I recently came across an article on CK Marketing that mentioned submitting posts to Blogging Zoom to give your blog more exposure and help build your site traffic in it’s early stages. Since I am relatively new to the blogging scene, I had never heard of Blogging Zoom before and decided to give it a look. I must say that I was impressed by the site from the moment it loaded on the browser. For someone like myself that designs websites, the design alone for Blogging Zoom impressed me. Great layout, colors, logo and extremely easy to navigate…I must dig (no…not DIGG) deeper.

WHAT IS BLOGGING ZOOM?
To put it simply Blogging Zoom is a very similar concept to DIGG or Sphinn; where members can post content from a blog to share with other readers and if they like it they can choose to “zoom” the content. Where Blogging Zoom differs from DIGG and Sphinn is they actually encourage users to submit and promote their own content, and all of the content must come from a blog. The more “zooms” your post receives the higher it will rank on the site.

SUBMITTING CONTENT
Submitting content couldn’t be easier on Blogging Zoom. Register as a new user, login and click the button at the top of the page to submit a new post. The posting rules are geared towards giving readers a very detailed description of your post, so they know what it’s about and can “zoom” it before reading the entire article on your site. According to the posting rules the description must be at least four sentences and 350 characters long.

WHERE’S MY SUBMISSION?
I have to admit I am not one for reading directions, so I was a little nervous that my submission hadn’t been accepted when I hit “submit” (memo to self…read directions, then ask questions). After submitting your new post it goes into the “upcoming” category and must be promoted (zoomed) in order to become popular and appear on the home “published posts”. If you’ve done a good job of placing a catchy title and a writing a good description of your post, you should catch a few “zooms” and make it to the PUBLISHED POSTS. I’ve only submitted two posts so far. My first post received 3 Zooms, and the second has received 4 Zooms in about 12 hours, and neither reached the PUBLISHED POSTS so I couldn’t tell you how many Zooms it takes to get published. What good am I right?

SO IF BLOGGING ZOOM IS JUST LIKE DIGG AND SPHINN WHY USE IT?
My experience with Digg is that it’s just too damn big for it’s britches. They frown upon you submitting your own content, and a lot of times it’s just too hard to get anyone to ‘digg’ your content. Sphinn seems to be turning into Digg’s little brother…especially when it comes to promoting. Recently, Winning the Web’s Gyutae Park was accused of vote rigging on Sphinn while promoting his Craziest Internet Marketing Contest You’ve Ever Seen. I haven’t read or seen anything like this at Blogging Zoom, and hopefully we won’t. Another reason that I see Blogging Zoom being helpful to bloggers (especially newer sites) is that it is still fairly new, and should be easier to break into the community and get established as a contributing member.

ZOOMING FROM YOUR BLOG
Through my research for this post I have located a Blogging Zoom plugin for Wordpress that enables you to put the Zoom Button right in your article, so readers don’t have to leave your site in order to give you a vote.

MY OPINION
Overall, I think Blogging Zoom is going to be a great tool for me personally. I don’t see any CONS to using Blogging Zoom over Sphinn or Digg…only Pros. Submitting posts couldn’t be easier, you can (and are encouraged to) submit your own content, increased exposure and traffic for your blog…all good things if you ask me.

If you have used Blogging Zoom in the past and would like to share your experiences, I welcome your comments. If you haven’t used it before…what are you waiting for? Get over to BloggingZoom.com now and check it out.

~ GrandmasterB