Blogging Tips

Everywhere you look, you hear advice from bloggers, would-be SEO gurus and “Internet Marketing Experts,” regarding Social Networking sites as a traffic generator.

Many of them are saying the same thing – “Use social networking sites to generate massive amounts of traffic.”

I have no doubt you have heard it all, so I am not going to repeat the same old stuff. I have experimented with many of these sites. At least all the popular ones such as Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Delicious etc.

But, what many of these experts in generating massive amounts of traffic do not tell you is how to go about actually making the traffic happen. I can promise you that if you sign up to one of these sites and submit a couple of links you will not get massive amounts of free traffic. No siree Bob, there is more to it than that.

The only blog I have seen around that actually gives good advice in this area is doshdosh. Good, detailed advice as to how to get the best from these social networks and a breakdown of what is likely to appeal to a particular sites membership.

But, it pretty much boils down to doing one of two things:

Be an active member of the community

Make a positive contribution to their site. This means doing more than dropping links to your posts at every opportunity. Interact with other members, learn to speak their language and more important – make sure you are speaking to the correct audience. Stumbleupon members are unlikely to be interested in Quantum mechanics.

Write posts designed to attract a particular social networking site

I have written several blog posts aimed at a particular community – these two were written with the express intention of attracting stumbleupon visitors. They have both generated substantial amounts of traffic and continue to do so.

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As for the first approach, I personally have found this to be too much time and trouble for the benefits gained. I very much question the value of traffic from these sites, although I do believe the secondary benefits are worth the effort.

Being naturally lazy, it makes far more sense to me to spend the time creating a blog post that will appeal to a particular group. I have also found that these sites produce far more traffic when a regular user of the site finds your post and submits it themselves rather than by submitting it myself.

Thoughts and comments welcome. Agree? Think I’m an idiot? Let me know in the comments box.