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Social media sites like Digg, MySpace, Flickr and del.icio.us are very popular. They have millions of users, and you want in on that action. But how do you get traffic from these sites?

How Are Social Media Sites Good For Your Blog?

• You can create pages with links back to your site, or submit an article which is voted on by users, if it becomes popular it can generate large amounts of traffic. Extra traffic can also equal more links aiming at your site which is good for SEO.
• You can build profiles on popular sites that can attract links, attention and contacts from other members. When you have a profile that people recognize on popular social media sites you have a significant ability to influence discussion and popular opinion within the community around the site.
• You can generate niche specific traffic. Submitting an article to a niche specific site like Dzone which is a site for programmers and web developers can bring traffic that is interested in your field. 

Mistakes and Misconceptions about Social Media and Blogging

Going for volume of traffic over traffic quality out of the box

It is likely that you won’t immediately succeed on the very popular main stream sites like Digg and reddit. When you are starting out you may be better off focusing on smaller sites specific to your niche. For example a small design blog would be better to focus on writing content that appeals on a site like designfloat. This will bring qualified users who are interested in design.

Not having a strategy when you start

A lot of people see the buzz around the Internet with different blogs and social media sites and think they just need to start their own blog, post a few YouTube videos, and put a link to their Flickr account and think that their site is going to be a instant classic. However, all successful sites have a clear purpose, and target a specific niche. If you don’t know what you want to do before you start, then maybe you shouldn’t be starting.

Posting you own irrelevant content

If you can’t look at your own writing and decide what is likely to be relevant to the masses and what isn’t then you need to do some rethinking. Not every article you write is going to appeal to the masses. Don’t post day to day rubbish, focus on writing pillar articles as often as you can and only submit what has a chance of being useful to others.

Use appropriate language in your commentaries

When you have an opportunity to promote your article, for example, in a forum or in the comment section of a social media submit form, use appropriate language. Don’t be a “know it all” or don’t use sale-speak. Be informative and friendly, and speak in language that is appropriate for the medium which you are submitting to.

Expect it to be easy

Everyone has a blog these days, and everyone uses social media sites, how hard can it be to make a quick buck? Building readers and trust online takes time and requires a lot of effort. The best path to success will require you to freely share your expertise and to work hard to create genuinely interesting and useful content. 

Advice On Getting The Most Out Of Social Networks

It is important to remember that these sites are not there for your purposes of promoting blogs, they are there for people to enjoy, so you shouldn’t “just” use them for marketing purposes. It is transparent and may build you a bad reputation. If you want to be accepted in social media communities you need to put effort into developing your reputation. On sites like Digg it is a good idea to leave comments on submissions. If you want your comment to be more visible, comment on recently submitted articles which are in your niche or that you think are good, so then if they become popular your comment will be at the top and more visible.

It is a good idea wherever possible to use a profile image, either of yourself or a logo of your site. It makes you stand out. On Technorati this is a great way to make your articles stand out in search result pages.

It is important to build up friends. It is great to have others who have your back, and are more likely to vote for an article which they see is yours. A good technique to building up friends in a social media environment is to view people who have voted for your articles in the past, then add them to your favorites. If they liked something you have written then they are a likely candidate to like future content you write about.