How Social Startup beBee Benefits Bloggers

Today’s boisterous blogosphere continues to expand exponentially with competing content. In fact, your current social reach for blogging might be analogous to readers finding a single grain of sand on a beach, or the proverbial needle in a haystack.

That’s why smart and savvy bloggers are branching out by diversifying their social media experience. This means producing high-quality content and cross-channel marketing on new platforms. 

One such platform, which I highly recommend for all independent writers and bloggers, is the fast growing startup beBee Affinity Social Network. This platform has attracted more than 11 million users in more than 100 countries worldwide in the short time span of less than 2-years. Therefore, if you haven’t caught the buzz about beBee yet, let me fill you in:

• beBee, based in Madrid, is swarming North America with the recent opening of a New York City office on Wall Street, as well as targeting the USA and Canada to boost the growing user base. The startup also plans to open a Silicon Valley office soon.
  
• beBee was recently selected to represent the European Union (EU) at the prestigious week-long gathering in the epicenter of the high-tech world: “Startup Europe Comes to Silicon Valley” (SEC2SV).
  
• beBee was the only social media network in Europe selected to participate in SEC2SV because of its leading potential to become Spain’s first unicorn.

beBee also has an innovative Brand Ambassador Program in which those selected can potentially earn an equity stake in the company, if and when it goes public (by blogging on the site, among other things).

Blogging on beBee

If the aforementioned overview isn’t enough reason to blog on beBee's publishing platform, called Producer, then consider these 10 reasons:

1)  Maximize your readership and engagement (more Likes, Comments, Tweets and Shares).

2)  Boost your online presence and SEO (so your blogs can easily be found in a Google key word search, for instance).

3)  Improve your personal and/or professional brand.

4)  Create compelling content on a user-friendly platform.

5)  Write as much as you like, there are no word limits for long-form posts.

6)  Add all the multi-media content you desire.

7)  Drive more traffic to your standalone blog or website. beBee retweets user blog posts on multiple Twitter handles to showcase buzz-worthy content.

8)  Connect with like-minded bloggers in a welcoming online community of writers.

9)  Use affinity-based “hives” (open groups) to micro target your audience.

10) Leverage the new “Live Buzz” video streaming feature, exclusive to beBee, to promote your blogging and extend your reach.

Unlike LinkedIn, users on beBee (called "bees") are the real influencers, rather than hand-picked celebrity personalities and big-name CEOs.

Affinity Networking

For those unfamiliar with beBee and the unique concept of affinity-based social networking, here’s what some social media experts and writers have said about it:

Neil Hughes is a tech writer and columnist for Inc.com. In 2015, he was ranked by LinkedIn as one of its “Top Voices in Technology.” Neil writes: 

“The platform concentrates on matching professionals who have mutual interests and skill sets to help build business relationships, rather than just contacts. BeBee is about professional networking through personal interests and hobbies. In this digital age, we are finally realizing the importance of personalization and niching down."

"It's time to give potential employers an opportunity to see the whole person and not just a digitized representation of their resume.” - Neil Hughes

Javier Camara Rica is the co-founder and Global CEO of beBee. He's also a serial entrepreneur. Javier writes:

“Affinity networking connects you to both users and content of interest based on what you like. We don’t use a fancy algorithm like other social media platforms are using that determines the type of content the user will see in their feeds. Our algorithm, which is called Affinity Rank, helps users connect with content and people related to their career or hobbies."

"The algorithm gives the users the control to decide what type of content they would like to see and how much of it appears in their feed.” - Javier

Matt Sweetwood is the USA CEO & President of beBee based in New York City. Watch Matt's video message here.

John White is beBee's Social Marketing Director. John says:

“Let's face it, you're an interesting person! You deserve a platform where all of your interests and talents can be represented and leveraged to grow your brand. beBee is the first platform to give you the opportunity to showcase your entire personal brand."

"The idea behind beBee as a professional networking site is that your personal interests can lead to business opportunities.” - John White

Jim Murray is a beBee Brand Ambassador based in Toronto, Canada. Jim writes:

“As a blogger, I was simply looking for an audience and some interaction from that audience. Very quickly on beBee, I started to acquire page views well in excess of just about anything I had been able to achieve on LinkedIn. And in a relatively short period of time I was fielding comments, and growing my network."

"I was noticing that the quality of content on beBee was generally quite high."

Jim added, "Some of it was from the people I had been connected to on LinkedIn. But a lot of it was from new people who had interesting things to say.”

Linked Out

Has LinkedIn left you feeling linked out?

I recently compared view counts of my most recent blog posts on LinkedIn versus the same or similar blog posts on beBee Affinity Social Network.

The results speak volumes.

Some may choose to argue over technicalities of “views” versus “reads” and "engagement" on different social networks. But that misses the big picture because without views, there can be no reads or engagement.

Or, in other words, views represent the fundamental building blocks of engagement.

Of the 46 blog posts I have published on LinkedIn since April 2014, 82% have been featured on one or more Pulse channels. However, being featured on a Pulse channel no longer equates with high readership and engagement. Moreover, those blog posts not featured on any LinkedIn Pulse channel have little chance of attracting large readership, not to mention going viral.

That's because blogging on LinkedIn Pulse has taken a turn for the worse since it first launched in 2014. This has been consistently evidenced by a growing chorus of bloggers and independent writers voicing sincere disillusionment and discontent with recent changes to the LinkedIn publishing platform.

These unexplained changes have detrimentally affected LinkedIn bloggers.

My last blog post on LinkedIn Pulse was featured on two Pulse channels with a combined following of over 25 million. I mistakenly assumed this would automatically result in a high number of views/reads. However, the same blog post on LinkedIn received double the views/reads on beBee.

Other examples show triple or quadruple the number of views/reads on beBee compared to LinkedIn. This leaves one perplexed about this gaping disparity of engagement on the two sites.

LinkedIn has about 450 million users, whereas beBee has over 11 million. My professional network on LinkedIn is comprised of 6,400 connections, whereas my network on beBee is fewer than 1,000 thus far.

Therefore, an objective observer might expect much higher views, reads and engagement on 14-year old LinkedIn compared to beBee, which hasn’t even turned 2-years old yet. But that's simply not the case.

It’s truly mind boggling that while LinkedIn has about 40-times more total users than beBee, the level of user engagement appears higher on the smaller and newer affinity-based social network. How can that be(Bee)?

Eradicating Engagement

The answer is because LinkedIn appears to have intentionally trampled Pulse engagement, which has subsequently stifled reach and readership. For example:

• LinkedIn no longer provides users with the basic courtesy of sharing their blog posts with the user’s entire professional network via the Notifications feature. Thus, bloggers don’t know who their content has been shared with, if anyone, or how many of their connections have been notified.
• LinkedIn Messenger has eliminated the “blind copy” (bc) function, which is an important tool for users to reach their networks and inform them when a new blog post is published – especially considering how LinkedIn nixed Pulse Notifications.

But rather than allowing a basic “bc” function -- which is an integral aspect of most online messaging (including basic email) -- every recipient in Messenger appears on a user’s message to a group of connections. This contributes to bad actors spamming all recipients listed on the message, which might then be blamed on the user who sent the initial message.

• LinkedIn Groups has undergone a radical transformation in which moderators of open groups have had their oversight abilities severely restricted. Moreover, some groups do not allow users to post automatically. This means bloggers must wait for the group managers to accept or reject their submissions, as well as membership requests, which further limits engagement.

These are just three major examples of how LinkedIn appears to have disregarded the plight of regular users who publish on Pulse. Meanwhile, the cherry-picked LinkedIn "INfluencers" have their content persistently promoted regardless of quality or merit.

In the world of real estate, it’s all about location, location, location. Similarly, in the world of social media and blogging, it’s all about engagement, engagement, engagement.

In short, beBee proactively enhances user engagement, whereas LinkedIn intentionally restricts it.

The question is why? And the possible answers are varied.

Perhaps readers have their own theories about this? If so, please include your valuable feedback in the comment section below.

The Takeaway

For those who haven't tried beBee, I would reiterate that it makes no sense to put all of your blogging eggs into only one or two social media baskets -- like LinkedIn and Facebook, for instance.

However, on the flipside, it simply makes good sense for bloggers to leverage a diverse range of social platforms, especially ones like beBee in which engagement is high.

Big social platforms are not always better for blogging. It’s social engagement that really counts. This is where beBee excels.

Therefore, if you haven’t tried blogging on beBee then you’ll never know how much potential engagement you could be missing.

Remember: beBee = Buzz!

NOTE: A longer version of this blog post first appeared on LinkedIn Pulse and is also on Medium. I encourage all bees and bloggers to kindly consider engaging with the initial post on LinkedIn and providing constructive comments there, as well as below. Also check out Twitter Moments.

CREDIT: beBee Brand Ambassadors Jim Murray for his masterful memes above, and Pamela L. Williams for her awesome image below.

Related Reading:

• What is beBee? Why is beBee Disrupting the Current Model of Social Media (Javier)
  
• How to Use beBee Producer, the New Blogging Platform (Teresa Gezze)
  
• The Ultimate Guide to Using beBee (Teresa Gezze)
  
• Learn How to Use beBee (John White)
  
•  beBee Ready to Swarm North America (David Grinberg)
  
• How to Succeed on beBee (Ashley Marie Taylor)
  
• How to Use beBee Hives (Paul Croubalian)
  

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: I'm an independent writer and strategic communications advisor with over 20 years of experience in the public and private sectors -- including work in the White House, Congress and national news media. I'm also a Brand Ambassador for beBee Affinity Social Network. In addition to beBee, you can find me buzzing around on Twitter, Medium and LinkedIn.

NOTE: All views and opinions are those of the author only and not official statements or endorsements of any public sector employer, private sector employer, organization or political entity.