Using Social Networking Sites to Generate Massive Amounts of Traffic
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.
Property Investing
Google Hacks
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. 
Written by Mark Knowles from Mark KnowlesPosted on February 5th, 2008 and filed under Blogging
Do not forget to subscribe to our RSS feed for updates
14 Responses to “Using Social Networking Sites to Generate Massive Amounts of Traffic”
Author comments are in a darker gray color for you to easily identify the posts author in the comments
Trackbacks
-
[...] by Mark Knowles from Mark Knowles on February 12, 2008 | 0 Comments Last week, I talked about using social networking sites to generate traffic. I personally don’t particularly enjoy interacting on those sites and dropping links to my work [...]
-
[...] 2. How to Build a ‘Digg Culture’ on your Blog 3. How to Use MySpace to Build a Blogging Audience 4. Using StumbleUpon to Get on the Radar of Other Bloggers 5. 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers 6. Using Digg to get traffic for your blog 7. Getting Blog Traffic From Your Facebook Profile 8. 8 Steps To Successfully Building Blog Traffic Using MyBlogLog 9. What Facebook Can Teach You About Effective Blog Marketing 10. Using Social Networking Sites to Generate Massive Amounts of Traffic [...]
Comments are closed.
Comments are closed since this post is older than 30 days. However, you can continue this discussion in our popular Blogging Forums
Sponsors
Blogging Tips Newsletter
Sign up to the Blogging Tips Newsletter for Free today and get a free ebook!
Webmaster Corner
A collection of top Wordpress themes, Web hosting and resources available to web site owners.
|
Mark! Thanks! Lesson one learned. Speak to the right audience in their language. Regards Suzanne
Thanks. Regards back.
I am glad to see you saying it is important for people who want to get traffic from social sites to join and be contributors. I hope the people who want traffic will understand they are being involved in a community and not just pushing their sites on others to get traffic.
Yes, I’m also using rich media and social bookmarking sites to gain a lot of relevant traffic. I used to work on facebook and stumbleupom as major market player.
I agree 100% – without showing that you are someone who’s opinion should be valued you will not receive any following from a random social networking site.
I have two blog posts I’ll link to below that give you different options on how to market social bookmarking sites to your readers…
http://dannydouglass.com/post/2008/01/Add-Social-Bookmarking-Links-To-Your-Blog.aspx
http://dannydouglass.com/post/2008/01/Social-Bookmarking-RSS-Feed-Widget.aspx
If anyone is interested in the plug-in from my previous comment as a WordPress extension just let me know. I’ll figure it out and offer it in a day or two.
I have just started using social bookmarking sites and getting results straight away.
Thanks, as I have learned so much from you.
Dr. Sandy
Blogging Guide
Thank you Dr. Sandy.
Thanks for those links Danny.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that success in social networking sites is more about being an active and enthusiastic member than simply submitting your own posts! One thing I love is using Stumbleupon and Digg to find great sites to read and link to through my own posts. This way, you can also get to know the type of material which make it to the front page of such sites, and can craft your own posts accordingly.
Good info Danny.Everyone know that SN sites brings flood of traffic.But how to experimentally use is nice.
You are right on as usual. You are one author we can all trust to tell it like it is. Thanks