MindValley Launches SocialRank To Aggregate Niche Blog Content

social rank logoMindValley is a San-Jose based company run by Vishen Lakhiani and Mike Reining. Yesterday, they launched SocialRank, along with 30 niche websites. The websites run the gamut of possible content, from more obvious niches like gadgets (GadgetRoll.com) and celebrity news & gossip (GossipStrip.com) to the more obscure, including MathBloggers.com, ChallengeReligion.com (for atheists), BikingCircle.com, TheLibraryShelf.com (hot stories from librarians?!?!) and KnittingFriends.com.

I’m particularly interested in StartupSignal.com because it’s focused on entrepreneurship and startups. But they’re also launching a number of related sites that tie very well into this blog, including: ProductivityZen.com, MarketingLens.com and MightyBlogger.com.

The folks at MindValley asked me to participate early on with StartupSignal and vote for my favorite startup-related blogs. As a result, I was able to interview Vishen Lakhiani about SocialRank, how it works, what their plans are for taking over the niche blog aggregation world and a bit more. The interview follows.

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Ignore the Social Media Scoreboard

social media scoreboard

The biggest downfall of anyone getting involved in social media and social networking is the Social Media Scoreboard.

  • The Scoreboard only cares about numbers.
  • The Scoreboard is used to rank us against one another.
  • The Scoreboard provides no actual value.

The Scoreboard is a master seducer. It whispers temptingly in your ear, “You need more friends. Add more friends. More, more, more.”

What the Scoreboard fails to tell you is that it could care less what you do with those friends, as long as you’re piling them up.

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The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building Your Social Media Profile

No amount of effort with social media sites and tools like digg, StumbleUpon, MyBlogLog, Propeller, etc. can make up for a bad blog. A lack of focus, poor writing, over-advertising and a lousy design will sink your blog each and every time, regardless of how much effort you put into social networking and social media promotion.

The flip side is also true, in that you could have a focused niche, write well, limited advertising and a beautiful design, but still find it hard to build an audience. So you shouldn’t be ignoring the opportunities that social networking and social media provide.

In a recent post I wrote about linkbaiting and guest writing on other blogs, James Chartrand left a comment that got me thinking:

What about when you don’t have the time to surf all the social networking sites? It seems ridiculous. Just after I tell someone we have a LinkedIn page, they ask me if the business has a MySpace page. Then a Yahoo page. Then a Facebook page, a Digg page, and so on.

Not only am I expected to have a page on every social networking or media site or blog possible, I’m expected to surf and browse all these sites, comment, keep in touch and be active.

It goes on. I still have to visit relevant blogs to my subject area and target audience, reading, commenting, etc. Plus there is my own blog, of course, and I do have to work for a living as well…

Stop the madness is a phrase that comes to mind. What’s your solutions to this “be active everywhere at once” problem?

This is an extremely common problem. And it’s getting worse. James didn’t mention Twitter or any of the people search engines like Xing and Spock that have emerged recently.

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About Ben Yoskovitz
I recently joined GoInstant as VP Product. GoInstant changes how we use the web, making it shareable like never before.

I'm also a Founding Partner at Year One Labs, an early stage accelerator in Montreal. Previously I founded Standout Jobs (and sold it). I'm a hands-on startup guy, helping companies grow successfully from the idea forward. You can reach me at byosko at gmail dot com.

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The opinions and commentary on this site are mine and mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of my employer, GoInstant.