There has been a lot of controversy recently about social bookmarking sites and how they return huge amount of visitors to the post. I didn’t think I would actually post about these sites, but I gave these sites a try and it is returning a high percentage of visitors.
Social bookmarking revolves around us bloggers and how we like to stumble certain posts. Bloggin-Ads have been depending on visitors through direct traffic and subscribers, but recently we decided to move towards social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon. There are more to add to this list, but StumbleUpon is where I’m getting huge amounts of traffic each day because of people stumbling my posts.
Caroline Middlebrook published a post recently with a huge list of social bookmarking sites that constantly sends a decent amount of traffic to her site. She considers this an easy way to gain backlinks to your posts or blog. Although both her and I do recommend you only submitting posts that have actual content instead of submitting a post saying how you lost your pencil. Most of the time if you submit valuable content that receives decent votes or viewers, you won’t be banned. Therefore, you will start gaining the visitors you deserve from the content you wrote.
What have StumbleUpon done for Bloggin-Ads?
As you can see in the image below, I started using StumbleUpon the same day my review of OneBuckWiki got posted on the OBW blog. The return traffic from OBW was nothing compared to what StumbleUpon sent me. I have also increased my RSS subscribers count by over 40 after stumbling and submitting to bookmarking sites.
I know most of you use Digg, but Digg doesn’t seem to work too well for me. I’m sure for most of you small blog owners, Digg doesn’t return as much as expected and it is mainly due to their voting system on posts. Don’t be afraid because StumbleUpon doesn’t focus on votes and the return is much higher. For better navigation and easier stumbling, I do suggest their toolbar. The toolbar easily allows you to submit a post through their system without navigating away.
Submitting your own posts
Valuable content should never be left on a blog to just eat daily viewers. Instead, if you feel that the post deserves more viewers, submitting to the social bookmarking sites will earn you more viewers and subscribers. Many viewers on the bookmarking sites would probably consider this being a cheesy way to gain attention, but I certainly don’t think so. I don’t care what others think because there are always haters out there and that is what a blogger must live with.
How will visitors get to me?
I’m going to base this part of the post on StumbleUpon, but it doesn’t mean that other bookmarking sites don’t return viewers. With a click of the word “STUMBLE” on the toolbar, the user is sent to a random page, which could be a post that you have submitted. There are far too many people on the Internet these days, so a post is bound to see some traffic and page views. As a viewer sees your post, the viewer would have a chance to rate it with a thumbs up or down. The more thumbs up = more stumbles.
The power of StumbleUpon just overpowers all the other social bookmarking sites, but this shouldn’t discourage any one to not try other sites. I’ve been using Social Marker for the past few days and I receive over 400 uniques a day by doing so. Social Marker allows you to put everything together more quickly by fast tagging and submitting your posts to reputable bookmarking sites faster. Just make sure you submit valuable content or viewers will tend to drift away.
Make sure you give it a try if your blog is struggling. Bloggin-Ads isn’t what you call a “BIG GUN,” but I can definitely say that we’re getting somewhere with help from other bloggers and social bookmarking sites.
i have to agree that social networking is the way to go to get a blog off the ground. and it’s free. you’ve done a great job of marketing your blog at a low cost.
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Nice article !
Mike, if you are getting good traffic from SU you should try and install my wordpress plugin called Increase Sociability, it adds a reminder for visitors from Digg and SU to give you a positive vote.
If you have any questions let me know !
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preblogging » Hmm…very useful plugin. I’m going to give it a try and maybe include it in an upcoming post
Thanks!
[...] Social Bookmarking For Posts Is a Guarantee Return [...]
I agree with Bloggin-Ads that social bookmarking is a guarantee of traffic but I found it difficult to have someone to submit my article for me (because I don’t have many loyal readers yet), I am reluctant because I heard Digg community dislike self-submission.
Perhaps they should differentiate between submitting and voting, like a user can submit own articles as much as they want but whether it become popular or not is up to the social community to vote.
Also anyone interested can check out my post Have you tried Mixx?, it’s a brand new nice social media site!
I just discovered the stumble posts in the forum yesterday where everyone stumbles each other.
Wow! I got 300 hits from that. I’m just glad I read your article instead of just stumbling and moving on. I thought the same way as BobbyT about not submitting your own article. I’ll definitely be doing that.
What kind of a forum is that, Curt? Is it specifically for stumble exchange? And how many stumbles or thumbs up did you get to receive 300 hits?
Hey BobbyT.
I’m referring to the Entrecard forum. In the “Promotions and Events” section. Just take a look in there. There’s usually a post started for the day. I only discovered that 2 days ago. It helps a lot to get invoved in the forum and get to know some of the other bloggers.
For the thumbs up, I just went and looked again, but I still can’t figure out the voting system to know. But I see through Google analytics, I got another 247 hits from StumbleUpon yesterday.
Yes,social bookmarking is helping us guys a lot!!.
Regarding your stats,whats more impressive is that the bounce rate of the visitors from SU is very low.That means a lot of visitors from the site are actually reading your blog.This would certainly increase the number of subscribers.That is the main reason why bloggers like to use SU to promote their site rather than Digg!!.
And yes,there’s no wrong submitting your own posts if you think your post deserves it!!.
Thanks for the info
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