Getting Targeted Visitors with Social Bookmarking
Everyone who has a website or blog should know about social media/bookmarking sites by now. If you don’t, it’s a great traffic generating opportunity you are missing. Many people submit to sites like propeller, digg and stumbleupon. Getting on the top page of these sites can generate some great traffic, however, it may not necessarily bring you the conversions that you want, and in the end you may be disappointed and stop social bookmarking all together. I have unfortunately known several people who have. That is why much attention here at www.trafficteria.com is not just on getting traffic, thats easy, but targeted traffic. With that said, Social Bookmarking is a stategy that needs to stay in every internet marketers and bloggers toolkit.
Think about why it is important to social bookmark your posts.
First, creating good backlinks used to be one of the most important reasons. However, many sites are using “nofollow” for the links. It is important to realize that “nofollow” does not necessarily mean Google, for example, won’t follow the link, it will just not pass page rank on. Bookmarking is still important for finding and helping to rank your site in my opinion.
Second, exposure, exposure, exposure. Should I say that again? Gaining exposure is the key to good Internet Marketing. We all should have good authoritative sites with orginal content that brings true value to the reader. You want to get your site and those articles in front of as many people you can. As a small business owner we don’t have the advertising funds as the big boys. We should always be looking for new ways of advertising and marketing our sites and doing things those “big boys” would not do. Social bookmarking is one way to gain great exposure, and subsequent traffic.
There are two main types of social bookmarking sites.
- First, there are sites, such as http://del.icio.us/, http://ma.gnolia.us and http://www.bibsonomy.org/. They are simple bookmarking sites where site where you give it a title, description and tags. People can search for articles by these tags to find your articles.
- Another type of bookmarking site is http://digg.com/, or http://www.propeller.com The difference between these sites is that a Digg or Propeller type of site, is that people can vote on their favorite articles, and in Diggs case you undigg it by burying it if you don’t like it or if it is spam. I like the Digg type sites the best as there is a lot of community involvement and spam is controlled better. Plus getting to the top page of a site like this can get you a lot of traffic.
Traffic and exposure is always good. In general sites such as propeller and digg, in order to target visitors make sure you have a well written title, description and tags. Don’t try to mislead people just to get traffic. Be as specific as possible and make sure if you are monetizing your articles to have an offer as specific as possible to your topic. If your article for example is on Teen Credit Cards, make sure you have a teen credit card offer on it.
Sorry I digressed into marketing strategies for a second. Lets look at how to really zero in on targeted visitors. There are literally hundreds of social bookmarking/media sites out there. It is unrealistic to use them all. Everyone should spend a few days researching these sites to find ones that may be related to their niche, or possible articles they might include. I have a parenting site for example. Recently I wrote an article on Earth Day and Kids. The smart thing to do would be to also find any specific social bookmarking sites related to the environment such as hugg.com or care2.com. Say you have a site where you sometime share recipes. I know I do. For those types of articles you could add to your bookmarking canyoucookit.com for example.
In summary, one should never use the same social bookmarking sites over and over. Add a few that are niche or article related for more target visitors. And whatever you do, show some good bookmarking etiquette by bookmarking or voting up other peoples articles. People that don't play by these rules, those that spam their bookmarks everywhere, or get many people to vote and artificially bump up their article will in many cases end up getting banned. That is not the practice I would ever advocate. Playing nice, voting for others, and bookmarking others by getting involved in these communities will in the end bring you consistent traffic that is well targeted over time.
This is far from comprehensive, and I have not included the general type sites, but those that are more niche specific. Here is a list of social media sites to get you started in your research:
Social Bookmarking Niche Sites You Can Vote On
http://www.agentb.com/
AgentB is a place for you to find and share great deals from across the Internet.
AgentB is a place for you to find and share great deals from across the Internet.
ArmchairGM aims to be the ultimate community of sports fans — a place where fans of games ranging from baseball and football to auto racing and mixed martial arts can congregate around a common theme: Fans rule.
here you can vote, post articles, write comments, and interact with fellow auto enthusiasts.
popular sports news, videos, and blogs
Christian and religious stories and articles
A Place for Sharing Beer Brewing Articles, Tips and News
News and commentary
Can you cook it? Great place to bookmark and share your recipes.
Green living, health and human rights
Social media bargain hunting
Domain name news portal
Software and Internet developers social media network
The digg for green news and living
A shopping social media site. Add comments and pictures
Social shopping network. If you have your own products this is a great place to share.
Reviews several internet startups per working day. Vote for the one you think will be a killer.
Celebrity news and gossip
Photography and photo related links and news.
Pixelgroovy is a webdesign tutorial directory
Plant Change is a free resource to support the ongoing environmental debate taking place in Australia and across the globe.
PlugIM an internet marketing community where one can share and read tips and ideas.
real estate social news site
entertainment related news, videos, and blogs
This is a lifestyle social media site. Categories include parenting, food and home, design and crafts, arts and entertainment and much more.
Small Business news you can vote on.
Internet marketing news and discussion forum. You can submit your latest tips or article and have people vote on it.
Anything related to style and fashion can be submitted here.
A site for music lovers. In its own words “it's like a massively-multiplayer game for music junkies who are always on the prowl for new sounds”
A social media network specializing in all aspects of computing, technology, and the Internet.
If you like investing this is a great resource for you to share your favorite stock market and investing news.
Submit gaming news and stories
A digg type social media site for book lovers to share reviews, previews, discussions, newspaper articles, blog posts, video's, podcasts.
Finally, here is a massive list I found written a couple years ago, some of the sites are gone by now, but nevertheless, it is a good place to start your research,
Filed under Internet Traffic, Social Bookmarking, Social Media Optimization by admin
Comments on Getting Targeted Visitors with Social Bookmarking »
damnlove @ 2:30 am
wow, i kinda agree with your points..
currently i use social bookmarks for builidng backup links…another good way is writing comments like this one
Anne-Marie @ 11:29 pm
Great list. There are several which appeal just to moms like The Mom Blog Network (www.momblognetwork.com)and CafeMom's Hotlist (www.cafemom.com/hotlist). Also, sk*rt is on the verge of changing their name and their URL…stay tuned.