Most bloggers use social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com, StumbleUpon and Del-icio.us. These sites work by providing feedback on submitted articles via a judging and voting system. A well received article can ring a multitude of visitors to your site. Beware of falling into the trap of becoming ratings obsessed; make sure you do not detract from your original goal of writing for your subject specific readership.
When considering your Search Engine Optimisation strategies it is best to choose one maybe two of the social media sites. Using a multitude will give you a never ending task within the promotion stakes and this is where you will fall down with your original goal - that of writing. All will help create further web presence and can bring traffic to your site, each work in a slightly different way. StumbleUpon can give you a good influx of traffic from just a few votes; Digg however needs far more votes to help lift your article to the front page, once there your stats will show a huge traffic peak or spike.
Social media sites can help boost your exposure throughout the web which will help considerably with your optimisation objectives. The more traffic the search bots encounter visiting your site the higher up the rankings you will go.
Here I must emphasise once again the need not to get enthralled by the obsession for traffic and lose sight of your initial goal to write. Although all the social media or community sites mentioned in this article will help send initial traffic to your site if the content the readers find there is not well written and worth reading the traffic will be short lived, when aiming to build the popularity of your work not only do you want those tell tale spike sin your stats leagues you also want a loyal audience that read your work because they enjoy it. Here is where social networking sites come into their own.
By building up a large network of likeminded people you have a good start to a ‘reader list’ you know these people enjoy similar ideologies as yourself why else would they be within your network or circle – here is where my deals of networking may change to those of some others.
In building my network in LinkedIn I have looked to link with other likeminded individuals that share similar interests and goals, in this way we can help each other within our networks. I have not actively searched for a massive list my network has grown through connection with others within my professional arena - be it through similar career goals or industry experience or those whose expertise I value and I would like to learn from. By simply building an enormous list for 'list sake’ you run the risk of putting the worrying thought of spam into people’s minds. Large communities or networkers can still easily be built but you need to constantly keep your reasons for building uppermost in your mind.
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