Right now at PostRank, we’re mining our databases to analyze reader engagement across feeds and topics for all of 2009. On January 14th, 2010 we’ll be announcing the Top Publishers in each of the topic areas we cover. You’ll be able to see who created the most audience buzz with their articles and stories across the entire year.
Make sure you’re included!
How Will the Rankings Work?
PostRank tracks reader engagement with content by measuring what happens with articles and stories. We monitor 20 social sites across the web where readers create, critique, chat, collect and click. For each engagement event a weighting factor is applied based on the level of engagement that event suggests.
Individual story engagement is then rolled up and a total engagement score for the site is used for the ranking. It’s a truly remarkable signal that indicates how engaging and influential a publisher is. (Learn more: About PostRank, About Engagement.)
Help Us Curate the Lists
To make sure our topics reflect the best publishers and content out there, we want your help. Every day we work hard to make sure we track the best quality and most engaging publishers on the web. But you, the actual members of these communities, can make sure we haven’t let something slip through the cracks.
Anyone can add new sites to our system. And any registered user can add sites to specific topics. Please visit your topics of interest and add the ones you feel should be there. Could be your own, or someone of whose writing you’re a fan. Let your communities know, too, so they can make sure they’re represented.
You can browse all available topics or search by topic name in the search field on the postrank.com homepage.
Adding a new site to our system is as easy as entering it into the search field on postrank.com. (Please note, however, that to be added to our system, a site does need to have a valid RSS feed.) To add an existing site/feed to a topic, you’ll need to create an account. Fortunately, that’s easy as pie.
Then you can use the search field to find a specific topic in the drop-down results — just start typing. Or select it from the All Topics page.
To Add a Site to a Topic
- On the right sidebar of the topic page, click the Manage button.
- On the Topic Management page, type or enter the new site’s URL into the Add Feed field. If it’s in our system, it will appear in the drop-down list.
- If the feed isn’t in our system yet, just add it in the search field on the homepage, and it should appear in a minute or two.
- Click the green plus sign button to the right of the site’s listing to add it to the topic’s feed list.
- Click the Save Changes button at the top of the screen to save the update.
Voila! You’re done. To see where the new site is in the topic’s rankings, click the Feeds link in the right sidebar to see the topic’s full list of sites. If you have any trouble, let us know.
Find Out How You’re Doing Now
If you’re already in our system you might want to see how you’re doing in detail. Check out PostRank Analytics! Get a snapshot view of the last 30 days of your site’s engagement with the PostRank Analytics Tour.
And for 2010, keep working hard on creating great content, discovering where your audience is, seeing how they engage with that content, and growing your community and influence to make yours a Top Blog!
Resources
- PostRank Logo location: http://blog.postrank.com/images/PostRank_logo.png
- Top Blogs 2009 badge location: http://blog.postrank.com/images/topblogs_2009.png
- PostRank.com homepage: http://postrank.com
- PostRank All topics page: http://postrank.com/all_topics
- PostRank Analytics Tour: http://analytics.postrank.com/tour
- About PostRank: http://postrank.com/postrank
- About Engagement: http://analytics.postrank.com/docs/engagement