The Internet Intern

Two of the biggest traffic boosters amongst social media websites are Digg and StumbleUpon. When used properly they can have a huge impact on your traffic .

Let’s start off with using Digg to drive traffic to your website.

Digg works by allowing users giving a thumbs up ‘dig’ or a thumbs down to whatever they read online. It’s pretty much a way to rate different pages on the web so that the best stories get the most attention.
With Digg there is a lot of importance attached to getting on the front page. If you can manage to get a story on to the home page of Digg, then you can expect to receive thousands of extra visitors to your site.

To get started you will need to submit your story to Digg, and then encourage other people to vote for it. You will need a good number of votes to have any chance of making it to the home page and picking up the thousands of extra visitors.

If you can get someone else to submit the story, or if it happens naturally, that is so much better, and will give you a much higher chance of getting the votes you need.

If you want to give your story the best possible chance of being voted for, you need to attract the reader’s attention quickly. This means that it’s important to have an interesting headline and description. Remember, there are plenty of competing articles, and the reader can’t read them all. Give them a compelling reason to read yours.

It also makes a difference if your content is fresh and relevant. If you are writing on topics which are current and hot right now, your chances of getting votes increases enormously. Remember that readers are more likely to vote for something which is of genuine use to them, so if you can produce an article with genuinely helpful information in it, you will certainly gain votes.

On Digg.com, you start contributing as soon as you sign up. This is a great way for you to get information about your site out there. Many site end up being linked by other people, and you will find that this improves your link building status; your links will not only be out there, they will also be contributing to your Google search engine rankings.

Now… lets talk about how to use StumbleUpon to generate traffic

StumbleUpon can be a very effective way to drive traffic to your website, but only if you avoid the traps that so many StumbleUpon users fall into. As with so many other Web 2.0 social networking sites, the traffic is not predominantly people who are looking to buy. If your website is blatantly obvious in terms of its marketing and promotion, then your attempts to drive traffic will simply not work.

StumbleUpon users are looking for information, and will almost never give the thumbs up to any blatantly commercial site.

The biggest mistake of all is simply to stumble and promote your own sites. Gaining traffic through social networking sites takes preparation, work, and interaction with the social community. The first, and most obvious, factor in determining traffic levels is the number of the other users who give you a thumbs-up recommendation.

For this to happen, your page will obviously need to be top quality.
StumbleUpon is not a technique which can be used to drive traffic to poor quality landing pages. As well as this, the number of reviews which your page has is also highly relevant. Simply, the more reviews means the more traffic you drive.

Another major factor is the authority given to your account. If you want to use StumbleUpon to drive traffic, you will need to become active in the community and regularly stumble and review other people’s sites. You want to generate as many friends as you can within your allowed limit. If you review other peoples profiles, you should find that a certain number of these will return the favor.
Having a profile with increased number of reviews is also instrumental in giving you more authority.

Slowly but surely, people are learning how Digg, StumbleUpon and the many other tools out there to drive traffic, increase awareness and achieve success. Once you have a couple of good Digg and StumbleUpon friendships, traffic to your website will never be the same.

Tags: Digg, social nsites, stumbleupon
Posted in Traffic Tactics
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