In this post Kim Roach from BuzzBlogger shares three techniques for getting featured on mainstream media news sites.
Did you know that you can get your site featured on major news sites like CNN, CNET, Newsweek, USA Today, and even the Wall Street Journal. It’s one of the best kept secrets in the blogosphere and I’m going to reveal it in this article.
There are actually three ways you can get your blog articles published on major news sites.
1. BlogBurst
The first technique uses a site called BlogBust. BlogBurst is a blog syndication network that places the best blogs on mainstream media sites like Reuters, USA Today, Fox News, and the Houston Chronicle.
Join the BlogBurst network and start getting picked up by some of the world’s most popular media sites. Keep in mind that they only accept full text feeds. No partial RSS feeds are allowed.
Once your blog has been accepted, you’ll gain increased visibility, branding, and traffic. This is an easy and automated way to increase your exposure. Plus, you’ll be associated with some of the best websites online and you’ll be able to tell your readers that you’ve been published on USA Today, Fox News, and other high-profile websites. Just think how much more credibility this will give you.
2. Blogrunner
My second strategy allows you to get links from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. You do so with a service known as Blogrunner.
If you go to the New York Times website, you’ll see the Blogrunner widget integrated into almost every page. This is a news aggregator that collects related headlines from news sources and blogs. Each of the news stories in the Blogrunner widget is ranked by its popularity.
Sources are selected based on an automated process so you won’t be able to submit your blog directly. However, they currently monitor thousands of blogs and media sources, so it’s likely that your blog is already indexed.
Now you simply need to write on topics related to those published in the New York Times and get some extra buzz to get linked.
3. Sphere
There is a third and final way to get your blog featured in major news sites like CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek.
All you have to do is link to a story on one of these major news sites and they will link back to you at the end of the article.
This is all automated by a site called Sphere.com, which matches mainstream news items with related articles in the blogosphere. For example, you can go to the bottom of any CNN story and see a drop-down box that says: “From the Blogs”. This box includes stories that have linked to this article. You can get hundreds of extra visitors by positioning yourself to show up here. All you have to do is link to a CNN story and you’ll get your own spot of fame.
The mainstream media is really starting to embrace the blogosphere and you can join in on the fun with these simple strategies.
Sphere is also being used by TechCrunch, Time, Reuters, CBS, AOL, the Washington Post, WordPress, GigaOm, Newsweek, and ZDNet, allowing you to get your blog featured on any of these prestigious sites. In fact, there are over 100,000 web sites using Sphere, providing you with almost unlimited link opportunities…
The key to getting picked up is to write content that adds to the conversation on partner sites. Your articles need to be highly relevant and add value to the article your linking to.
All you have to do is make a post to your blog, include a link to one of the stories on a site that uses the Sphere plug in, get a link inside the sphere widget, and watch the traffic roll in.
Kim Roach is the hip marketing gal at BuzzBlogger.com. Grab Front Page Rankings in 24 hours with her Free Google Domination Videos.
WOW this has got to be one of the best tip so far, hands down. It is so simple, well time spent, but easy. A link from a major source is what most of us strive for.
I am making this my mission this weekend and going forward. Wish me luck! :)
Darren that is absolute Gold. Thanks for the idea. Although is this really something that your readers can realistically achieve or maybe just the lucky few.
Has anyone out there been successful with this???
the blogburst service is great — they place me on Reuters and other high profile sites with pretty good frequency
1000% recommend
Hello Kim thanks for these great tips.
but it easier said then done. aquairing links from services is next to impossible for every one. Only few lucky guys get listed on widgets of BlogBust or Sphere.
And even if your post is linked it will remain their for as long as some one don’t write about that news or link to CNN story.
I would suggest you guys to try these strategy only when you don’t have any other opportunity to build inbound link. Or Have lots of free time.
wow… this is absolutely great… i will this sometime when i got a new blog fixed related with news… Thanks, i’ll keep this in mind.
Thank you very much Kim for this cool post. I signed up to BlogBurst and am waiting for them to review my application.
I read about BlogBurst about 2 years ago, in Business 2.0 (boy I hated it, when Time Warner canceled that magazine, because Business 2.0 was always ahead of other publications in terms of new technologies). I have seen Sphere, since I frequent TechCruch. But I never knew about BlogRunner. These are all strategies I will implement, once I redesigned my website into a blog. Great post Kim!
Sounds like it wouldn’t hurt to give a try. Going to get signed up right away!
Hey Darren,
MAN! Kim really nailed it for us all ! What a great bunch of suggestions. I’m seriously on the hunt (they call me Blog Hunter ) for ways to connect with blogs and people who read them. Big time media exposure! Just what I need..
Thanks to Kim and to you for sharing!
BlogNetAwards.com
This is a very informative post. I was wondering how blog links were showing up on CNN, now I know. Time for me to take action. Thanks/
Thanks for the great resources, Kim and Daren, can’t wait to join the network…!
BTW, I signed up Kim list, she has some great videos to share, hope you guys love it.
Thanks Kim,
I’ve been using Sphere for a while now and that one is great. Thanks for the other two – I’ll check them out.
Best wishes to you..and thank you too Darren.
Awesome tips on blog promotion, I ever read. Thx for sharing them.
These are some tips that we don’t hear about very often and it’s great you listed them here. Maybe it is difficult to actually get links from these sites, but it’s important to have more than one strategy when trying to build traffic to your site.
cool stuff.
that is great! definitely something that would give credit to your blog. not that easy to achieve it seems.
something to aim for. thanks. sean.
Interesting tip – I think though the title is very misleading – “featured”??
If your blog is targets readers in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Spain, Denmark, Portugal or South Africa and you want to be lined by newspapers in those countries, you might want to check out http://www.twingly.com/ which is a similar service to those described on this post.
Kim Roach comes up with the goods again, i am a subscriber of Kim’s and i am always amazed at the content i am given. Kim knows what she is doing thats for sure, i love Kim’s backlinking strategies.
Got the link from twitter for this post and its a very good read.
Thanks
Stevie
How bout for video feeds?
I placed a sphere content widget on the blog, it showed several others blog posts and ads? Now why would you have your readers click into that and walk away from your post with out any gains? That widget is a bad idea. It promotes others not you, and what if you get lucky after giving 100s of clicks to others?
I think you just have to do it without sphere content widget.
Thanks Darren,
Sree Sreenivason from NBC also likes to cover websites in his tech report. I don’t know how to get his attention, but he contacted me one day out of the blue to let me know he would be covering my site on the evening news. I was blown away! Check the video clip here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vydtJ-uEtIw
I had heard of BlogBurst before, but this is a great way to get some main stream exposure.
Thanks for the great tips!
Cool tricks! And the best part is there’s really very minimal effort involved. In fact, from what I can tell #2 requires no effort on your part other than just writing about topics that are also coversed in the main stream media.
@Index Options Trader – She’s not saying to install the widget yourself, she’s saying that you should link to main-stream media sites that USE the widget so your blog will be featured on them.
Thanks Kim for these great tips, I am following your advice right now
thanks for the info i never knew getting big was a click away
I just tried the “Sphere” suggestion by linking back to an article on CNN.com. I hope it works. Darren – I bought your book yesterday and I am reading it every chance I get. Thanks so much for all of the helpful info. I definitely have a lot to learn, but am a “problogger” wannabe!
Thanks for the great information. The other day I was very surprised and pleased to find I got a bit of traffic from being listed as one of the blogs that linked to the Google Blog announcement of their Voting Map. It wasn’t huge, but since my blog is new and doesn’t get much traffic yet, every little bit helps.
I’ve also found that sometimes when we do book reviews or talk about a product/website, that website will list us. Again, not a huge amount of traffic, but it helps.
Great advice on these! Thanks I will share this with my friends. My question for the audience would be…
Does this negatively impact the SEO/Google Page rank of your site? Are you dinged for duplicate content?
Stanford University started running my site through theirs and I noticed that my Alexa ranking immediately got worse.
Could have just been coincidental…I don’t mind the loss because I want to participate in their community, so I guess it is a choice made for notoriety more so than anything else.
If anyone knows the answer, I would appreciate to hear your opinion. Thanks so much!
I have been using BlogBurst with some good results. In a month’s time I’ve had articles show up in the Chicago Sun Times, the Deseret News, and some other places. I’ll check out Sphere and Blogrunner soon!
I used Sphere for a while, but saw no results. Perhaps the blog was in the wrong category?
I run a sports blog and Blogrunner’s sports section is a total joke. It just lists a few American sports teams and ignores loads of major world sports. Waste of time for me until they get that fixed.
Typo in paragraph four by the way: ‘blogbust’.
Thank you for the wonderful blog post. Now I know where to register my blog so now I shall get more readers.
Loved these tips! I can promote my blog now.
This is awesome! I got some homework to do now!!! :0)
Awesome tips. Hugs from me :)
It’s certainly no bad thing if you can get more link juice, but i would imagine you would have to come up with the goods and in your own mind have content that would get syndicated through these networks. It would have to be highly relevant and targeted, as for the sphere widget, that’s a definite no for me.
A useful insight for expanding your blog to a higher level, but i suspect only good quality and relevant content will be considered.
Great post, Thank’s
I have been using sphere but i was not featured even once. :(
Great information. Thanks
Wow…. featured on whaTTT…. I never heard of those 3 website either. I’m going to give it a try
Does anyone have anything positive to say about Sphere? Any successes?
I’ve been using BlogBurst for one of my sites for a while now. I’m actually in their top 10 and top 20 most posted blogs for the past two quarters, BUT I’m not getting much traffic from it. The CTR is very low. To give you an idea, in a 30-day period:
Headline impressions: over 3,214,775
Post views: 6,379
Blog clickthroughs: 31
Most of these impressions were generated from one major news site, the number has dropped like a rock since they pulled blog burst from their site.
In summary, by all means join BlogBurst! BUT please don’t expect any huge amount of traffic from it
Dan
Great tip as usual
This is a very informative post especially for a new blogger like myself. It points to three important venues or outlets where one can broaden his / her blog footprint.
I am of the opinion that for new bloggers such as myself, the best strategy is to build presence by creating great content, build a sustainable online presence and then take advantage of the avenues outlined in this post.
It is a great tool for future use for some of us.
There seems to be some confusion about Sphere.
Kim Roach or Darren (or anyone who can), could you please clarify!? The use of Sphere on your own blog is not necessary?
The tip is about linking to content on major sites (CNN, Times) that has the sphere widget on. That is all you have to do, to get featured via Sphere?
What is sphere doing exactly, is it just scanning trackbacks and then linking them via the widget?
Thanks.
This is a useful post. I am familiar with two of them but do not think that I have tried to utilize the services on websites before. This post will be something that I try to reference when I want to promote certain posts that may be of interest to online readers on a wider scale. Maybe I’ll use it for the more in depth posts every now and then.
What he is saying is totally true, but the real key is to generate content that is going to get read. I mean if you are trying to sell something like laser cutters, then you better write something damned compelling on the topic. People in the know are going to be bored and bounce if you don’t catch their attention quickly.
Right in two ;)
Great post though it probably doesn’t relate to my ridiculous humor blog. :D
Very useful post. I’ve seen these tools and wanted to integrate them into a blog I started recently, and thanks to the info here, got it all done in a matter of minutes.
Wow, this is some helpful info, will go and get listed with these sites right away.
Thanks Darren
JR
This is certainly new and useful information. I am a little bit cautious, as a good potato chef should be, about the odds of a small blog actually being helped by these tips.
I would think, and I do think on occasion, that for most bloggers getting on a local tv station or in their local newspaper is not just more likely…but in the long run probably more useful.