Social Networking and Paid Campaigns For Bloggers at Sverve!

Sverve is a nifty new site for bloggers that combines social networking with paid blog campaigns. It kind of reminds me of Klout too because you have a score — the higher your score, the more influential brands and other bloggers would consider you to be within your areas of expertise.
I had been seeing a little bit of buzz about this one here and there but held off on signing up until I realized it’s more than just another brand to blogger site. The fact that this one is also a way to network with other bloggers and additionally allows you to share your posts — Pinterest style — piqued my interest!

How to Get Started

Getting started is very easy. Just sign up as an “Influencer.” You’ll notice that you have a couple of options here. You can either sign up directly with your name/email, or you can choose to connect through Facebook or Twitter and sign up quickly that way. Fill out the relevant details about your blog and social media following and add your areas of influence to your profile. Sverve lets you add up to five of these. For example, I listed work from home, blogging, jobs, etc. Just use words relevant to the main things you blog about.
After you’ve listed your areas of influence, you’ll notice each one has a score beside it. This score can go up or down for each area depending on how many endorsements you get from other bloggers. For example, if you write about work from home and I come across your profile, I might “endorse” you for that area of influence, thereby causing your score to go up. The higher your score, the better, obviously. You have a total score for your profile that is calculated based on your social influence, blog influence, and Sverve influence. Getting these endorsements will help that score go up.

Initially, your score will be low and it might take a little while to build it up. You can build it up by getting endorsements, getting “favorites” on the posts you share on Sverve, and when other Sverve users follow you. It’s a good idea to be as active as possible. Follow others and they may follow you back. Endorse others and they may endorse you back. Favorite the posts of others and they might return the favor. You get the idea.

Sharing Your Posts

It is really easy to share your blog posts on Sverve. They have a little “bookmarklet” that you can click and drag to your bookmarks bar of your browser. Every time you publish a post on your blog, just click the bookmarklet and it will share it to Sverve. Note that Sverve’s feed is “Pinterest-style” with big images, so you’ll have the best chance of getting clicks through to your posts if you have eye-catching images to go along with your blog posts.
If people “favorite” your Sverve posts or comment on them, your score will start to increase. So be sure to share your posts every time you write one. I admit I always forget to do this!

Sverve Campaigns

Sverve campaigns are opportunities to make a little money or get some kind of incentive for blogging about a certain product or service. Advertisers post campaigns on Sverve, hoping to get bloggers to apply. They go through all the applicants for each campaign and select the bloggers they want to blog for their campaigns. While many of these campaigns admittedly are geared towards women/mom bloggers, there are some that might work for any sort of blog, so it’s worth being a member here and keeping tabs on what’s available. Some of the campaigns offer compensation in addition to a free product/service while others just give you the free product/service in exchange for a review. I also saw one today where the only real incentive is being entered into a raffle for a prize.
To browse the available campaigns, just click over to the tab that says “Campaigns” to see what’s there. There is always a huge list. Just apply for the ones that interest you. You may or may not be selected, but don’t despair if you don’t get selected. Just keep applying to campaigns and working to build up your score until you do. The higher your score on Sverve, the better your chances of getting picked for campaigns.
Update – Sverve is now paying bloggers to tweet on Twitter, too! I’ve already been invited into four paid tweeting opps!

Getting Endorsements

One of the best ways to get endorsements for your areas of expertise is to endorse other bloggers. I know that when I see I’ve gotten endorsements, I try to go and return the favor. Another thing you can do is add one of the Sverve badges to your blog’s sidebar. Just go to the “About” tab on your Sverve dashboard and click “Goodies.” This gives you three different badges to choose from and the code to get them copy/pasted into your sidebar. Clicking the badge will take someone to your Sverve profile, where they can easily click to endorse you. You can look to the bottom right of my sidebar to see an example of what the Sverve badges look like.

My Thoughts

I am liking Sverve so far because it’s not only an outlet for me to share my blog posts, but also a way for me to easily network with other bloggers and find sponsored campaigns to participate in. So far I haven’t seen a lot that would fall under the “work from home” niche, but I’m keeping my eye out anyway not only for this blog, but for my other two as well.
I know that it can be really hard for new bloggers to get much traffic right off the bat — especially since it’s hard to rank well in Google when you have a brand new blog — so Sverve and sites like it are a great way to start working toward getting readers. Thanks to social media, relying on search engines for blog traffic is no longer a have-to. There are lots of other ways to get the word out.

Sign Up

Go here to create an account at Sverve and start building up your blogger score.