AOL’s BlackVoices.com has consistently been the number one African-American web site for news, culture and community over the last 12 months and saw a 66% increase in year-over-year growth. According to the recent comScore Media Metrix report, BlackVoices hit 6.9 million unique visitors this month which is a site record and higher than any other African-American targeted web site or network.

Nice but expected by most since BlackVoices has been the leader of the pack for sometime now.  I was able to chat with Tariq Muhammad, Director at BlackVoices to get some insight into what exactly they did on a day-to-day basis to acquire more audience.  What I discovered was interesting and surprising coming from BlackVoices but was also something that all of us already knows works, Social Media.  Our discussion revealed tactics that have been employed by blogs for some time now (and on a regular basis) can easily work on sites of any scale.

Tariq made a point to note the team at BlackVoices pay close attention to what people are sharing on the web and what stories are Dugg, Stumbled, Reddit, and what is being reported on by popular blogs. He says they have also been willing to give love and partner (sometimes passively) with blogs to send traffic their way (read link sharing a tactic used by many most notably The Huffington Post). BV tends to use social media tools like the ones mentioned above as a way to foster ideas and give editorial direction. What typically ends up on BV is similar content with a different spin and a different perspective. I also learned they look at what people are searching on with tools like Google Hot Trends on a regular basis. Electoral coverage was all the rage on just about every website over the past 18 months, however BV attributes some audience acquisition to Twitter especially during their DNC and RNC coverage. Aside from using social media to acquire audience and promote content sharing they also employed some other strategies:

• Variety:  Increased their mix of content for the user; offer entertainment, lifestyle, and general news.
• Engagement:  Added engagement by infusing things like polls and drag-and-drop features, this gave the user a richer experience.
• Measure:  Internally BV uses Omniture to monitor what works and what doesn’t in terms of metrics (Google Analytics is a great alternative)
• S.E.O.:  Tariq says they treat “SEO as a matter of course.”
• The Sum = All the small things and tweaks they have been doing added up.

When asked about being number one Tariq mentioned that as a team they don’t like to focus on being number one for the sake of being number one, they “are number 1 at giving the user what they want” and aren’t self-serving.  “A good meal hits the palette in all different ways.”  He knows what I like to hear ;).