If you haven’t been using social bookmarking sites like, Digg.com and Digg-like sites, to generate traffic you are missing out on a large consumer potential. As the net becomes more interactive and users gain more decisiveness on what is and isn’t “quality content,” Digg-like sites continue to pop up to serve virtually every known online niche.

Digg is still a leading website when it comes to user generated and voted content. However, the site still does not cater to every niche. It is mostly a playground for techies and gadget geeks which leave those who write for other niches off the front page, and in some cases, off the website in general. Thus, more and more people are starting Digg-style sites that are niche specific.

These sites do pretty much the same thing that most social bookmarking sites do, which is to help people get their social news, while helping authors get their work exposed.

For Emarketing related content people are finding places like PlugIM.com and MarkTD.com are sending them more traffic than Digg ever has. Many websites, including Digg, are anti marketing which means that small business related topics rarely make it to the front page. However, finding and using a Digg-like site that pertains to your niche can greatly increase your traffic.

Some of theses sites offer a Digg It button to place on your site and if so, use it. The easy way for publishers to hasten their entry into the Digg and Digg-like ecosystem is to add this button or link to pages on their sites.

Surprisingly, considering the importance of social bookmarking, few publishers have done this. Having a Digg It button on your website encourages user participation, which increases your article exposure, traffic, and, ultimately, your sales.

Before publishing on Digg, look for “vertical” Digg-style sites to publish on because you will most likely receive more traffic from these sites because, even though they are much smaller, they are more closely related to your niche.

There are several lists online that you can use to find Digg-like sites that work for you. Simply Google your niche and the terms “Digg-like”, “Digg-style” or “Digg clones.”

Keep in mind however, that these are all communities that you have to be active in to gain the real benefits. That means submitting content frequently, voting early and voting often. Many webmasters admit to getting traffic from leaving comments on other users’ content almost as much as they get traffic from their own content.

As it gets harder and harder to reach Digg’s front page, people will be looking elsewhere for their social news. Web masters should consider trying all the Digg-like sites out there that relate to their niche to see what does well for your site’s content. And if worse comes to worse and you can’t find your niche in any category create your own Digg-clone.



By: Jeff Casmer

About the Author:

These days, you’re just not “with the program” if you’re not involved with social bookmarking. Recently I have been trying to increase my Plug-in Profit Site’s traffic numbers to a certain daily level, and one way to do that is by getting into one of the newer internet trends - social bookmarking.

Social bookmarking is a neat way of saving websites, articles, and blog posts that you consider your favorites. Then you can easily get back to these posts, share these same sites with others on the web, add other saved sites to your list of saved sites, or subscribe to someone’s blog for example.

Usually we bookmark pages we like on our own computers, but social bookmarking allows us to save them on the web for others to see as well. The way we do this is by creating a title, description, and tags (which are the keywords we are targeting) for the pages we want to save. This should generate some new traffic for you fairly quickly from others who use social bookmarking sites and are looking for articles based on the tags you have chosen.

If you own a Plug-in Profit Site, it’s easy to start using social bookmarking sites. If you do a Google search for “social bookmarking sites” for example, you will find a list of the top social bookmarking sites. One of the most famous ones is called “del.icio.us”, and other popular ones are “Digg”, “Yahoo”, and “Furl”.

It doesn’t take long to set these up. But first you have to go to those social bookmarking sites, and create a free account with a username. Once you’ve done that, you are free to use the service to find topics that interest you, or post your own favorite pages.

When you set up an account, you will likely be given a choice of buttons you can add to your toolbar that you can simply copy and paste. Then when you visit a site you want to bookmark publicly, you can simply click on that button on your toolbar, type in a title, description, and tags for that page, and voila! You have saved a page that others can also access!

On your Plug-in Profit Site, there are a few ways to get more traffic using social bookmarking sites. One way is to write quality, original content on your blog, such as posting your own article. On your social bookmarking service, you should be able to find a piece of code to add to your Plug-in Profit Site’s HTML code which will be like the button on your toolbar for the different services.

For example, on my blog, I have four buttons at the end of each blog post which I added to my blog’s template code. These four buttons would lead a reader who like my post to Digg, Furl, Yahoo, and del.icio.us, where they can add a title, description, and tags to submit my post and bring me more traffic.

The nice thing for Plug-in Profit Sites, or any website for that matter is that it’s okay to do this for your own article posts, as long as you do not spam the social bookmarking services.

You don’t really want to send each and every post you make to your blog to one of these services in the attempt to get more traffic when maybe not all your posts are fantastically written, original content. You want to provide something of value to your readers just as you would do in the discussion forums you frequent, and not over-do it.

Some article directory sites now are allowing you to “Digg” your own articles. Again, if you do it slowly and in moderation, you won’t likely be accused of spamming. Be careful because if you do go overboard, some people have been known to get their websites banned from services like Digg.

Another way to boost your Plug-in Profit Site traffic with social bookmarking sites is to actually get yourself involved with these services and use them the way they are intended to be used - don’t just “Digg” your own posts. Find other posts that you like and add a comment, or save them in your own archived lists.

Last but not least, whenever you write an article or blog post for your Plug-in Profit Site business, be sure to use Technorati or other tags in your author bio-box at the end that link back to your main website. Look up information on “tag and ping” to find out the correct format and you will get more traffic quickly!



By: Liane Bate

About the Author: