In my previous post, I lamented on the proliferation of "me too" social bookmarking sites.
I singled out Blog Engage, a relatively new entrant to the social bookmarking scene, as being different from its peers and is thus creating waves, by going against the grain.
It does this by being a blogging community that only allows bloggers to access its platform. It also encourages genuine participation by doing the following:
1) Allowing Bloggers to post their articles/stories on the platform, engage each other by browsing each others blog posts/stories and voting up their best-liked stories...
In return, they receive points for voting, befriending other bloggers and general site participation
2) Using their Forum page as a means of giving bloggers great tips for marketing and making money from their blogs, whilst allowing us to share stories of what works and doesn't work in these forums.
3) Giving us a great list of affiliate sites that bloggers should patronize to make money from their blogs
4a) Facilitating do follow links, thus giving bloggers a means of increasing their page rank.
This comes with a subscription to Blog Engage RSS Service - where you can automatically get your blog pinged and have its RSS feed published on Blog Engage.
This saves you time from having to manually post stories/articles to their site.
Being a Blog Engage RSS Service subscriber also has other benefits:
When pinged, your RSS feeds are submitted to Blog Serp, Top Blogged, RSS Leak, Blogger Ink, Tag Serp and Blogger Tag for further proliferation online.
4b) You're automatically allowed to sponsor blogging contests that guest bloggers enter by submitting articles. Contestants can win up to US $250 in cash and prizes, so your blog gets additional exposure by being on these contestants' pages.
All this comes at a price though, ranging from $1.99 to $19.99 per month, depending on how many blogs you want to have automatically pinged and the sponsorship opportunities you want to make use of.
The Following are a Few Glitches that Blog Engage Needs to Iron Out
Alas, the debutante in the social bookmarking arena also has a few glitches that need ironing out:
1) The Blog Engage Forum link on their home page - doesn't take you to their forum page, it just links you to top bloggers on the site.
To really access their forum page you have to go to Google and type in "Blog Engage Forum" or go to Blog Engage Forum.
2) Another way to get your blog showcased on Blog Engage is to try to get entered on their "Cool Sites" page.
To qualify, you have to link to the Blog Engage, via placing their button on your site, reply to the "Cool Sites" forum page with your blog URL and verify your page rank.
This process is rather tedious, as you have to enter their forum to initiate this process. (Yep, the same forum that's not accessible from their home page).
Additionally, when you login and try to complete the process of being showcased, the "Cool Sites" discussion page is locked, thus preventing you from replying with your blog URL...
Thus shutting your blog out from being showcased as a "Cool Site"...
...Very lame!
What's even lamer is that they don't even have contact information on this site, or any way of contacting them on the site. So it's difficult to contact them about this bug or anything else, from their site.
Yes, they do have a FAQ page, but it doesn't give fixes to the bugs above.
However, you can contact them by emailing your problems to the same email address that you got your access verification from.
So, overall, my rating of Blog Engage as a blog community that encourages participation and has loads of new features to help market your blog (including the ability to have do follow links), is an "8".
(I really don't like having to pay for a "do follow" service).
However, the glitches on the site reduce my rating of them to a "6".
Hopefully, they'll work out the kinks on their site, soon.
But if you want to engage with other bloggers in a real community setting, try Blog Engage - they are an excellent blogging community with very innovative features to encourage community!
As such, I think they may just be around for a very long time!
Gillian
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