5 Tips To Increase Your Blog Traffic With Social Bookmarks

Social Bookmarks

Want to know how to increase your traffic immensely? There is nothing else like the social bookmarking sites… they can potentially bring in an extra 100,000 visitors in a day or two, if your article is popular enough.

So how do you get results like that? While there are no guarantees, if you follow the guidelines below, you'll increase your chances immensely.

* This is not my normal topic, I know, but I've gotten several times my normal traffic lately, and it has been mostly from social bookmarking sites. I also know that at least the most vocal of my readers also have their own blogs, so maybe this will help.

It's All About The Headline

You need to write a headline that draws attention. Many of you already know this, as it's also important for SEO, but the headline is even more important on social bookmarking sites than elsewhere. If your headline isn't good enough, users of the social bookmarking sites will never even read the description, let alone the content. Copyblogger has a series on how to write magnetic headlines that can help.
The Description – Set The Hook

Once the headline makes the reader bite, you have about thirty or so words in the description to set the hook. This has to take the attention the headline has gathered and focus it into enough interest for the reader to click the link to go back to your site to read the article. This is a good place to summarize the benefits from reading the article, as well as to inject a little humor.
Make Friends On The Site

This can make or break your chances on a social bookmarking site. If you have 10 friends on one of the sites, whether you met them through the site or know them in the outside world, and they vote for your article, it can easily start a trend. Articles with very few votes don't gather as much attention as those who already have a presence… and the higher the number you can jumpstart your article with, the more likely other people are to click on it (there's a reason why the sites are called SOCIAL bookmarking, after all).
Make It Easy For Your Readers

Save your readers from having to copy and paste your URL by putting links or buttons at the bottom of the article that allow them to quickly and easily vote for it. To be honest, I may have gone overkill on this, as I have included most of the bigger sites of which I am aware. You might be better served offering only a few, as that concentrates any votes you have on those sites, bringing a higher potential rating on that site, in turn generating more traffic as people want to see what is so interesting.
Write Great Content

This one should be obvious… if your content stinks, even with the above advantages, people will not vote you up. They also will not return to your site (which is presumably why you want traffic in the first place).

So… short, but hopefully sweet, that is how you get traffic from social networking sites. I hope my regular readers will forgive my stepping away from my normal topic, but the increased traffic lately has made me happy, and hopefully following these directions will allow others to share that happiness.

Have more tips? Leave them in the comments below.

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