Posts Tagged ‘social bookmarking’

The keyword here is “social”. To be able to take advantage of social bookmarking sites, you have to become a part of the community, learn their culture, and use your knowledge to play the game (following the rules, of course). In social media, there are regular users and power users. When regular users submit a page, they get usually get modest traffic. In contrast, when power users submit a page, they are likely to generate traffic that would make servers cry. The difference? Power users have many friends within the community, and when they talk, people listen.

How do you become a power user?

1. Observe. Choose your preferred social bookmarking site and particular niche, then subscribe to it. The more specific the category, the better. Get a feel for the trends. Know what works and what doesn’t.

2. Keep ahead. Also, subscribe to the top blogs or sites related to your niche. Your RSS reader should have at least 20 of those. Some of these are probably among the most dugg sites already.

3. Branding. Join the site using a short catchy username, and an equally memorable avatar.

4. Get personal. Go to the Upcoming section and try to digg the ones you think will make it to the top. More importantly, be the first one to add comment of support. Add them as friend and check their profiles constantly to digg their other submissions. If you do this, they’ll most likely return the favor.

5. Test. Once you’ve accumulated about 50 friends or so, start digging posts from your own blog, one at a time. Don’t spam or you’ll get banned. Only your best posts should be dugg. See how much diggs you can get automatically, and how close you can get to Digg’s homepage. You might need to ask a little help from your friends first so that they know about your site. If you fall short of the number of diggs needed, just go back to #4 and expand your network. Remember, it’s all about being social.

Whenever social network traffic is discussed, it seems Digg always comes up. While it can be a very powerful tool to drive massive traffic, that’s only true if you get on the first page, which is quite difficult, and when you do, it’s usually short-lived. StumbleUpon, in contrast, can give you considerable amount of traffic easier, which can go on for days, if not weeks. Sound good? Let’s get started:

1. Register. Become a StumbleUpon member and install their toolbar. This will allow you to stumble sites effortlessly. Just click on the thumbs up icon if you like a site, or thumbs up if you don’t. This is also the simplest way to submit your pages. If it’s the first time a page has been stumbled, a window will appear asking for a short review of the page content, among other things. Fill ‘em up and you’re good to go.

2. Tag ‘em. Make sure that you tag your submissions with relevant keywords. Specific tags are the key to bringing you targeted StumbleUpon traffic. This also increases your chances of people clicking the thumbs up button, since you’re sure users who’ll see it signed up to view your kind of content. However, be careful about being too specific that your post can only reach a handful of audience. In the absence of a hard and fast rule, it’s best to experiment.

3. Pimp your profile. When you submit a page, sometimes other Stumblers check out your profile before deciding whether to give their thumbs up approval. A blank profile won’t look right, as you might be thought of as a spammer. So fill up all the things you need to and give yourself instant street credibility.

4. Make friends. Once you start submitting, try to see who stumbled your pages, and then thank them. It’s a great way to make friends, and you do owe them that much for helping to send you traffic. Better yet, stumble the pages they’re submitted as well. You can also look for profiles with interests similar to you, add them as friends. Within StumbleUpon, you can have up to 200.

5. Socialize. To have a wider reach within the StumbleUpon community, try to join user groups, especially those that are related to your niche and interests. Group members usually look up each other’s stumbled pages. Another thing is that StumbleUpon rewards the most active group members by placing their clickable icons on the group’s front page.

6. Give back some love. Submitting only pages from your site will eventually get noticed. This will put another blemish on your reputation. It’s a give and take process. Stumble other pages frequently. If the pages you’ve stumbled and submitted are well-received by other people, you’ll be highly regarded within the community, and they’ll be likely to follow your lead.