A chess game may last 40 moves but is possibly lost due to move #10. Here we will list a few strategies which will get you to the front page and keep you there with your news. You may have to devise site specific strategies, which are up to you.

1. Become an Influencer

This means becoming popular with lots of people on the site, the mavens, connectors and everyone in general. You need to be seen as a user who provides quality content which is of importance to members of the community. This may take up time, in the long run it increases the chance of your stories reaching the front page.

An influencer profile allows you to brand yourself as a social news expert. It allows you to do favors for bloggers and webmasters, by promoting their content. 

2. Befriend Influencers

If you can’t create a strong enough profile yourself befriend social media influencers.

Make sure your content is 100% relevant to the site and users’ personal interests. Respect their brand and only pitch content which improves their standing in the community. Avoid aggressive self-promotion.

3. Develop a Voters Bank

This is an age-old method used by countless webmasters and bloggers to game social sites. Simply get a bunch of friends, colleagues or like minded individuals to register for the social website and then collectively vote up each other’s stories.

Some companies have their bunny rabbits voting for specific stories. A network of friends is useful if it used discreetly.

Do voting networks or banks work? They do but in the end it may be detected and your content may be removed by the editors. Worse could happen, your domain could be banned from the site. So be very, very cautious especially at the start when you are just finding your feet.

This is for starters

At first don’t try to build voter banks or networks. Sidle into the network quietly as a participator, pass judicious comments. Intelligent comments are those which help users in some way or further the discussion into an area that is fruitful. Members of the website will notice someone has arrived, not just someone, but someone who is willing to give.

The next step is to build an influencer profile. You could try building a voter network but that is not a solid foundation and as pointed out it can lead to trouble. Once you are on the way to building an influencer profile you are in safer territory. This can be specially useful when you are in consultation or selling services. If you are a product seller it may not be so useful since users will generally go by other users experiences as also reviews.

The final step is the most arduous. You will have to make your presence felt on a number of websites. This means devoting a little bit of time to each every day, you cannot allocate 4 hours on a Saturday, it has to be half an hour or so each day. These social news websites change on a day to day basis, daily interaction are necessary.

Finally, you would have an Analytics tool to measure traffic on your website. Determine which social media websites are providing you the best traffic. All traffic from these sites is called targeted traffic but some sites will yield more. Gently put in more efforts into those sites or guess why other sites are not sending traffic. When you begin this the real gains from participating in a social media news site will show up.