Use Stumble Upon To Create Traffic

Stumble Upon

www.stumbleupon.com

StumbleUpon is just a little different from the other social bookmarking websites (actually they are all just a little bit different from each other).

It works as a browser plugin to let you ‘stumble upon’ and rate websites, articles, blogs, photos, videos etc. A person using StumbleUpon is known as a ‘stumbler’, and when you come across an interesting web find you just click the Stumble! Button on your tool bar and add it to your StumbleUpon favorites. All the functions that you would normally use in social bookmarking are made available on your browser with StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon is a great way to discover exciting new content on the web in a relatively random fashion, as well as sharing your finds with your friends. When you click the button on your browser, StumbleUpon generates web page matches according to your preferences. The pages displayed are those that have been

recommended by your friends or other users of Stumble that have interests similar you.

Using StumbleUpon: Making It Work for You

To use StumbleUpon all you need to do is to sign up for a free account and then download the free browser plug in. Once this is installed and activated, then StumbleUpon chooses which new website will be displayed depending on the ratings you assigned to previous pages, or on ratings of websites by your friends

and the sometimes perhaps even based upon the ratings of other users on StumbleUpon who have the same interests as you. So, if people in your network give your website thumbs up, more and more people are likely to visit it.

The content on StumbleUpon is based on a rating system that allows users to givethumbs up or thumbs down to a website, so it is an entirely recommendation based system that makes extensive use of socialnetworking principles. It also has a one click blogging system, and users can rate a blog with a thumbs up or thumbs down decision.

What StumbleUpon actually uses is called collaborative filtering. This is an automated process that makes active use of the opinions of the people using the system. It also takes into account the personal preferences that come about from machine learning. This creates a virtual community of people who are connected to each other, and over time this community should become ever more closely linked

because of the new linkages being added every day.

The website updates each user’s personal profile, which is a blog style record of the

sites that that particular user has rated. Then, StumbleUpon generates peer group networks of users that are connected by similar interests, and it is these social networks that organize the distribution of the content on StumbleUpon.

What happens is that users of StumbleUpon only the get to view the pages that have

been recommended by their friends or those who have similar interests.

Instead of just giving a site a thumbs up or down, you also have the option of leaving

comments on the website, and this will also appear in the user’s profile/blog. This

way of discovering content on the web is becoming surprisingly close to automating

the word of mouth marketing function.

Stumblers have the chance to rate and review the blogs created by their peers, and,

as a Stumbler, you could also join certain interest groups as well to further increase

the interactivity of your account. These are community forums created to discuss

specific topics wherein users post comments in such a way that it becomes more like a discussion board.

StumbleUpon claims to have a certain edge over conventional search methods, and some of these could be crucial to increasing your website’s visibility and directing traffic towards it. Using search engines often means that we have to carefully sift through pages and
pages of seemingly relevant content, but often these results are nothing more than somewhat irrelevant keyword matches which may be far from what you are looking for.
 

Using StumbleUpon, however, you can be sure that if the content on your website is good, then people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say will see you. Members have also come to trust content on StumbleUpon, since members are taken directly to matches that are sorted according to interests and preferences.

They are more likely to visit your site if it is visible on StumbleUpon. Like most other social bookmarking sites, StumbleUpon uses technology that is essentially driven by humans. By using a combination of machine learning and human opinions to yield search results, StumbleUpon delivers content that is highly relevant and appropriate, so that the user gets a high quality website every time they

search for something and they come to trust this pattern. This means that when your

website shows up on StumbleUpon, it will almost automatically have greater credibility.

StumbleUpon is quite easy to use too, so it could work for you, even if you are just

learning the ropes of social bookmarking. Also, if your target audience is not exceptionally good at understanding the workings of the internet and social bookmarking, StumbleUpon is a good place to start. Users can add your website to

their favorites with a simple click and they also have the opportunity to pass your link on to others in their online community. They can also give feedback or make comments. This creates an inevitable network of visitors to your website.
 

StumbleUpon lists nearly five hundred topics that users can choose to list as their

interests and preferences. This allows you to get your website known in different circles and communities of users. The internet just keeps getting bigger and more complex each day. Information is also constantly changing. StumbleUpon has a dynamic approach keeping fully abreast of all of the freshest sites, blogs and articles on the internet. It filters tons of

information on the website to bring content to its visitors. So if you have created a

new website, you can promote it and invite feedback and comments on it by using StumbleUpon.

Furthermore, the more active you are on StumbleUpon, the more visibility you will

gain, because StumbleUpon compiles a list of its most active users, and this gives extra exposure to those who are very active and helpful. It also shows you people on
StumbleUpon who are geographically close to you.
 

How To Use Delicious To Get Free Traffic

www.delicious.com Just like any other social bookmarking site, del.icio.us is a collection of people’s favorites. These favorites are yours and those of many others like you. Whenever you find an interesting article, blog, music, recipe, review or just
about anything else, then you can simply save it to del.icio.us. This makes your favorites accessible from anywhere, not just your computer.


Furthermore, you can share these favorites with the people around you, whether they are family, friends or coworkers, and you can even build your very own
community of like minded individuals on del.icio.us. Del.icio.us also opens up the window to the best content on the web, so that you don’t have to sift through the thousands of search engine results. Everything on del.icio.us is someone’s favorite,
and this already acts as a content filter so you know that you are only getting the best resources and most appropriate website shown to you. Users can, as always,browse the numerous tags to search for what they want.

Using del.icio.us: Making It Work For You


Del.icio.us is basically a social bookmarking website that enables you to save your bookmarks online. You can use it to your advantage to get maximum exposure for your website or blog. It gives you access to the links that other people have tagged as favorites and this provides you with an insight into what kind of content people are looking for and how to position your website in relation to this content. You can
assign one word descriptors to your posts; that is, tags. Tagging allows greater flexibility – since you can give a post multiple tags and increase your chances of
being viewed.

The following are some of the major reasons why people visit del.icio.us and my suggestions for harnessing the power of its extremely large visitor base to increase traffic to your website:
• Many people searching social bookmarking websites are looking for information or doing research. If your website is information based, then use the site to pick up tips on what kind of information people need most, so that you can post accordingly. Stay active in the ‘tags’ that directly or indirectly relate to your own website. Only when you post comments actively will people comment on your posts, thereby creating a network of back links and opening up new business avenues.

• Many people now do a considerable part of their buying and selling on the internet. For example, people commonly choose presents on the internet and
have them delivered. They even have their own wish list posted on the net and share it with others. This can be a gold mine if your online business is
product sales based. Trawl the wish list tags to get an idea of what people are buying. If you find a wish list that’s looking for what you are selling, drop them

a message and tell them you can help. If the user finds you and your service helpful, they are likely to recommend your product to others as well. This
could open up a treasure trove of visitors and buyers on your website.

• Many of us listen to pod casts – whether it is news, music, reviews or entertainment. There is a considerable market for pod casts. If you are in the
business of developing pod casts, make sure you check out the mp3 and podcast tags on del.icio.us to see what people are listening to now.

• The internet is also fast becoming a popular travel resources center. People are buying bus, rail and air tickets online. They are choosing destinations and
hotels online. And when it comes to traveling, word of mouth is a great marketing tool. People are likely to trust information from people who have been to the place, used the same airline etc. If your online business is travel related, it would be a good idea to get yourself acquainted with the travel and
other related tags. Become an active member, help people organize the travel and get the benefit of guiding traffic to your travel based website at the same time
.
• Creating a link log can also help you immensely and is quite simple to do. Make sure you comment on other users’ blogs as well and they will comment
on yours, thus creating a network of links that point back to your website.

• You can also use del.icio.us as a tremendous networking tool and also for pooling resources and completing projects that need collaborative work.
Groups of people can use a shared account. They can use special tags for their own work and share relevant bookmarks that will be useful to the entire
group. You can, in fact, basically organize your tags and resources in anyway that you want.

How To Use Technorati

www.technorati.com The word technorati is a combination of the words technology
and literati. The mainstay of technorati is blogs. Technorati is basically concerned with the world ‘live’ web, as opposed to the World Wide Web. The world ‘live’ web is that part of the World Wide Web which is constantly being updated and is interactive.

 Technorati searches for and organizes independent, user generated content, whether it is blogs, videos or pictures. This kind of ‘personal’ media is also sometimes referred to as citizen media.
Before examining the workings of technorati, let’s take a look at blogs as they are the basis of technorati. A weblog or blog (as it is commonly known) is a kind of daily diary or journal but it is online. Blogs are a very powerful tool of communication.
They may be very personal and not actually trying to achieve an audience at all,whilst on the other hand, they could be vying for mass viewing. In any case, blogs are quite influential. They reflect a wide variety of opinions and topics, and they are as varied as the millions who write them and read them. Millions also respond to these blogs and are influenced by them.

Within the blogging community, bloggers connect to other bloggers on a regular basis. This means that they are engaged in an interaction that is almost like an open conversation. This is where technorati comes to fore.

Technorati tracks blogs and the conversations around them, and it rapidly indexes these links. The world live web is buzzing with activity that many are entirely
unaware of.For example, every day over 175,000 new blogs are created. These blogs are updated regularly as well. There are 18 blog updates per second – which means that there are 1.6 million posts being made every day. This could be a gold mine of potential visitors to your website.


Using Technorati: Making It Work For You

Technorati’s mainstay is the blogs that people create.
You can sign up for a free account and start posting your blog pages to Technorati straight away. You can also create a user profile for yourself, so that others can get to know you and your interests and help you to network better. The site also includes news, and is broken down into these two main categories – news and blogs. There are topical categories as well, and these include business, entertainment, lifestyle,
sports, technology and photos. Each topical category has blogs and news items related to it.

As a member, you can ‘favorite’ the blog or posting of a fellow user. You could even‘ favorite’ the user. This means that you are giving them a ‘thumbs up’ for all of the posts made by that user. Imagine how many link backs it can create to your website if people favorite your profile or even your posts in the same way.

Technorati also makes a distinction between the most ‘favorited’ blogs and the top commented-on blogs. So this brings a greater number of blogs to people’s attention.If, for example, the aim of your blog is to spread information, it may not garner too many comments but it may be a favorite of many users. On the other hand, blogs that are more opinionated and interactive will invite much more commenting.

The ‘popular’ page on the website displays the top five blogs, the ones that have been voted as ‘favorite’ by the most people, and it also provides a link to the top one hundred favorite blogs. It also shows the number of people who have voted the particular blog as favorite. The ‘popular’ page also lists the top five blogs that have the most comments made about them and provides a link to the top one hundred most commented on blogs. This page shows the number of comments made about a post as well.

Top Social Bookmarking Sites To Try

Digg

www.digg.com is a popular website that involves elements of social bookmarking and blogging. It places an emphasis on science and technology but has recently expanded to included categories such as politics and entertainment. The latest stories and websites are submitted by registered users and editorial control is democratic. This means that news stories and web site links are submitted by users
and they are only moved to the front page of Digg based upon a user-controlled ranking system.

This is how it works. Users can view all the stories or link that their fellow users submit. If a story gets enough ‘diggs’ it gets promoted to the front page of the Digg website. If it doesn’t get enough ‘diggs’ it remains in the ‘digg all’ area, where it will eventually be removed. A post may also be removed if enough users report a problem with the link.

All the content on the Digg website is free.
Originally Digg carried fifteen categories in which to submit stories. These were deals, gaming, link, mods, robots, security, technology, design, Apple, Linux, music, hardware, movies, programming, software and science. However, Digg was recently revamped and the previous categories have now been worked into the six new categories, which are: technology, science, world & business, sports, entertainment and gaming – with each category having subcategories.

On Digg, users can discover web content from just about anywhere. Whether it’s the biggest names on the web or the most obscure blog from the other side of the world, you will find it on Digg.
There are no editors on Digg. The editing is done by all the users together. The users together determine the value of the content that is available. All the content is user driven – from the blog posts to the pod casts. Once you submit your post, it is instantly visible to all Digg users. If your submission is a good one and it gets enough Diggs, it gets promoted to the front page of the website.

 There it is available for viewing by millions of users around the world. Since Digg is all about sharing and making discoveries, users can also build conversations around the content that is posted. Digg provides users with tools to comment on and

discuss topics they are passionate about. When you go through Digg, you will quickly realize the benefit of working through the lens of other users who have the
same interests as you, simply because it acts as a content filter. This ensures that you only get the most interesting, relevant and unique information.

Using Digg: Making it Work For You Simply sign up for a Digg account at digg.com and take off from there.
Whenever you want to submit an article, video or pod cast, just post it for people to see and it will show up immediately in the section called ‘Upcoming Stories’. Here, other Digg members can see it and ‘digg’ it if they like it. A ‘digg’ is a vote for your post that recommends it to other users. If your submission
receives enough diggs, then it gets promoted to the front page of Digg.com. The next step up the ladder of popularity is to make it to the Top 10 list on the
homepage.

The more people who digg your post, then even more people are likely to click on it. If it’s good for them, it’s good for the next user as well. On the other hand, if a
submission is no good and does not receive enough diggs it will remain in the Upcoming Stories’ section and stays there until it gets deleted. So you have to be at the top of your game to make sure that your post does not get deleted. To do this, you must stay active on the website.

You must take part in the collaborative editing process that Digg is essentially based upon. You should digg posts that you like because it means that other users will also digg your posts and create better visibility for your post. You can also share your digging history with your friends. You should make an effort to ‘bury’ any bad links, that is, links that have irrelevant
information or duplicate entries. This keeps the spam out and ensures that users get only relevant information. This helps you gain credibility and in turn build an invaluable network.

 You can invite your friends or make new ones on Digg. This lets you view what others are digging and help you find mutually beneficial resources.

You can even share a link with friends who are not on Digg by emailing it to them. Most importantly you must share your opinions and make them heard on Digg. This is only way that you gain credibility for yourself and create more link-backs to your website, thereby generating more traffic.

How to Make Social Bookmarking Work For You

Here are some methods that you can employ to get the most benefit from social bookmarking. Many of them focus on how to organize your information so that your website shows up in more and more search results:


• When you create a blog post, make sure that the keyword phrase is as close to the beginning of the post as is possible. When you bookmark the post, use
the title of the post and tag the keyword as well. This is great for search engine results. In fact, doing this is often termed search engine ‘bait’!


• Stay active on the social bookmarking website and bookmark every post. As mentioned before, social bookmarks are bait for the search engines, and this
is an opportunity that is not to be wasted.


• Social bookmarking leads to more people reading your articles, posts etc, and over time this will create additional credibility for you. It can also lead to
repeat traffic, referrals, sales, newsletter sign ups, comments on your blogs, emails from readers etc. In order to make the most of the social bookmarking
website, you need to have all these functions working for you.


• Interaction is your biggest and most potent weapon in social bookmarking.
Links back to websites rely on being bookmarked and getting read. With advancing technology, you can add video, audio, RSS feeds etc to get more and more interaction on your website and eventual links back to your website.


• The content on your website must be good. There is no substitute for good quality content when it comes to generating traffic. You must ensure that you
get quality links as well, because the links that you receive on your website must be from reliable sources and have to do be relevant to your content.


• Related to the point made earlier about having good content is the fact that search engine spiders are always crawling good websites. Increasingly, social
bookmarking websites are becoming a favorite of search engines. This is because there is a human element to social bookmarking. People are actively
involved in organizing and tagging their favorites. This is a strong indication that the web page is extremely relevant to the search, much more so than a
simple keyword search.



• When using social bookmarking you should work towards improving your search ranking. Get as many people – ideally those with similar interests – to bookmark your web site. The best way to encourage people to come back to your website is to provide great content and make it easy for people to
bookmark your website.

Using Social Bookmarking For Your Website or Weblog

With the millions of blogs and websites competing for the time and attention of internet users, social bookmarking can be a huge help in getting your website or blog noticed. Social bookmarking has proved to be one of the top techniques to promote your website and guide traffic towards it, and the beauty is that it is actually quite simple to do.

The first thing on your checklist should be visiting a few of the top social bookmarking websites, such as

Digg, del.ic.ious, and Furl. If you are really clueless

about social bookmarking websites, then do a simple search engine search and you will get a ton of results. Sign up for a free account at the social bookmarking websiteof your choice, and when you do so, you will get to select a ‘button’ that you can add

to the end of each of your blog posts. What this does is enables users to bookmark your blog or website easily.

For example, if a visitor likes your website and is a member of the social bookmarking service ‘Digg’, he/she can click on your button and this will lead them to the Digg website where they will have to log in. After that, your blog post, article or website will appear as a bookmarked URL. This also gives the visitor the ability to post a comment on your post and this can prove to be very beneficial to your website in terms of traffic.

The more people that click on the social bookmarking link for your website, the more links you will have on the website pointing back to you website. This should increase the traffic on your website when people logging on to Digg are looking for posts relevant to them and find your site bookmarked. Also, as more and more people visit your website they may also social bookmark it themselves, either on the same social bookmarking network or on other sites, both of which will lead to even more bookmarks leading back to you.

However, just registering yourself with a social bookmarking service does not mean that your job is done. You shouldn’t simply stop after pasting a button under your blog posts and expect everyone to remember to click. You must become an active

member of these social bookmarking sites.

What is meant by ‘active’ is that you must actively visit the social bookmarking site in question and find topics that relate to you or your online business. This allows you to bookmark, post and add comments of your own.

Believe it or not, this really does increase the traffic on your website. If you bookmark some one’s website, it is likely that they will also bookmark your site, and there should soon be a network of links pointing back to your site.

The Basics of social bookmarking

What is it?

No doubt, everything you have read so far has given you some indication of what social bookmarking sites are and what they do. Let’s try to break it down into even simpler terms. Social bookmarking is the practice whereby you can save your bookmarks to a public website and tag them according to content, type etc.

In order to create your own collection of social bookmarks or be able to view others’,you must register with the social bookmarking website in question first. The site will allow you to store bookmarks, make tags, decide upon which of your tags should be made public and which should be kept private. Some social bookmarking will do periodic checks on the bookmarks to make sure that the links still work, and as suggested, those visiting social bookmark websites can perform searches by

keywords, popularity or person.

Who does it?

Social bookmarking is useful for just about any one who uses the internet avidly and loves information. Social bookmarking is particularly appropriate and useful for pooling resources from research from around the world.

How does it work?

Social bookmarking is a new way of organizing information and categorizing resources, making everything easier to access in the process. The person creating the bookmark must assign a tag or a group of tags to each link or resource. This creates a user directed and defined classification of information. Social bookmarking services show who created particular bookmarks and also give access to other bookmarks created by the same person. Users can therefore make social connections with other users interested in the same topic by following these tags. As a user you can also see how many people have used a particular tag and search amongst all the resources with the same tag. Over time, users of a particular community site tend to develop a unique set of key words to describe their resources. This is known as ‘folksonomy’.

Why is it important?

Social bookmarking gives users a unique opportunity to express their own personal take on information and resources, as well as on the organization of these
resources. The process of social bookmarking allows people of similar interests and tastes to locate each other and create a sort of online cyber-community.

It follows that using folksonomy as a tool for research allows you to benefit from the insights and research of other users, and this helps you find information relevant to what you are looking for, as well as topics that are not directly related (such as those

that show up in key word searches). For example if your search is based on cars, you may also notice that other users found some connection between cars and car repair services, and this could prove to be a valuable connection and resource for you, either personally or on a business level. Furthermore, the collections of these folksonomies keep changing and are therefore generally up to date. Social bookmarking also allows users to rank tags and this acts as a collaborative filter of sorts and enables you to find your most relevant results.

Where is it headed?

Social bookmarking is not a technological marvel, and indeed the technology behind it is quite simple. The basic idea on which social bookmarking is built, that is tagging, is now spreading into other applications as well such as email and multimedia files.

As the net gradually moves away from ‘formal’ taxonomies and terminology, it will change the way that online communities come together and interact. The horizon of resources available on the internet is changing, new ways of classifying information

are constantly emerging and much of it is user directed and controlled. Keeping this in mind, it is more than likely that in the future, the organization and function of databases may change as well.

Why use it?

The most obvious advantage of using social bookmarks is accessibility. You can access your favorite websites from any computer and even from your mobile phone! You could argue that if you wanted to access any kind of information, you could

simply enter key words into any search ‘engine’ and gets thousands or even millions
of results, but that is exactly the problem.

No matter how fast or how many results a search engine may yield, it is still selected by a computer. In essence, computer software is trying to determine the meaning of your search. On the other hand, bookmarks are the result of discerning, deliberate

human action. Furthermore, such bookmarks within a social bookmarking service are usually focused upon a certain topic or attract a certain kind of user.

For example, if you and I share an interest in celebrity gossip, then you are likely to benefit from my bookmarks list much more so than running a search in one of the major search engines.

Besides that, you will also have a certain ‘word of mouth’ recommendation about the site. You don’t have to waste time figuring out which is a good website to catch up on the latest Hollywood gossip – you would simply log on to the social bookmarking

website and choose from recommendations by fellow gossip-holics.

Perhaps this is the most important advantage of social bookmarking. It has the ability to incorporate human intelligence. Furthermore, a community of like minded people can help you sort between good and bad content. This is something that search engines try to figure out by way of algorithms but is difficult to achieve.