Social Media Marketing: Using Web 2.0 to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Part 2 – Social Bookmarking

Following up Part 1 of this series on Social Media Marketing is Social Bookmarking. From Wikipedia, “Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.”

As a tool for web developers, social bookmarking allows your website to listed by topic along with thousands of other sites on popular pages visited by hundreds of thousands of users. With proper techniques, you can increase your pageviews by the thousands, and maybe even be featured on the front page of the website. Listed below are the most popular social bookmarking sites.

1. Twitter – Twitter is so popular that it was featured as a separate blog post on this site.

2. Digg.com – This technology-based social bookmarking site has over 30 million monthly visitors.

3. Yahoo! Buzz – Similar to Digg, Yahoo! Buzz ranks content based on votes. The more votes you obtain, the higher your ranking, and the higher your traffic. While they both rank content on votes, Digg also bases ranking on the rate of the submitter and their quantity of friends on the site. Yahoo! Buzz bases ranking on search-term popularity and what the current trend in reading is.

4. TweetMeme – TweetMeme takes all of the popular links from Twitter and determines which ones are the most popular. It also counts the number of times a link is retweeted.

5. StumbleUpon – Stumbleupon combines a social bookmarking site with a toolbar for your browser to quickly rank sites and find new websites.

This website contains the top 20 most popular social bookmarking sites listed by monthly visitors.

After choosing which sites you would like to submit to, the next step is to create accounts on those sites. After signing in, simply submit a new site. Here are some tips in creating a quality review of your site.

Many websites and blogs go unnoticed on these types of sites simply because their headline is not catchy enough. Your headline is usually the only thing users will see from your website, so your efforts in providing a good headline will effect your page views.

While the headline is important to draw attention, if you want to keep that attention you must write a meaningful description. Be sure to keep it short, as most bookmarking sites limit your description’s length. Make sure that you submit your site to the proper category. Social Bookmarking sites usually include a General or Miscellaneous category, and since these fill very fast, your chance to get noticed quickly decreases.

It is best when other people bookmark your site to social bookmarking sites, so make it easier for them by including a bookmarking button at the end of your articles. Here is a link to add social bookmarking links to your articles.

Although submitting your links to social bookmarking sites is the most important step, an often overlooked one is to maintain your profile on those sites. Become an active user on the sites and submit other interesting articles and websites. Respond to comments left by other bookmarkers. One final tip is to focus on getting your ranking up on one social bookmarking site after submitting it to a few of them. If a post is popular on one of the major sites it usually becomes more popular on the others, so it’s best to stay focused on one at a time.

Using these steps, you will create valuable backlinks to your website and increase your overall SEO.

Social Media Marketing: Using Web 2.0 to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Part 1 – Twitter

Social Media (or Web 2.0) such as Facebook, Twitter, and Digg contain a surprisingly powerful tool for websites. Having a strong presence in social media extends your reach to potential visitors and clients. By using these tools, you will see a major increase in traffic and create a new way for social engagement to take place on your site.

Twitter is a microblogging service that allows users to participate in discussions with thousands of other users. Simply by creating an account, following other users, and sending a “tweet” you have informed users of your web presence and allowed traffic to reach your website. Twitter clients, such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite make using Twitter a lot easier. Here are some tips while tweeting to create value in your posts.

Ask a question relating to your site. If you are offering a service, ask what others think about your offer and provide a link. Use a URL shortening service such as Tinyurl or Tiny.CC for your links.

Remark on the comments you receive. Try to create a conversation with other users. While selling yourself is important, blatantly spamming links will quickly get you un-followed by other users and will diminish your traffic. Having a sense of humor and helping others with your tweets will show people your good nature and will make them more likely to click your link.

Make sure you are continually looking out for new followers. Follow people with interests similar to your website or blog and try to start a conversation with them. If you have a lot of users who aren’t responsive, simply un-follow them. Hootsuite offers a mass-unfollow tool.

Creating a strong web presence through social media will not only get your website traffic but will give you a lot of quality feedback on what is expected from your website or blog. Using these tools properly can get you thousands of more visitors each month.