Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?

...............................................
F'r'e'e for All BWMagic Subscribers
- DATEwise Desktop eCalendar & Planner
Never miss another important Meeting or Birthday
Again! Takes only minutes to Download & Install.
F'r'e'e Download:
http://www.bizwaremagic.com/Free_Desktop_Calendar.htm

...............................................



BWMagic's Web Marketing News!


Read This Newsletter Online:
http://www.bizwaremagic.blogspot.com




.......
Contents:

o Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?

o AddThis BookMark

o Peel Away Ads

o Next Internet Millionaire

.......



o Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?


Over the last few months I have been closely
studying Social BookMark Traffic. It has really
opened my eyes to a lot of marketing opportunities
that really never existed for my sites before now.

Social bookmark traffic comes from such popular
sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon... basically
these sites are driven by their users - that is,
users or members pick and bookmark the content they
want to view and discuss.

This content can come from any site on the web -
including yours.

Getting your site or content featured on the front
page of these sites can drive 100,000's visitors
to your site immediately. So much traffic that
it may sometimes overtax your server and crash it.

So be warned, if you're actively promoting to these
social bookmark sites just make sure your servers or
web hosting is up to the demanding task of handling
all these sudden visitors.

One common problem with traffic from these
sites - it's very temporary traffic. The high
volume will only last a few days... until your
item is moved back from the front page.

These visitors will not stay on your site long
and most are gone within seconds, never to be
seen again. A few may sign-up to your newsletter
or venture to other areas of your site but
not many.

Social bookmark traffic is very fleeting, like
customers in the drive-thru section in a fast
food chain, they grab the content and surf back
to the major linking site very quickly and surf
on to the next item.

This traffic will behave very differently than
organic traffic from the search engines, or from
your newsletter traffic or from those in your
marketing funnels.

So the question remains - is social bookmark traffic
useless?

First, you must realize no traffic is useless,
any visitors to your site is a good thing. Without
traffic your site is useless, just a few files
sitting on a server in the middle of nowhere.

Obtaining visitors is one of your first objective
as a webmaster. You have to get visitors to your
site or it's game over.

The best kind of traffic is traffic coming from
organic search, visitors who come from the search
engines seeking exactly what you're offering on
your site. These are targeted visitors who will
consider your offer, real your information,
maybe buy a product or sign-up to your newsletter
or follow-up system. They often become repeat
visitors to your site.

These are your ideal visitors. This is the kind
of traffic your want.

Social bookmark and social media traffic is
different but it does have some saving graces.
Mainly it can help expose your site to millions
and brand your site or business. It can get the
word out about your site. Start a buzz.

These social sites are good for another reason,
getting your links on all these high traffic,
high PR7 and PR8 sites doesn't hurt your
search engine rankings.

Since many of these visitors will be using
the Firefox browser which has the Alexa toolbar
embedded - your site's traffic rank will
increase. Everyone knows Alexa traffic
rankings are not a true picture of the
web's traffic but it's a good measuring
stick, nonetheless.

Google might even consider it when ranking
your site. Google which basically considers
their whole indexing system as a democratic voting
structure... sites give a vote by linking to
your content. Then wouldn't getting a lot of
traffic or being featured on a site like Digg
where the users vote to propel the best content
to the front be the ultimate vote.

Keep in mind, all traffic from these social
media sites can't be judged with one brush.
Recently I had one page on my site featured
on the front page of many of these sites,
Digg, Mentalfloss, Fark, Stumbleupon...

I use Google Analytics to examine all my
traffic. It pointed out some very interesting
factors about this social bookmark traffic.
Most of it will simply bounce back, very few
visitors will spend much time on your site.
Very few visitors will even venture into your
site, sign-up to your newsletter or enter into
your marketing funnels.

For me getting an article featured on these bookmark
sites was very discouraging and not a pleasant
experience at all. Mainly because my content
was very poor - it was an old article from
two years ago with outdated stats and facts
about the web. Not really an article - just
a list of simple things about the net - meant
to be taken more as a joke than anything
serious. Why it was even featured is still
a puzzle!

Unlike getting one of my articles featured
in Addme or SiteProNews where I can easily
get 200 or 300 new subscribers in a day.
Plus, these visitors are interested in
my information and have been exposed to my
content (article) before coming to my site.

So there's no comparison, I would take the
traffic from these sites any day over traffic
from social bookmark sites. And I would
take free organic traffic from the search
over any other source of traffic including
PPC advertising.

One strange thing I did notice, for some reason
the traffic from Stumbleupon was different.
These visitors stayed longer on my site
and reacted more like organic traffic.

So I am not drawing any conclusions yet.

Nor am I put off by one bad experience,
you really have to get your hands dirty
and dive into these sites to really study
them. Old artist in me coming out - I guess!

Besides maybe there are other social sites
like Stumbleupon so I have to seek them out
and examine them first hand.

Hopefully, I will have further chances to study
traffic from these social sites and get the
long-term effects, especially in regards to
my rankings in the search engines.

But for now I will give an open mind but the
jury is still way out whether or not social
bookmark traffic is worth the interruption
to the daily marketing tasks of your site.

.....



1. Social Bookmarking

Regardless of my views on the matter, you should
be actively promoting your site and content
to the Social Bookmarking sites.

One simple way to do this is to do exactly what
I did. I simply put the free Addthis.com bookmark
on my content and site.

Folks, as you can see for above, it works.

Only takes a minute to join and few more to put
the code on your webpages.


http://www.addthis.com/


....

4. Peel Away Ads

Seems like I am plugging this "Peel Away Ads" tool
way too much. But like the social bookmark above
this one also works.

It will get people to read your ads and many will
click thru to your offer or sign-up form.

This really has to be seen to fully understand
how it works. So see for yourself:







....

o Next Internet Millionaire

Joel Comm's Next Internet Millionaire is still
running so if you're one of the few people who
haven't checked it out yet. Check it out.

It features such marketers as

- Mike Koenigs

- Armand Morin
- Marlon Sanders
- Jeff Walker
- Mike Filsaime
- Rich Schefren
- Brad Fallon
- Perry Marshall
- Dave Taylor
- Ray Edwards


so don't miss it. You can view it here:








Kind Regards,

Titus Hoskins