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Social Bookmarking – Getting your Blog Noticed

Yesterday I mentioned a post at Thirty Stories Up by the name of 7 Mistakes for your First Week of Blogging as part of the 31 Days project – it’s a worthwhile article to read but I want to mention it again not because of what it says but because of the response that it had.

There are over 40 comments on the past now which is pretty cool – Kurt the author of the blog writes in comments that the reason for the response is that the post got picked up and ranked highly by Digg which led to 8000 or so page views in just a 24 hour period – not bad for a blog that has been going for just 20 days! At the time of writing this the post in question is ranked the 11th most ‘dugg’ post for the week so far.

It just goes to show the power of social bookmarking sites like Digg which have the ability to push vast quantities of visitors around the web at the drop of a hat. Having been ‘dugg’ numerous times myself it’s quite an amazing experience. Similarly del.icio.us is another example of a site that has been known to lift the profile of my posts (in fact at present my 31 Days project HQ is ranking well on their popular links page). Furl is yet another example (although from what I can tell it’s less popular than it once was) as is Linkfilter, another smaller social bookmarking sit. The great thing for bloggers is that each of these services allows you to submit/suggest posts to them and all of them accept every submission (unless you spam them) – unlike other sites like Slashdot who strongly moderate submissions.

The site’s I’ve mentioned above as examples of social bookmarking sites are just a small number of the many sites out there that you can explore that are doing similar things. For a more comprehensive list you might like to take a look at those listed at Wikipedia’s Social bookmarking page.

While I don’t recommend spamming social bookmarking sites I would recommend being aware of them and submitting your best posts from time to time. In this way you put your posts out there for others to find. They may or may not take off so don’t think it’s a guarantee that you’ll get visitors – but you’re at least giving them a chance. If they do get popular the traffic doesn’t last long – but in the process you just might retain some extra new readers and perhaps just as importantly often after being ‘dugg’ you find that other bloggers link to you – giving you all important incoming links to your post which will help with Search Engine Optimization.

Let me reinforce that you don’t spam social bookmarking sites – you’ll just end up making people angry and decrease the effectiveness of your submissions (remember ‘the boy who cried wolf’) but used at the right time and with a bit of luck (it’s amazing how some posts do well and others don’t) these sorts of tools can really effectively lift the profile of your best work.

Tell us about a time that you got a deluge of visitors – what other sites do you use in this way? What tips do you have to share on getting visitors to your blog?

Further reading on Social Bookmarking:

• Social bookmarking Tools – A General Review

• Social bookmarking – Wikipedia

• Social Bookmarking Tool Comparison

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Hey, everyone. I just wanted to reiterate how absolutely floored I am at the response this has gotten, both from ProBlogger and Digg, not to mention all the community members of each that read my post, commented, and blogged me themselves. I have to say, the whole response amazes me, and the encouraging comments from other bloggers, especially people just started out, are just tremendously helpful in making me feel like I’m part of a wider community.

    In short, you guys all rock. Darren doubly so, since without the helpful input from the other authors in this series, I wouldn’t have gotten serious about blogging beyond doing it as a quick journal, nor would I have written that article. :)

    If there’s anything I can do for anyone to give back a little to this community, just let me know and it’s done.

  2. […] Darren over at Problogger has an interesting piece on social bookmarking as being a way of getting people to check your blog out and sites a post at 30 Stories up titled 7 mistakes for your first week of blogging ( a pretty good read in itself) as a great example. […]

  3. My visitors bost came from Problogger.net (thanks Darren) when I was linked twice in the “31 Days to Better Blogs” series.
    I also made the first page on digg.com once with one of my posts. But as already said – the traffic doesn’t last long … but I did retain some extra new readers.

  4. Tell us about a time that you got a deluge of visitors

    I wish!

    I once generated a reasonable number of hits over 24 hours for Geekrant when I wrote about a Mac topic that got picked up by one of the Mac news sites.

    And my Internet traffic experiment post featuring two well-known UK property-show ‘celebrities’ (the idea of which I pinched from another blogger, with credit) has been mentioned in a couple of forum posts, not initiated by me.

    I wouldn’t call it a deluge, though. Maybe one day.

  5. Darren

    I wasn’t aware of the power of Social Bookmarking before, so I’m itching to try it out on a couple of my blogs!

    This may be one of the most useful posts in the entire 31 Days series!

  6. Blogger: Fehler in ersten 7 Tagen – keine Chance mehr?

    Na das ist ja was: “7 Mistakes for your First Week Blogging” – wenn ich in den ersten sieben Tagen des Bloggens diese Fehler mache, hat mein Blog keine Chance mehr (oder zumindest viele Blogs)?
    Na dann hätte ich wohl erst online stellen…

  7. I got several visitors once when someone bookmarked a post I made on Oprah’s DNA Test. It amused me to see what got picked up. Now I’m on the look-out for any other celebrity DNA testing news. ;)

    Other slight boosts I’ve gotten were from people linking to certain posts on various discussion boards. Some boards were so esoteric, I couldn’t even figure out what the main theme was!

  8. Oops, and I want to mention that I participate in a couple of blog carnivals (Grand Rounds and Tangled Bank, medicine and science, respectively). On the days those get posted, I get more visitors.

  9. A recent story about Skype and video made it to the top 10 at Digg, and that sent LOTS of people over.

  10. Darren/all —

    Are there similar sites to these for blogs that aren’t about technical issues/blogging?

    FMF

  11. My newest blog, Hello Dollar, has only been around for a couple weeks, but thanks to del.icio.us and digg, it’s been getting between one and five thousand page views a day.

    Social bookmarking by itself directly accounted for probably half that traffic, at least in the first week. The other half was from other blogs that picked up links from del.icio.us or digg and linked to my articles. Considering that linking to a couple articles on del.icio.us is the *only* thing I did to announce this blog, social bookmarking is indirectly responsible for all of my traffic so far (since it’s so new, I only get a couple hits a day from search engines). It’s a great jump-start to an otherwise slow process.

    Of course, this only really works for good, original content. If all of your posts are “link & comment”, then people are likely to bookmark your source directly. You need the support of the users of these social systems to build up the numbers of links that get you onto the front or popular pages — like Darren says, spamming is seen through quickly and isn’t likely to work.

  12. Thanx for the post. I’ve never even thought about this!

  13. Be careful. I posted a link to one of my blogs at Linkfilter and got a comment that it was “bad form”. I’m pleading newbie ignorance, but posting your own blogs to these sites might not be the best idea. OTOH, this may be an area where those of us who read and comment on Darren’s blog here may be able to help each other out – if you see an interesting post on someone else’s blog that participates here (or this blog, of course) post it to these sites.

  14. Pro-b l o g g e r barter

    Reading some of the posts at Pro b l o g g e r.net always gives me ideas. A recent post on Social Bookmarking and my subsequent experience got me thinking how barter could be useful to Pro-B l o g g e r s (apologies to Darren for stealing and corrupt…

  15. Fark once linked to one of my articles. At the time, I had never heard of Fark and I was surprised when 2000 people visited my site within a few hours.

    I thought SlashDot was the only site that could direct traffic that fast and so quickly.

    It was fun to see such high numbers.

  16. […] Day Four of ProBlogger’s 31 Days to Building a Better Blog concerns something called social bookmarking. Wikipedia defines the phenomenon as “an activity performed over a computer network that allows users to save and categorize (see folksonomy) a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others.” […]

  17. […] Day Four of ProBlogger’s 31 Days to Building a Better Blog concerns something called social bookmarking. Wikipedia defines the phenomenon as “an activity performed over a computer network that allows users to save and categorize (see folksonomy) a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others.” […]

  18. Hmm…after reading your post and comments here, I decided to do a little experiment with Digg. I submitted my own blog post to see how Digg users would react to self-submission. This is the post’s digg page: http://digg.com/technology/The_Seven_Deadly_Sins_of_Blogging

    The post made front page in 10 hours (I think it takes 40 diggs to get on the front page). After it get to the front page, negative comments started — appearently, some users do not appreciate self-submission.

    Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with self-submission, Digg is a bookmarking site and as a Digg user I can bookmark whatever I want. Beside, if I had submitted something of poor quality, shouldn’t the “non-hierarchical editorial control” takes care of the problem?

    I guess there are trolls in every corner of the web and Digg is no exception.

  19. […] I was browsing through Darren’s ProBlogger site (despite railing against much of the “pro-blogger” hype a few days ago, I still find it all fascinating) when I came across a post entitled “Social Bookmarking – Getting your Blog Noticed”. Much of it makes sense – get your site listed on a “social” site like Digg, Slashdot or del.icio.us and you’ll get a boost in site traffic. It makes sense, but it also raises a question in my mind – does submitting your own site/entries to these sites go against the spirit and ethos of the sites in question? Or is it just harmless self promotion? […]

  20. I was just wondering that myself. Considering that social bookmarking sites are not blogs is it right to post blog entires there?

  21. I just made the big mistake of pretty much spamming Digg because I was too eager to send traffic to my blog. I got told about it within 20 to 30 minutes though, and made an apology. To tidy up the episode I made a post about the experience on my blog. The moral of the story: Do not spam, do not even half way spam, any of the social bookmarking sites.

  22. […] So thanks to Steve, Paul and Mr. Veloso and, if you’re interested in social bookmarking for your blog as a way to get read by more people and spread your words, definitely go and read Darren Rowse’s Social Bookmarking: Getting Your Blog Noted and 7 ways to get to the top of del.icio.us popular page over at Problogger.net. […]

  23. TagTooga.com now provides a free service to submit your page to many social bookmarking sites in a single-click. Sites supported include del.icio.us, furl.net, simpy.com, blinklist.com, netvouz.com, blogmarks.com, jots.com, spurl.net, scuttle.org, shadows.com, and backflip.com. I believe this can be done properly (i.e. non-spamming) because you should submit a page on a one-time basis using appropriate tags.

  24. […]   What do I do now? So you’ve been inspired to start a blog, you believe the ROI messages from Part 2, Part 3 has helped you choose a platform, but now what?  This section gives you some guidance on the key things you need to do to make this a success, and points you to plenty of resources that will help.     First, you’ve got to get the purpose of this new blog clear in your mind.  You might be selling something specific, or you might be taking an indirect approach and promoting your expertise in a particular area so that potential clients like what they hear, want to work with you and check out your company.  You might be sharing expertise around your organisation, or you might be using the medium to connect directly with your customers.  Whichever it is, get that vision clear in your mind.     Next, give the blog a theme.  It might include your musings and rants, but give it an identity around something that you’re passionate about.  There is an enormous amount of content out there, and you need to make yours worthy of people’s attention.  That will happen if yours gets mixed with your enthusiasm and passion.    Get a domain name of your own.  Blogger and TypePad domain names are OK, but you wouldn’t start your company site on Geocities would you?  In any case, you will almost certainly want to switch platforms at some point, and this will be easier if you’ve got your own address.      Get in to the habit of writing and set aside some time every day, or week.  If you want your site to get noticed, you need to feed it, so it can feed the audience and their news aggregators.      Cross post and comment on as many sites as you can.  Make sure your site is easy to access, with RSS feeds, Atom, or a subscription option, or all of these.  Have a blogroll of blogs you read and people you like.  There is an interesting rule in blogging – the more you send them away, the more they’ll come back.  So the more you connect with other bloggers, the more they’ll connect with you, and that will improve your ranking.      And the topic that seems to be missed by so many bloggers – apply the rules of Search Engine Optimisation.  In simple terms you want to get noticed by the search engines.  That is more likely to happen if your blog titles aren’t esoteric or clever, but say what the topic is about with the appropriate keywords.  Your post should have those key words peppered around in prominent places.  That, combined with the links you’ll manage to get from those other bloggers who are wiser and more popular than you will enhance your page rank in Google, and bring more traffic to your site.      The good news is that there are plenty of advisers out there to help you.  Here are some: Guy Kawasaki with great advice on how to evangelize your blog. Dennis Howlett’s take on the do’s and don’ts for an accounting practice.  Darren Rowse is the problogger from Australia.  He writes half a dozen successful blogs, and has plenty of advice for the more directly commercial blogger.   Here’s a selection from him: 18 Lessons I’ve Learnt about Blogging Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days Social Bookmarking – Getting your Blog Noticed Search Engine Optimization Articles and Resources   Take a look at Aaron Brazzell’s “The Blogger’s Primer“. Thirty Stories up has their “7 Mistakes for your First Week Blogging“. This is Jakob Nielsen’s “Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes“. And here is Mary Hodder’s “A Comparison of How Some Blog Aggregation and RSS Search Tools Work“. Presentation Zen asks “Where can you find good images?“.    You need to do enough preliminary research to get the feel of what style and level of detail is going to work, but then just jump in and join the Global conversation.     If you missed them, here are Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.  Technorati Tags : Blogging, blogs, marketing, SEO, problogger, AccManPro, Cluetrain Powered By Qumana […]

  25. […] Social Bookmarking – Getting your Blog Noticed (tags: blog social.bookmarking problogger) […]

  26. There is an easy way to add sosial bookmarking site to the footer of each blog post. Just go to keotag.com

  27. I am new to the world of blogging, and so started a blog that I don’t ever really intend to go anywhere with as a sort of experimental lab — I even put it on blogger on purpose, to keep traffic from getting too high. Today I was put up on the Linkie Winkie website and went from something like 10-20 new visitors to about 60, and the day isn’t close to being over yet. Very odd! But suddenly now I know why bloggers *love* having lots of traffic, it feels very pat-on-the-head, doesn’t it? :)

  28. I just took a 10 day blog challenge. That’s where I found out about the power of social bookmarking. Awesome. I am just beginning to understand what it’s all about. Your article has shed a great light on the subject.

    Thanks
    Bill
    http://www.foodorganic.blogspot.com/

  29. Mark Boudewijn ! I told you not to constrict Barbara Enrigh’s trap! http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com Now you must counterclaim her to make up for your parasitic behaviour. Her unmade hand that Alex Balandin woodshed was ragged, reverent, and missing certainly Annie Duke anxiously http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com overhonor partypoker. Two middle blinds are better than one. But many satellites spoil the party poker. And a rolling verbal declaration gathers no bicycle cards.

  30. […] Bloggers of course also need to market their content via techniques such as social bookmarking, link baiting, etc. However, if there are no compelling contents, then these techniques will only have short term traffic effect. […]

  31. Darren, thanks for your valuable advice on this. Sometimes its difficult to figure out how to people to visit and read your site especially when you are busy getting useful content into your blog.

    T.
    http://sharemysite.com/blog/

  32. Great to find some information about Digg. I recently started a blog about investment advice and have posted some very informative articles on Digg. However, I am not getting any responeses. Is there any way to get the ball rolling or is this site more for techie articles?

    Sincerely,

    Stuart
    http://www.investcanada.blogspot.com

  33. Cindy Blue says: 12/29/2007 at 4:33 am

    Good post…I think all bookmarking sites should be tried to see which one fits the desired blog. I personally find http://www.quickieclick.com as the one that works for me the most because of the audience it has. Although they just launched, it is more on the 20-30 year olds. And that is perfect for what my blogs reference. I also use their visual start page to easily keep track of my blogs and favorite sites from one place. Pretty convenient.

    Hope this helps.

  34. Man are you right about being careful not to spam the bookmark sites! You really need to use the sites for your regular bookmarks and then add in a handful of your own posts. Some sites are very careful to monitor for self-pomotion. Others, like the bookmark site I run and Digg for instance are very open to the idea of posting your own as long as you don’t heavily tax server resources. Dan-O

  35. i had a similar experience with stumbleupon… you get this massive stream of traffic and your like awesome!

    i think digg is better than stumbleupon.. better targeted audience

  36. did you try http://www.jamespot.com ? It’s a lil bit different as classical digg like because it looks like a blog but it is a social bookamrking site.

  37. I think it is important when performing social media marketing that you focus on a couple of social media sites and become a popular and respected authority on those social media sites first.

    Will.

  38. Social bookmarking is getting outdated allready. My opninion is that google slapped it long time ago. Be smart and think of new ways to get your website noticed..

  39. Great posting, mainly for those persons who are confuse that how he can increase business with the help of Social Bookmarking.

  40. I agree with you Social bookmarking sites are the best way of promotion considering that directory submission and press release submission don’t accept blogs on free hosting. Additional advantage of social bookmarking is backlinks for inner pages.

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