How To use StumbleUpon To Generate Traffic
StumbleUpon can be a very effective way to drive traffic to a
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 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.
If you are really serious about utilizing StumbleUpon to its
full potential, you’ll need to create a ring of contributors who
stumble each other’s posts. This will need to be done very
cleverly to avoid detection, and some may consider it gray hat.
You will need to make this choice for yourself.
How to use Facebook to Generate Traffic
Facebook is a relatively new social networking site, but the number of members is growing rapidly. It is another site that is worth using to try and increase your contacts, and even to try and drive some traffic to your commercial websites. As with many other sites, you need to be careful what you are doing. Facebook is not a marketer’s site, and it is so easy to get caught up in activities which will bring counter productive results, and even result in you being banned from the site.
The first essential is to get your profile set up properly. Make sure it looks professional and business like, and not like the profile of someone just looking for dates. Include a full description of what it is you can offer to your potential customers, and make sure there are links back to any of your own commercial sites. Once your profile is set up, it will act as your sales page. Don’t make the tragic mistake of using your business name as your profile name, as this is against Facebook’s terms of service. It would honestly not be worth doing anyway, as you will only gain traffic and customers from your written description.
With social networking sites, it is all about doing just that, networking. Make sure you respond to any friend requests, and send out your own. Growing your network is your long term ticket to building steady traffic to your commercial sites. Use the My Questions application to find out what people are looking for related to your business, but never spam. You can relate experiences about other people you have done work for, or sold products to, and then if they are interested they will ask you. At the very least, they are sure to visit your profile, and then it is only one further link to have them on your commercial site.
How to Quickly and Easily Leverage Social Media to Build
How to Quickly and Easily Leverage Social Media to Build a Big List (Part 2 of 2)
In Part 1 of this article series, we talked about what social media sites are and how they can be used together to drive traffic, get links and build your list. But we didnt get into any details so were going to pick up where we left off and discuss your social media marketing strategy.
1) Register and Start Networking ASAP.
Social media sites are by their definition places where you network, socialize and get in contact with those of like minds. That means you cant hold a one-way conversation where you lecture to your prospects and participate in activities that will directly benefit you.
As such, that means you need start networking and participating on these sites before you start doing those things that directly benefit you. For example:
* Comment on and rate videos on video-sharing sites like YouTube before you start posting your own videos.
* Comment on and rate other peoples content before you start bookmarking your own content on Digg, StumbleUpon, ReddIt, and similar.
* Comment on and rate other peoples content while you are building your own Squidoo Lens or HubPages.
If you become a part of the community first, then youll be able to grow a good reputation quickly. This makes you more authoritative and influential when you do start submitting and bookmarking your own content. And that means more traffic, fast.
2) Start Sharing Quality Content
Once youve helped other members and contributed to the community, then its time to start contributing your own quality content. That means you can share videos, bookmark your pages and build your content sites. You can also run a blog on these sites, start niche groups and similar.
3) Network with Like Minded Others
You may find plenty of prospects on these social networking sites, which is why you should work to get people on your mailing list. But dont forget that you may also find potential joint venture partners on these sites so network accordingly.
4) Commit to Doing Something Every Day
Finally, you should commit to doing one social media marketing activity every day. For example, load a new video, create a new Squidoo page or answering five questions on Yahoo! Answers.
The reason for this consistency is because the more you do, the more traffic youll get and the faster youll build your list. See, you cant just do social marketing for one day and expect it to pay off for months. But you can do just a little bit every day and watch as it pays you handsomely every day.
Youve seen just the tip of the social media iceberg in this article. That means you need to check out [[Social List Building]] to discover what the gurus know about building their lists using YouTube, MySpace, Digg, Squidoo and other social media sites!
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