In her keynote address at our Digital Marketing Mixer in Scottsdale, Arizona, Arianna Huffington gave her play-by-play for turning the eponymous Huffington Post into a social media juggernaut. Rohit Bhargava—himself a superstar blogger—was also at the event, and he discusses the secrets to Huffington's blogging success at the Influential Marketing Blog. Here are a few of his observations:

Huffington makes it easy for contributors, even those who are technologically averse, to participate. "Not a purist about blogging," notes Bhargava, "Arianna's point of view on blog posts [is] simple—if someone shares their thoughts transparently and honestly, the site can publish it as a blog post." There's a "backstage" area where her enormous roster of bloggers may upload their essays electronically, but they can send posts by pigeon for all she cares. The late historian Arthur Schlesinger preferred communication by fax; superagent Ari Emmanuel, meanwhile, likes to give dictation over the phone.

She builds on her big hits. When gossip blogger Perez Hilton linked to her blog, Huffington not only earned the admiration of her daughter, she saw a serious spike in traffic. Though 72 percent of the visitors never returned, some came back periodically—and an impressive seven percent became regular readers. "Multiply that effect over three years of traffic and big hits, and the result is their current traffic of more than 20 million unique visitors per month," says Bhargava.

The Po!nt: Huffington doesn't get hung up on definitions of what makes a blog a blog—and neither should you.

Source: Influential Marketing Blog. Click here for the complete post.

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