Blogs are legitimate way for bloggers to start making money online. The most important thing for a successful blog is to have original and useful content, but other important thing to create a successful blog is to promote it in order to increase it’s exposure and drive more traffic. It’s impossible to make money with a blog if there is no traffic. If there are no visitors coming to your blog you can’t monetize it by placing ads and affiliate links.
Promotion your blog is important to make it visible and drive traffic There are a number of ways to promote a blog. Bloggers can drive traffic by commenting on blogs, SEO of the blog posts, guest posting. One of the ways is using social bookmarking websites.
What are social bookmarking sites?
Social bookmarking is similar to “Favorites” in the web browser. Instead of saving your favorites websites in your browser, using social bookmarking websites you can save them online. You can later log in to your social bookmarking account from anywhere and your information will be accessible to you. This way the information you saved will be available to you from any computer that is connected to internet.
To start creating your own bookmarks, as well looking what others have bookmarked online, you will need to open an account with social bookmarking website. That way you can start creating your own bookmarks on that website as well as look what other members have bookmarked. To see what members have bookmarked on other websites you will need an account with them too. After you create an account with the social bookmarking website you can start bookmarking, tagging and make decision do you want them to be made public or private. This way other members can search bookmarks created by you and any other member based on tags and keyword, and when they click on your bookmarks they will come to your blog. Other ways members can search bookmarks is based on their popularity or the person who created them.
Why social bookmarking websites are good for driving traffic to your blog?
Social bookmarking helps drive traffic to your blog by sharing your bookmarks with other members of the social bookmarking websites. When you publish new blog post, you should bookmark it and make it available to other members. That way other members will be able to view your bookmarks and that way the traffic to your blog will increase.
Aside from driving traffic to your blog you can use social bookmarking sites to connect with people with similar interests, join groups and find useful information and read interesting blog posts.
Because of this social bookmarking websites are good source of traffic for blogs. The ability to categorize and use the information makes it easier for members to find what they are looking. Considering that social bookmarking websites have millions of members make it excellent place for bloggers to increase the exposure of the content of their blogs and build their audience, which in the long run will drive lots of traffic that they can monetize and make money with their blog.
The process of classification the information on social bookmarking websites begins with the members creating a bookmark and tagging it. The tag is classification of information created by members. When other members search for that tag they will find out about the bookmark that was created and the member who created it, as well as other bookmarks created by the same member. This way the members with similar interests who use same tags can create social connections and build a community of people with similar interests which will share bookmarks, give their personal opinions on them and share ideas.
Communities on social bookmarking websites aside from sharing bookmarks and opinion on them can also rate certain bookmark which will help other members find the most relevant and up to date information. If your blog provides the community that is relevant and up to date than you can expect to be ranked high for certain tags and as a result will lots of traffic from the bookmarks that you have created.
While you bookmark your blog posts and share links with other members you can also bookmark content from other blogs you find useful and interesting and share it with the community. This way you will help other members with similar interest to find information that they might find useful . Other members can do the same for your content which will result in more traffic to your blog. People are more likely to visit your blog because someone they trust has bookmarked it.
Step by step guide for using social media websites to drive traffic to your blog.
- Join Social bookmarking websites. To start driving traffic from social bookmarking websites you must join at least one of them. There are dozens of websites online which you can join.Social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Del.ici.ous, StumbleUpon and others can become a major source of traffic for your blog and help you build an audience if you know how to use them to your advantage. For best results you should join several social bookmarking websites and bookmark your blog posts. That way your blog will get more exposure and more traffic.
- Bookmark your blog posts. Whenever you publish a bog post you should log in to your social bookmarking accounts and bookmark your blog post. When bookmarking you will need to add appropriate tags and description. You may also be given a choice of making your bookmark public or private.
- Be useful member of the community. Don’t join just to bookmark your blog posts. If you do this you will be considered a spammer. Also bookmark other blogs or websites which contain information that other members might find it useful and interesting. Check out what other users are bookmarking and give your opinion. That way you will establish yourself as an expert and use your reputation to drive traffic to your blog.
- Add social bookmarking buttons to your blog. You can add buttons to your blog which will allow your visitors to easily bookmark your blog posts which will result in more exposure and more traffic. If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform there are many plugins that will help you place bookmark buttons for many social bookmarking websites.