With the advent of Web 2.0, social media has become an integral part of daily online life. It has become so powerful with its viral nature that succeeding in this arena may become a make or break deal for your website. If you plan to harness it, you might as well do it properly. Here are just a few tips.
1. Link Bait – The content on your site should be stuff that’s interesting and/or useful, the type that other people would want to link to and share with their friends. There are many ways to do this: having a blog on your site, offering free white papers, gathering breaking news, how-to articles, pictures, videos, statistics, and collections of multiple resources and tools.
2. Others First Policy – A common mistake rookies commit (including myself when I was starting out), is that they submit their own content to social media sites exclusively, right from the start. That’s a no-no. Build your reputation first as a source of great sites within the communities of these sites. Digg or Stumble other people’s content. Only when you get yourself a sizeable following should you start submitting your own.
3. Presentation – Now when you send other people to your site, make sure they’ll like what they see. Great content badly presented will not be terribly effective, negating all your hard work. So, make sure your ads, if any, don’t clutter up your pages. Check for the site design’s compatibility to major browsers and screen sizes. Add life to your pages by including relevant images. To make reading easier for your visitors, break the content down to sections and highlight the titles.
4. Buttons – All the popular social bookmarking sites have their own little buttons you could put at either the top or bottom of your post. If you’re using Wordpress or some other CMS, make them part of your template.
5. Discuss – Social media sites have their own groups and forums. Try to join the discussions on topics related to your site. If there are questions you can answer, by all means offer your take on things. This helps to boost your ranking among the community. In forums that permit it, you can put a link to your site on your signature.
6. Reciprocate – If someone Diggs your article or posts it on a forum, write a thank you note to that person. If he or she has a blog, try to see if you like any of the entries and return the favor. You can also ask if this person wants to exchange links, which is mutually beneficial for climbing the search engine rankings.
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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.
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We’ve already discussed how to generate massive traffic from StumbleUpon referrals. They’re not particularly hard to do, but they do take a bit of time to master. Why bother?
1. Viral. Using StumbleUpon, you can produce rapid exposure for a website, blog, brand or a specific product. If you write a great article, posted eye-popping photos or an entertaining video, people can come pouring in in a matter of minutes.
2. Highly targeted. People who sign up to StumbleUpon choose the specific topics they want to see. Assuming you tag your submissions well, your audience will be an eager bunch who will be receptive as to what you have to say.
3. Long lasting. Unlike Digg which is more of a one time, big time deal, StumbleUpon traffic is normally more gradual. The effect can last for days or even weeks, and can even resurface months after you first submitted it.
4. Marketing tool. StumbleUpon ads can be good alternative to Google Adwords. For only $0.05 per impression, your page can be shown to StumbleUpon users like it’s just a normal part of the rotation when they click the toolbar. Be sure to package your page in a way that doesn’t come off too strong, to keep your audience interested. Look at the popular stumbled sites for ideas.
5. Backlinks. Once a user stumbles your site, the link becomes part of his or page. If many people do this, you’ll have a lot of instant backlinks which may help your PR.
6. Convenient. With the Stumble Upon toolbar, webpage submission has become incredibly easy. Also, since the pages you stumble become part of your personal StumbleUpon page, it can be used as a form of social bookmarking. It’s a great way to keep track and share them with others.
7. Fun. It’s not always about building traffic. Browsing around the StumbleUpon community, you’re likely to find cool sites you’d never have found otherwise. And, hey, use that toolbar. Click the “Stumble” button once and you’ll get hooked - guaranteed.
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.
