Increase your traffic through social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a great way to promote your website. learn the five steps for successful social bookmarking.
One of the best ways to promote your blog is through social bookmarking. There are two main reasons for this.
First, social bookmarking drives traffic. The type of people who participate in social bookmarking websites are looking for interesting things to read, vote on and comment on. There will be a target audience just for your blog.
One of the wonderful things about social bookmarking enthusiasts is that they are voracious content consumers. That means that they will return and read future posts of yours. Some of them might even submit your blog posts to share with others across numerous social bookmarking platforms.
Second, social bookmarking helps you build better search engine rankings in two ways. One, because the links from social bookmarking websites are fairly valuable, especially if your content gets voted to the home page. Two, because other bloggers who frequent social bookmarking websites will often build on your ideas in their own blog posts and link back to your post.
What social bookmarking websites should you use?
There are some big ones…
– Digg
– Reddit
– Delicious
– StumbleUpon
– Mixx
– Yahoo Buzz
Consider also whether any of these applies to the subjects you write about…
– Tipbo (for any post with tips in it)
– Tipd (for finance-related posts)
– MMO Network (for money-making posts)
– BizSugar (for business-related posts)
– Zoomit Canada
– Sphinn (for SEO-related posts)
– PFbuzz (for finance-related posts)
There are many more, but these are all good. Here are 5 tips to promote your blog posts at these sites.
ONE: Make it easy for your readers.
Make it for your readers to social bookmark your pages. Add social bookmarking links to the end of each post.
TWO: Bookmark your own posts.
The whole value in the links and in the eyeballs that see your submission is in getting voted “popular”. That requires a lot of votes, votes that will come only from people who bother checking out your submission. A network of allies in the community sure doesn’t hurt.
THREE: Participate.
Be active on these social bookmarking websites. What do I mean by active? Well, at very least don’t be a hit-and-run submitter. Once you have submitted your own post, make a point of voting for several others that you like and leave a comment. Regulars on the site will recognize the people who vote for and comment on their submissions…and those who do not. If you repeatedly ignore their submissions, why would they pay attention to yours.
FOUR: Don’t spam.
OK, this seems to be a no-brainer, but too many people miss this. Social bookmarking is for sharing pages that will be of interest to people. Generally, these are informational. Submitting a home page is considered spam at any of the significant social bookmarking websites. So is a product page or any page about your company. News, opinion, strange facts, cute or wild photos – these are all good content. And make sure to stay on-topic; don’t submit a hair replacement article to Tipd or Sphinn, for example. Study what has already made it to the home page on a social bookmarking site, and you will know what will fly there.
FIVE: Make the title sing.
Chances are you’ve already come up with a snappy title for your blog post. If so, you might want to just use that title when you submit to social bookmarking websites. On the other hand, it is worth reading carefully what works and what doesn’t at each site. You probably need a longer title at Reddit. You might need a shorter title at Digg. You might need to emphasize the financial aspect at PFbuzz. But make sure the title is optimized to lure people in with curiosity.
There you have it – the top five tips to make social bookmarking drive traffic to your blog.
Resources:
The author is David Leonhardt, founder of Zoomit Canada, a social bookmarking platform just for Canada. Make it easy for your readers to spread the word – get a social bookmarking tool for your blog.
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