Can StumbleUpon & Digg Drive Insane Amounts of Traffic to Your Website?
StumbleUpon and Digg, two popular social media websites, both serve many valuable purposes.They provide insights into trending topics, stories, and news; they provide users an opportunity to discover what others are talking about; and they create an aggregation of new and popular websites.They are also fantastic for business owners, as they can drive insane amounts of traffic to your website.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is an online community that allows its members to discover, rate, and review web pages, videos, and photos.Users select categories of interest and download a toolbar, which allows them to easily give websites a thumbs up or a thumbs down, write a personalized review, or send them to friends in one easy click.
The more thumbs up a website receives, the higher it appears in the different categories on StumbleUpon.Users can browse through the nearly 500 categories and “stumble upon” pages highly rated by their friends and other community members.Members can also use the “Stumble!” button, which immediately directs them to a random website based on their interests, number of thumbs up, and reviews.
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Digg
Digg is a social news website that allows users to discover and share content from anywhere on the web.Users can submit links and stories they find interesting, and vote and comment on links and stories submitted by others.The popularity of a link is determined by users who have voted it up (called digging) or voted it down (called burying) using the toolbar that appears at the top of every user-submitted page.
The most “Dugg” stories, appearing on the homepage of Digg.com, can be filtered by those trending within the last 24 hours, week, month, or year.Users can also browse through the top stories in each of the individual categories offered, or view the top stories in all of the topics.
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Eyeballs = Traffic
Driving insane amounts of traffic to your website can be done, and it’s not as hard you might think (but it’s not easy either). Ultimately, the goal is to get as many people as possible to “like” and “digg” your links and pages, improving your rankings and upping the chances for your links to get seen. The more people see your links, the more they will view and rate your content. And the more your content is viewed and rated, the more people will see it. And there you have insane amounts of traffic.
The first step of this process really starts with your content. Great content is essential. If you want people to like and rate your links, the content first has to grab their attention, and then has to resonate with them enough for them to share it with others. Once you have the content figured out, it’s really just a matter of following some simple best practices.
5 Best Practices You Can Put into Play Today
1. “Like” & “Digg” other links and websites, write reviews, and leave comments. The more involved you are in a community, the better your reputation and visibility will be - meaning higher rankings for your submissions. DON’T submit only your links. This is spamming, and I guarantee you will not get far.
2. Personalize your profile. Add a picture and details about yourself - people like to know that there’s a person behind the username.The more people feel they know you, the more likely they are to trust you and what you are sharing.
3. Use tags and keywords. This will increase your chances of getting found by the people who are interested in your subject matter. Keywords and tags are also great food for search engines.
4. Make friends with people who have similar interests. People who share your interests are more likely to be interested in the content you are submitting, which will result in them liking/digging and sharing your content on a regular basis.
5.Spread the word, far and wide…and often. Share your links on other social sites like Facebook and Twitter, and ask your friends to “like” and “digg” your content.Encourage them to share your content with their networks, but don’t forget to reciprocate when they ask the same of you.
It’s Just a Matter of Time
As with all things, achieving the desired results will take time, so don’t give up if you don’t see immediate spikes in your traffic. You’ll have to build relationships and gain trust before things start to really happen for you. Be consistent in your efforts, and your hard work will pay off in the end.
Do you use Digg or StumbleUpon? How about another social news or bookmarking site? We’d love to hear about what’s working for you. Leave us your comments below…
I use SU and do see results from them. I haven’t been using Digg that much recently because it seems like there’s too many links added to their site daily. Once my link gets dropped, it’s lost and never to be found again. I’m also seeing more bizarre stuff on there so I tend to stay away from Digg.
If you play hard on digg, make sure your hosting is stable enough to handle the traffic before you do it
That answers the question to the title i guess.
Totally agree with you and teknoloji. Better be prepared for the flood of traffic!
Stumble is one of my preferred sites and it really does deliver a lot of traffic. It can be a hassle sometimes to stumble sites that haven’t already been thumbed up, but if one has the time it really only takes a couple of minutes.
BlogEngage is another great service I use and your readers vote on articles etc.
Based on my personal experience, neither StumbleUpon nor Digg brought much traffic. Initially, SU was “ok”, but that fizzled out quickly. Perhaps I don’t spend enough time.
I have gotten great traffic “spikes” from both on different sites I run, but hardly ever does that traffic convert into sales or clicks, so what help is that spike if you get nothing from it?
Totally agree with you and teknoloji. Better be prepared for the flood of traffic!
Our 1st website and we have to learn how to best drive traffic to it. This website is for localized traffic unless there are those looking to move to our area of interest. Hopefully using the social websites will help.
Do you have any great tips for getting traffic from sites like Digg and SU? I’d be interested to hear what you consider makes a story ‘interesting’ to people using these sites.
I agree with hotblogtips, most of the time this traffic does not convert into anything other than wasted bandwidth. I’ve virtually given up using stumbleupon and Digg for anything more than “liking” a post every now and then. There are far too many other methods that are much more valuable a better use of time.
Yes, SU and Digg drive traffic to my blog but as the HotBlogTips said, I agree with him … Never get clicked from the traffic SU and Digg generated .. Anyway, My major concern is to drive a bunch of folks to my blog so the both help me for sure …
My personal experience is that Stumble do bring traffic , to be frank very sporadic traffic. I never got any traffic from Digg , rather this days I refuse to Digg.
The only issue with Stumble upon is the traffic hardly stays on your site. Thus making your average time spend on your site per visitor very low..
How about you all friends out ..
Indeed, you can get lots of traffic from digg… but you really need a great story/post!
Consolidation School Loan- that is so true. If you have an interesting article or post that will bring attention, you’ll really get lots of traffic from any media sites-twitter, stumble, digg, etc…
Surely, they are at the top of social networks. And they can bring a lot of traffic but a lot of work must be done before you get rewarded.
I have one article that has recieved 14,000 reads from stumbleupon. I can’t get an average visit time because often people read one article and move on… but oh well. Still 14 k
Nice article, especially the advice in the end. I have observed that there are so many things on net these days and good blogs like this one that people have got the idea what they need to do to make money. The only thing is it takes time and people back out when they do not see the results immediately.
Sam - 14k hits is a great result! What was your article about? Why do you think it attracted so much traffic?
Really it is great that stumble and digg which can generate a great traffic and this really a great and dazzling work has been done. Those who needs traffic they really choose the stumble and digg to get immense traffic.
I’d like to pay a web designer to make me a website that I believe could see a lot of traffic. It’d be similar in scope to myspace. How much do you think it would cost?
Stumbleupon drives me a lot more traffic than Digg. And I don’t know why.
To be honest I have not had that much luck with Digg and Stumble Upon to date - after reading this post I have some new ideas to go back and try
thanks!
Al
Not only StumbleUpon but there are many other social media that can be used to get your site more popular such as twitter and facebook.