I shared a bit of news with a friend a few days ago. I told her that I’m pregnant. Unplanned, but sometimes babies like to beat the odds.

What amazed me was how fast word got out. A few days later the father of one of my daughter’s friends asked me about it. The girls had been friends in preschool but were now separated. The friend I told was the mother of a kindergarten friend.

Makes me really curious as to the path the rumor took. So far as I know, those two people don’t know each other.

I don’t mind word getting out that way, but I did find it amusing.

If only it were that simple to get word of mouth marketing going for a business. As a rule, it’s not. How many products get people talking the way word of a coming baby does? How many blog posts do that?

Of course, it can be done. That’s the whole idea of viral marketing. You create something that people want to talk about, that they want to share with all their friends.

It’s quite the challenge, although you can take a look at the various social media sites and see things that have taken off well in that area. These are a little different from things that get talked about in the real world but similar principles do apply.

Humor can work. Then again, it can fail miserably. That’s just how it goes. But people like to laugh and if you can make them do that they may tell their friends.

Extremely useful items also get talked about. That’s what gets people going on about their favorite new gadgets or even a cleaning product that works really well.

Engaging people’s enthusiasm matters. People are generally enthusiastic about babies, whether they be their own or someone else’s. Think about what really gets you really enthusiastic.

It’s not easy to get people to talk about your business but you can do it. Look at things from the customer’s view and figure out what there is to rave about to other people.

I’ve been using Twitter for a few weeks now, so I decided it was time for an update on my experiences with it.

It is interesting. I’ve been able to interact with a variety of marketers, some quite well known. I’ve been directed to articles I never would have noticed otherwise, but were quite interesting.

I have 92 followers as of this writing. That’s not bad considering that I don’t really do much to build the following there, although I do have links to my Twitter profile on some of my sites. But that’s 92 people who might just notice what I have to say.

I do a mix of tweeting things going on in my daily life with links to articles I’ve written or found interesting. I don’t really have the focus I think I should, yet.

How Many Accounts?

Right now I have one account. I am considering spitting it out to a second account, so that each is more focused. Considering that I feel you need to tweet several times a day for any particular account I can’t say I can see going beyond that.

I haven’t decided for certain to do that yet. There are advantages, certainly, to focusing things on a particular niche with an account, just as there is for any other form of marketing. But it’s an additional amount of work I’m not sure I want to put into Twitter yet.

How Responsive Are Twitter Followers?

I can’t say that I’ve gotten a great response on Twitter yet. Some of it is due simply to numbers. 92 really is a small number there, and people are not terribly likely to notice a tweet if they aren’t online at the time. Matter of fact, it can be easy to miss a tweet just by stepping away from the computer, depending on how you check on the people you’re following.

But at the same time I do understand that people can be very responsive on Twitter. People have asked questions there and gotten dozens of responses, just about instantly. That’s not something you can get just anywhere.

Making Twitter Easier to Use

I use Twhirl to keep up with what’s going on with the people I follow on Twitter. As I recall, it was a tweet from Maki that brought it to my attention. There are other programs that do similar things, and of course you can use it from your cell phone if you can do SMS messages.

Who Do You Follow?

Finding interesting people to follow is a big part of the fun. I started out searching for a few of the names I knew would be on there, and then added in by using keyword searches and seeing who looked interesting.

As with anything of this sort, a lot of accounts weren’t particularly active, some with many months since their last tweet. I don’t follow those, as a rule.

Another tactic I used to find people to follow was to look at who people I already follow are following. It’s a way to see a lot more accounts than I would have otherwise.

I also found Who Should I Follow while using StumbleUpon. It’s an interesting concept. You enter your Twitter name, and it makes recommendations. I thought the results were interesting, and did follow some of the people it recommended. Only time and tweets will tell me for sure if they’re good choices.

The Hazards

Biggest hazard to Twitter is that it can be a time suck. Reading all the tweets, following interesting links, tweeting… it can add up.

On the plus side, tweets are short. Reading them doesn’t take much time, nor does tweeting.

It’s just like forum marketing or anything else where it’s possible to get sucked too deep into the social side of things. You need to remember why you’re there and keep some focus on your goals while still having fun and being interesting. No being an obnoxious marketer!

Benefits on Other Social Media Sites

Tonight I had one of the people I follow on Twitter locate me on StumbleUpon. That’s another friend on a site I use regularly, and someone I’ve made some sort of impression upon. Not a bad deal at all.

Other Twitter Perspectives

Of course many other bloggers have posted their thoughts on Twitter, so I’ll close this out with more links you may enjoy.

5 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Presence
Building Your Twitter Presence Part 2 - Pre-Prepared Tweets
Building Your Twitter Presence Part 3 - TweetBaiting
Twitter Networking 101
Tweeting Outside The IM Niche…
Social Marketing Pitfalls & The Twitter Time Suck
Why Twitter Is Not Stupid!
So How Do You Find People on Twitter?

Social media marketing has become one of my favorite ways to market a website. Most specifically I like StumbleUpon. It’s fun from both a user and a marketer perspective.

It’s best to first get to know StumbleUpon, Digg and other social media by using them as a user, not as a marketer. You need to get a feel for what people are after, and maybe to build a solid profile.

You absolutely do not want to be the marketer who bookmarks, diggs or stumbles his or her own posts only. People catch on fast, and your efforts will soon be dismissed, even if the quality of what you are offering is good.

Worse is if you’re doing that with no care for what people want to see. Promoting your quick work rather than your best is a rotten idea.

Getting Visitors to Socially Bookmark Your Site

It’s tough getting anyone to bookmark your site, whether it be in their bookmarks on their internet browser or in social media. But one of the delightful things about social media is that it’s easy to put up links to encourage people to think about it.

There are a few different ways to go about this. On this blog right now I’m using the AddThis plugin. It places a link for bookmarking that gives users a tremendous range of social media sites they can bookmark this site at.

Honestly, I’m often thinking that it’s overkill and really isn’t doing the job. While AddThis means that my posts can easily be bookmarked through any service, sometimes offering lots of options means you’re offering too many. But the stats are a nice feature.

You can do this service by service. A very good option to consider is to figure out which social media sites are your priority, and put up chicklets or links only to them. You do not want to have a bunch of them at the bottom of your site. Too many definitely gets confusing.

Digg also offers a nice way to integrate it into your posts. They provide a couple of options using Javascript that allow you to show how many times a given post has been dugg. The advantage is that if you’re getting dugg regularly, a high number shows how popular the post is. But if you aren’t getting many diggs, the constant 0 diggs showing on your posts can be a kind of drag. No one wants to know how unpopular you are! (grin!) Some of the other sites offer similar integration options.

But is the Traffic Any Good?

There’s the biggest question! Does social media marketing do you any good at all, aside from driving up your traffic stats?

Maybe…

Social media can be enough to take down your server. It rarely pays off in terms of immediate revenue.

What you do get varies by site. People like getting on the front page of Digg because it gets you in front of a lot of big bloggers, and they might link to you, as will smaller bloggers. The attention can overall do your site good.

In my experience, StumbleUpon can bring a lot of visitors who just bounce right back out of your site, but it also brings some who explore a little. You can get the host crashing peaks of traffic, but Stumble traffic also tends to endure longer. I can get bits of traffic for weeks for a given page that Stumbled well. It can also peak more than once.

Do Friends and Fans Matter?

Social media generally includes the ability to mark other users as friends or to be a fan of a member. Advantages can be both real and theoretical.

If you’re on Digg, for example, you can see what your friends have been digging, and they can see what you’ve dugg. You can send out shouts to friends to try to get more attention to things you want to do well.

You can do similarly with StumbleUpon, but people have theories about what else having friends and fans on there might do. Many think that if you have a lot of friends and fans, the power of your Stumbles goes up and you can send more traffic. It’s pure theory, but the idea is that you’ll only get a lot of fans if you stumble well, so a lot of them is a sign of trust.

Being a Good User

Bookmarking quality resources is part one of being a good social media user. Another part is writing quality reviews and comments about what you bookmark.

Posting good reviews and comments about the sites you bookmark helps to build your reputation. If you’re the first to bookmark a site, so much the better in many cases. Most will note who discovered a given page. This puts your profile right at the top and may even help you to come to the attention of the site owner.

I Want to Bookmark My Own Stuff! I Need the Traffic!

Go right on ahead. Just choose wisely.

On most services you should not bookmark every page of your site. It’s not too bad on del.icio.us, but on other sites that is a sure way to annoy other users.

If it’s traffic you’re after, don’t oversubmit your own work. If you already have some traffic, your best stuff may be submitted by users anyhow. It’s really nice when you don’t have to do your own submissions. Looks a lot better too.

It’s hard to resist, however, when you don’t have enough traffic to generate natural submissions. You’ll need to be highly critical of your own work, so that you can select that which is worth submitting, versus the ones that might not do the job.

On Digg you can send your friends a shout about things you would like to see dugg. That doesn’t mean do it every time you digg something. That’s a great way to shorten your friends list. You can also send pages to your StumbleUpon friends through the toolbar. Same principle, of course. Don’t do it much.

Overall, I have seen some good benefits from using social media. But the key word there is using. It won’t be nearly as useful to you if you see it only as a marketing tool.

Starting a Home Business Series:

Get Your Home Business Going in the New Year
Brainstorming Your Home Business Ideas
How I Research a Market for a Niche
How Do You Get a Website Going?
How Much Does an Online Business Really Cost?
How Complex Does a Website Need to Be?
How to Set Up a Wordpress Blog
These Are a Few of My Favorite Themes
Can Article Marketing Work for You?
It Sounds Like a Lot of Work - Is It Really That Hard?
Building Your List
Getting Social with Your Blog (current page)
Is Your Site Ready for Pay Per Click?
Article Marketing Statistics
Putting the Pieces Together

I’ve developed quite a fondness for StumbleUpon. Not only is it good for marketing a website, it’s fun. It’s hard to beat that kind of a combination.

Now, I know a lot of articles on building up a Stumble account really annoys regular Stumble users. That’s reasonable, considering that many tactics do nothing more than annoy people who Stumble because they enjoy it so much. I think it’s important to consider how to use StumbleUpon correctly.

Take the time to Stumble

People debate whether or not you should Stumble your own content. I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with it, provided the content is something that is likely to be enjoyed by other users. Before you start submitting your own content, figure out what appeals to other Stumblers.

The easiest way to do this is to pick interests to show in your profile related to your topic, and start stumbling. Look at the reviews the pages that get your attention get.

Doing this will help you to figure out just a little of what appeals to Stumblers. There’s no easy formula, but you can get some idea as to what qualities you should consider when creating your own content.

Pick your Stumbles carefully

Whatever you do, do not Stumble just any article you’ve posted on your website. I see far too many sites that I have trouble picturing being of interest to people using StumbleUpon. Pages focused purely on selling something, for example. If it’s something unusual or funny it can work, but without something like that, I have trouble picturing them doing well as Stumbles.

Similar for purely self promotional items. If you wouldn’t want to read it about someone else or their site, your fellow Stumblers probably won’t want to see it from you or your site.

Pick articles that are well-written, have a unique perspective, have a humorous slant, or are otherwise interesting. Same for images, videos and so forth. Stumblers get very tired of seeing the same thing over and over again, so you don’t want to submit something that you’ve seen on several other sites. Be more creative than that.

Don’t Stumble your own site excessively

While the limitations are guesses, most estimates I have seen say you can Stumble a given site no more than about 15 times. However, I have seen some people say you can get cut off after far fewer Stumbles. The more honest you are about your Stumbles, I suspect, the more freedom you have in Stumbling your own site.

Make friends and fans
It’s not entirely clear whether or not having more friends and fans on StumbleUpon improves the power of your Stumbles, but most people believe they do. People who have interests in your field are great choices, especially if they are also regular Stumblers.

Stumble often

And Stumble honestly. Submit pages that aren’t your own that you genuinely enjoy. Thumbs up pages when you like them. Enjoy yourself. Stumbling can be incredibly addictive if you relax and don’t worry about whether or not you’re getting anything out of it.

Think before you contact friends

Contacting StumbleUpon friends is a feature I’ve never taken advantage of personally. I know you can do this, but it is a feature to use with caution. Overuse is a great way to alienate friends. But if you’ve written something that you especially want attention to, and think it will do well, give it a try. But I wouldn’t send it to your entire list of friends right away, or possibly ever. Send it to a few and see if it was really a good idea.

And do so rarely.

Remember that traffic for traffic’s sake means very little

Stumble traffic may not be right for your website. It doesn’t necessarily convert or bring links. But it can.

The better the content, the better your chance of getting something from it. But it’s also the greater the chance you have of getting a ton of traffic, possibly too much for your server. You do want to be aware of this impact and certain about whether or not the potential extra costs will be worth it.

Technorati Tags: stumbleupon, stumble, stumbling, social bookmarks, social networks, building traffic, oneline business, home business

Sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon can drive delightful amounts of traffic. If you want to have high levels of traffic driven to your site, they’re one of the great ways to get it. But actually getting the traffic is difficult. So many people look for ways to cheat their way to traffic.

There are ways to do this. There are groups that will Digg, Stumble or bookmark on various other websites for you, just as you do so for other members. I won’t name any here; if that’s the solution for you, search them out on your own. You’ll find them.

However, a lot of people really don’t understand what they should be having other people submit for them. They’ll put in just any old blog post and hope for traffic. But what you really want to submit are things that will get people interested in what your site has to offer. Otherwise, all you are doing is burning up bandwidth.

If you’re going to do something like this, start out by using the service you’re targeting. What kinds of pages tend to do well? You don’t want to be copying anyone, but you can be inspired by the general topics that tend to do well. Read the rest of this entry »

Social bookmarking sites have really taken off as a way to drive traffic to your website. A hot topic on Digg, for example, can crash many an unprepared server. Who needs that?

Apparently many webmasters do, since many try hard to get traffic from Digg and similar sites. It scarcely matters that their server may not cope. They want those eyeballs.

The Trouble With Social Marketing Traffic

All that traffic can mean a lot to your business. Downtime. Slow access for serious customers. Negative comments from people who aren’t interested in your site but want to say something anyhow. A popular story can be a painful experience.

Perhaps worst of all is that social bookmarking website rarely deliver traffic that is likely to buy or click on ads. You may get a ton of traffic, but get just about nothing for the trouble it caused.

So Why Do People Want It So Much?

While social media sites have some serious negatives, there are some good things about them. A popular article can gain a lot of links as bloggers talk about it. This can result in good, relevant traffic from the search engines.

You may also gain subscribers to your RSS feed or email list. The conversion rate to this will probably be small, but present. If you can get subscribers who might possibly turn into buyers or otherwise valuable visitors, does it really matter how low the conversion rate is so long as your effort was minimal? Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll be the first to admit that building traffic to my sites is something I should work harder on. I know what to do, but making the time to do it is often another matter. Very, very bad of me since I’d do far better and earn more with more traffic.

I’ve long since slipped on one of my big goals, which was to comment more often on other blogs. Other blogs can be a great traffic source, especially if you post relevant and insightful comments. It really can bring in traffic.

The trick is standing out from the crowd. Commenting on popular blogs means your comments get seen by more people, but it also means you have more people commenting before you have even seen the latest post.

Be controversial.

Being controversial can also bring good traffic, especially if it’s on a current hot topic. No one cares if you think goldfish are better than neon tetras. But if you have a strong opinion on something popular, whether it be the latest Harry Potter (book or movie), the current field of candidates for the next Presidential nominations, current events in your field and so forth, you can encourage traffic, comments and links.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the delights of social bookmarking is when you see something you hadn’t submitted yourself take off even lightly.

I had that happen with a post on this blog and StumbleUpon. I got a sudden peak of traffic. Come to find out, someone had Stumbled my post What Tools Do I Prefer to Use for My Home Business? It was a real treat to Stumble across something of my own, when I hadn’t submitted it myself.

That is, of course, one of the delights of sites such as StumbleUpon. Even if you don’t submit something yourself, it can go somewhere for you.

You can Stumble your own pages, of course, but if you overdo it you risk your site being banned. I stumble my own stuff only on occasion. As I have more and more success, I expect to gain a better understanding of what appeals to each site.

In general, I think it’s posts and pages that are either pretty funny or very useful.

Technorati Tags: stumbleupon, stumbling, social bookmarks