The Social Media “Buddy System” for Improving Site Visibility

Need some help Digging and Stumbling? Do you even know what it means to do both? If you need help getting your social media profiles in order call Spider Writers today at 757-499-199 for your free consultation. Our services can help raise traffic to your main websites and solidify your brand.

Surely this is something you do already – I don’t have to tell you that once you have published your blog post or article or Squidoo lens that you should ride the social merry-go-round. It’s a task that’s become automatic to me as well: I publish, then embark on the social media tour. I tweet, I buzz, stumble, digg, reddit, and so forth. As a social media specialist assisting multiple clients with building traffic referrals to their main sites, I’ve been told the social bookmarking work I do for them does have a positive effect. Some have reported instant spikes in traffic, while others detect long tail improvement. If you, however, have taken on the task alone of getting your important URLs listed on the major networks and bookmarks, you should know it’s not work that necessarily works on a solo flight. One Digg won’t get your story far in a world where people are willing to promote pictures of cheeseburger-loving cats for free. If you want that same level of attention, you have to get social with the bookmarking and foster your own buddy system.

Make New Friends, Keep the Old

Social sites like Digg and StumbleUpon make it somewhat easy for you to find connections. If you use a free e-mail services like Hotmail or GMail, for example, it searches your contacts for people who have registered, and gives you the option to fan or subscribe to them. From there it’s only a matter of recruiting friends to assist you in a mutual backscratching endeavor to help boost your sites’ visibility in these networks.

Digg, especially, frowns upon people creating multiple accounts for a singular purpose, preferring users instead naturally grow interest in the links submitted. To prevent spamming, some sites like StumbleUpon and Mixx limit the number of URLs from one domain an account can submit, while Reddit imposes a time limit in between submissions. As you gather more social bookmarkers into your inner circle, it could prove mutually beneficial for everyone involved.

I have a friend, for example, who helps my efforts by “liking” each Facebook page I create, and retweeting every promotional post on my personal account. If you want to wage a viral campaign, sometimes it takes only one clip for something to spread. Let’s say you have ten friends and family with accounts all over the place. If each just did one thing to help your site, that’s ten opportunities for an outsider to find your information and share it elsewhere.

Work on growing your buddy system, and remember that it works both ways. For the work you have friends do, don’t be selfish in sharing their data. A variety of information not related to your work, too, boosts your authority in social search, so you don’t look completely like a self-promoter. The more you assist each other, however, the sooner you’ll find a positive difference in your overall traffic.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with Virginia Beach web design and social media writing. Businesses benefiting from Kathryn’s expertise include European hotels, Norfolk handyman services, and Gainesville B&Bs.