This entry is part of a series, No BS Blogging» First of all, for those who may not have heard of social networking, here’s a quick definition, courtesy of Message In a Box:
A broad class of web sites and services that allow you to connect with friends, family, and colleagues online, as well as meet people with similar interests or hobbies. Popular examples include MySpace, Facebook, Linked In. Even photo sharing websites like Flickr have become places for social networking through shared interests.
So in a nutshell, social networking is a way for people with similar interests to share ideas with each other. In this respect it is the Internet analogy to the cracker barrel in the general store of the 19th Century or the coffee shop of the late 20th century. people get together, share ideas and information and pass it along to others.
More Than just A Cracker Barrel
The main difference of today’s social networking isn’t what is said or how it’s done. The difference is in the number of people that can be affected by the information being provided.
In the past, spreading an idea through your idea by word of mouth could have taken weeks or months. Modern social networking sites can spread word of an interesting topic to millions of people in just a few hours. Imagine writing a post at 7:00 am and having a half-million page views by dinnertime. It can happen. It does happen. More often than you think.
The key is to determine the kind of information that people want to share with their friends or will find interesting enough to pass along to others in their social networks. Once this begins it can quickly lead to traffic spike’s so heavy that servers are overloaded to the point of reset.
The Twitter Effect
If you aren’t already using twitter you are missing out on a golden opportunity to bring readers to your blog. Occasionally tweeting about a post you’ve written will always get a few page views, but if that post is interesting to your twitter followers you may get the chance to experience what has been dubbed “The Twitter Effect.”
In a nutshell, the Twitter Effect works like this:
You tweet about your latest post, or a post you want to highlight
One or two of your followers Re Tweet your tweet, including the link you provided.
A few of each of their followers also Re Tweet your tweet
More and more people find the subject interesting and continue Re Tweeting the post to their group of followers.
And So-on. And So-on
In most cases this can gain you 20 to 30 pageviews, assuming that you have a few hundred followers and that at least one of those people found what you had to say interesting enough to send it along to his or her group of friends. On a good run this might even generate a hundred new views to your blog over the course of an hour or so.
There are those golden moments however, when that re Tweet finds itself in the hands of someone who has thousands and thousands of followers. That person shoots your tweet out and then a few hundred of his or her followers return the favor. In these cases you can see hundreds of thousands of pageviews in a very short amount of time. In some cases, enough will hit at one time to actually take your web server offline!
While this last example is uncommon for most bloggers, assume just for a moment that you’ve tweeted a bit of information along to such notables as Pete Cashmore (@mashable), John Scalzi (@Scalzi) or even Ashton Kutcher (@AplusK) in response to something that they’ve said. One mention by any of these notables could generate enough traffic in seconds to drive an underpowered server over-capacity.
If any of your monetizing schemes relies on pageviews, you could make a few hundred dollars in mere minutes, assuming of course that your host is up to the flood of traffic that will be coming your way. You could also gain a few hundred extra daily readers just based on the recommendation of someone that people respect.
Don’t be afraid to Tweet directly to the A-Listers if you have something of value to offer them. They are people too, and they have interests just like everyone else, just don’t expect them to respond, and never ask for a Re Tweet or get disgruntled if they don’t reply. Remember, any A-List player on any social network is flooded by comments and requests on a daily basis. A failure to respond is not generally a slight against you, but more likely they simply didn’t have time to reply.
There Is No Magic Formula
If you were expecting me to give you the secret to creating a viral post that will immediately jump to the front page of Digg,com or be visited by everyone using Stumble Upon, I hate to break it to you, but I can’t. I’ve written articles that generated massive amounts of traffic from both of these sites, but the reasons that they are more popular than others is a complete mystery to me.
To further complicate matters, the niche you write in will also determine what other people with similar interests find noteworthy. To say that there is one formula that can be followed would be foolhardy at best and absolute lunacy in any other case. The right combination of information and writing skills depends on your audience. Listen to them closely and in time you’ll find what gets your work noticed. Once that happens you’ll check your statistics package one day to find a pleasant surprise.
Twitter Is Not the Only Game In Town : Use Other Social Sites As Well
While I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Twitter, it is not the only social media site you should be worried about. Twitter is just the newest of the super-sites and the one most social-media types are talking about right now. Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, Squidoo.com and other social media sites are all still incredibly viable ways of bringing in traffic and should not be ignored.
A front page listing on Digg can generate hundreds of thousands of visits. Getting “stumbled” through StumbleUpon can do the same and I know several people who swear by the power of Squidoo lenses to gain visitors. The site that works for you will depend on the type of people using these services. and the type of content that you write.
Make sure you look at what topics are hot on each before pouring all of your effort into any one social media site. The only one that I have found to be general enough for just about any audience is Stumble Upon and I use it to generate a slew of traffic to those of my blogs that appeal to a wide audience. Other social media sites are focused on their own niche topics, such as technology or design, so if you write about knitting, you probably won’t want to waste your time getting mentions on Digg; you’ll never make the main page and you will have spent a lot of time and effort for no good reason.
The Reason It’s Called “Social” Media
When using social media to help drive traffic to your sites it’s easy to forget that the medium is called social media for a reason. Far too often site owners that are trying to boost traffic or sell products seem to forget that to be effective, they actually have to give something freely to the community.
Social media sites are built around community. If you fail to post replies to other people’s tweets or engage in conversations it’s very likely that you’re not going to find yourself with all that many followers regardless of the number of people you follow yourself. Worse, you’ll find that those people un-follow or block you once they discover that all you are doing is talking about yourself without ever giving anything useful to anyone else.
In the case of media sites like Dig and Stumble Upon, if you aren’t recommending sites other than your own, you’ve defeated the purpose of the concept and most users of those services won’t give your recommendations much weight. Th key is to Stumble or Digg other people’s blog posts and articles regularly. Be sure to leave encouraging (and relevant) comments or descriptions when you do. then if you point people to your own information they’ll be more likely to take a look.
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