Heat Seekers: BPI Fastest Growing Urban Blogs

While the Blog Performance Indicator (BPI) Team is getting ready for an updated version of The BPI Top 40 Urban Blogs, they recently created a metric that measures how fast a blog is growing relative to month over month growth. Due to a potential patent, they would not share with me the exact formula but I did ask them to run it for urban blogs. The results are as follows based on urban blogs created in the past year...

So here are the BPI Urban Blog Heat Seekers...The Top 10 newest, hottest urban blogs who are less than a year old and are burning it up in terms of growth and momentum. This list does not measure overall traffic or inbound links like the BPI Top 40, but rather focuses on how fast a blog is growing month over month. For example, Highbrid Nation has less traffic and inbound links than A Hot Mess, but Highbrid Nation's metrics are growing at a faster in the past four months than A Hot Mess. So The Heat Seekers are all about growth. Get it? Good.

1.Necole Bitchie - Urban blog networking guru. Hard work and hustle is paying off. Traffic and linking momentum off the charts
2.Highbrid Nation - Great layout, branding and dedicated fanbase is helping build traffic
3.Blogs Is Watching - Proving regionalized hip-hop blogs outside of NY, The ATL and LA can work. Fast growing Seattle hip-hop blog
4.Soul Bounce - An eye for unique news and well-written commentary. Already becoming an established urban blog in less than a year
5.Ill Seed - Capitolizing on his famed AllHipHop gossip column. Took a little to build up the buzz but   now traffic is growing rapidly
6.Satchel of Gravel - The anti-street wear blog, takes a look at the anti-coporate/trend side of style and hip-hop; attracting broad audience
7.That Grape Juice - One of the U.K.'s fastest growing urban blogs; gaining heat in the U.S. in the past three months
8. A Hot Mess - Light hearted look at urban news with plenty of updates per day, slowly escalating to Top 5 Urban Blogs level
9. The Corporate Takeover - Unique take on business side of hip-hop. Dedicated core group of readers allows for high linking momentum
10. Ill Doctrine - Jay Smooth's video blog gains popularity stemming from his original hiphopmusic.com blog

You will notice a common theme to The BPI Heat Seekers is the unique angle or twist each blog positions itself as. Some take advantage of their credibility from other sites, others find truly unique angles to share about hip-hop or urban news. But this list just proves being unique, having your own voice and getting your networking on are critical for early blogging success. Congrats to this month's BPI Heat Seekers!

Note: To all the WoooHah.com fans, yes we made the Top 10 list here, but since we are posting this info. we felt it better to remove ourselves. But we still pat ourselves on the back every day about it. Wooohah!

Comments

[TARN]

I know a couple of these but the others I have never heard of. I'll def check em out though. Good lookin out!

[My Big White T]

ALREADY GOIN TO NECOLE, CORPORATE TAKEOVER AND SOUL BOUNCE ON A DAILY BASIS. THIS LIST IS RIGHT ON IN TERMS OF THE NEW HEAT! (WITH WOOOHAH.COM OF COURSE TOO)

[LL]

Ill Seed got his own blog now? He should just do rumors separately and take all the AHH traffic with him.

[Mike Belgrove]

thank you Yeti. I had a bad weekend and my ego certainly needed some stroking this morning. I'd like to say that it's been nice to see people enjoying Highbrid Nation as we do try to offer something a bit different than most urban blogs. With that said all the blogs on that list are good and I personally subscribe and read each one including Wooohah and I'd recommend that everyone one else do as well.

[ATL Reps]

Regional blogs is the next wave.

[Satchel]

The Gravel thanks you for making us aware of this information.

[Niles]

UK on da map! HOLLA! Props to that grape juice.

[YSL]

thanks for bringing this to my attention yeti and givin a shout to the regional blogs! 206 UP!

[James from FaceySpacey Technologies]

Yo Yo, I'm a Web 2.0 Development company, previously from the music industry (Managed a major recording studio in Time Square in NYC).

Anyway, some of my old friends still doin hiphop music have asked me for some online marketing help.

So the first thing I did was search for a list like your Top 40 Urban blogs.

I noticed that you had a list of 3,000 blogs that you went through to get that list. Do you mind posting that list somewhere maybe as another article? Or can you email it to me or something.

I'm gonna organize a social media marketing campaign for the artist I'm helping, and it will include lots of genuine conversation on these blogs by our team. Ya Digg.

Otherwise, if u wanna learn more about my Social Media Firm, check us out at: http://FaceySpacey.com

Lookin forward to that list of 3,000 homie. Thanx

[Repping Beantown]

wow! that's crazy...lord knows I might never get on that list

[WittyAdlibs]

This and your top 50 or whatever urban blogs list is completely biased.

[DURKA JIHAD]

WEHATEYOURBRAND.COM

[Yeti]

@WittyAdlibs...to each his own. I don't create the lists but I've seen how they are compiled and trust me, they are not biased because the guys running the software have no clue or interest in hip-hop or urban culture. Just how do you think the list is biased? Would love to hear more about what you think.

[Flash Games]

Great post. Thanks for sharing.

[ATLien]

All of the sites definately deserve props! Great post! Hopefully I'll make it up there one day :-)

[franchise]

great post. we are trying to make it to #11 on the list. thanks for helping us hip-hop nerds/enthusiasts measure our success or lack of. see you at iknowtheledge.com!

[illseed]

THANKS FOR THIS!
I work gotdamn hard.
I've been "blogging" before there was such a term. it just so happens it was on a site. I'm now opening up to this stuff. I hope people like it, because its not rumors.