets the content aggregator know what your new content is about.

2. Make it easy for readers to share your content. They can post and tag your content on social media sites such as http://del.icio.us and www.digg.com. These sites allow users to create a page of their favorite sites on a subject - a virtual library.. Because these pages are so focused on a subject, they are showing up high in search rankings. If your content makes it onto these well-indexed and ranked pages, it can bring you lots of traffic.

3. Offer other ways to share content. Many people are not yet social media savvy. Add a Tell a Friend button that allows them to email the article to others.

4. Creating a feed is not enough. You have to make it easy for the people to find and subscribe to your feeds. Include the auto-discovery code in your feed setup, so that any browser will see there is a feed on your site. Place RSS icons on your homepage and every content page that has a feed. Offer the easy-subscribe buttons so that someone who uses a well known RSS reader or a MyYahoo or Google personalied page can subscribe with one click.
   

Here are some examples of websites that are using these ideas.

• SkinMD Natural
  
• Paradise By Marriott

Mouse over the RSS icon for a dropdown menu of easy subscribe buttons.

At the end of each article, there are Technorati tags and the options for posting to the social media sites.

Content syndication pays off in search results. And when readers like your content enough to bookmark it and share it with others, you’ll see the results in your traffic.