Back in 2006, Rand Fishkin owner of SEOMoz coined the term “Linkerati.” Basically, the Linkerati refers to anyone on the web who has a lot of influence, so much so that a link from them on a blog or social media site would cause the target of that link to go viral. As you might imagine, these people wield a tremendous amount of power. The Linkerati have been known to raise millions for politicians, stop corporate bullying and especially share funny cat pictures with the world.

Today, with social media sites like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon dominating the landscape, it’s quite difficult for one to rise to the top as a power user, a.k.a. Linkerati, for those already established sites. It’s like a game of king of the mountain, once someone establishes a strong foot hold on the top, it’s really hard to knock them down.

So how does one get themselves to the top of a social media mountain? The answer is easy, you start on a small hill and help build it up into a mountain. If you are reading this right now, then guess what, you’re on one of those opportunistic little social media hills, BlogEngange. Where better to start your rise to power as one of the worlds great influences then this up and coming website?

Of course it won’t be easy. You can’t just submit your blog posts once a week and think you can just set it and forget it. Mr. BabyMan, of Digg fame, didn’t get to where he is by sitting on his laurels. That guy has been submitting great content to the site since the early days, when Digg was just wee pup of a start-up. Now look at him, he’s one of the most influential guys on the Internet!

So now you know to start at a small site like BlogEngage, but what exactly do you do? I have a few ideas, though I can say it pretty much all revolves around a simple concept called participation.

Here’s a few ideas to get you started:

• Check the Upcoming stories often and actually vote for the ones that are interesting.
• Submit interesting blog posts (not just yours) that are unique and might not be found on other social media sites. BlogEngage is only as good as the content submitted to it, so it makes sense to go out and find it.
• Join a group in your niche or start one if it doesn’t exist already. Participate with others in your niche to get good stories to the front page.
• Help each other out, comment on their blogs, submit or vote up on other social media sites. As Bill and Ted once said, “Be excellent to each other.”

About the Author: Matt Savage is the author of the Plenty of Fish Online Dating Blog where he writes about his experiences messing around on online dating sites. In his spare time he enjoys botany, collecting fortune cookie fortunes and wearing sleeveless flannel shirts.