This is a guest post by Steven Snell. Mr. Snell designs websites and maintains a blog for Vandelay Website Design. You can read more of his writing and see his portfolio at www.vandelaydesign.com.

Social media websites such as Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us, and Stumble Upon send thousands of visitors to blogs and websites everyday. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of articles about becoming a top user of these sites to build your traffic. While they are all tremendous sources of traffic, getting a significant number of visitors from these sites can take a lot of effort—especially with Digg, Netscape, and Reddit.

If you’ve avoided social media marketing because you don’t have hours every day to spend submitting articles and voting on those submitted by other users, you are missing out on countless potential visitors.

For the average user the main problem with the most popular social media sites is that it can be difficult to generate any kind of traffic to your site. Most of us are completely overlooking the opportunity to benefit from 2nd tier social media sites that send decent levels of traffic and can make it easier for the time-starved blogger to succeed.

Literally hundreds of lesser-known social media sites exist that present far less competition for the top spots. Yes, they will send less traffic than Digg, but if you choose the right ones to use you can see substantial results.

Some of My Favorites

DZone: A community for developers that allows users to submit links. Other users then vote for links they like or dislike. The best ones make it to the “popular links” page and get sent out to over 8,000 RSS subscribers.
Alexa rank: 5,196

Sphinn: Targeted towards search and interactive marketers, Sphinn is a new site that was the beneficiary of some good publicity from SEOmoz recently. Sphinn is similar to Digg or Netscape with a voting system for posted articles, but it also has an area for discussion and networking.
Alexa rank: 109,326

Ma.gnolia: A social bookmarking site similar to Del.icio.us, but with a more attractive appearance.
Alexa rank: 7,418

Furl: Another social bookmarking site similar to Del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia. Like Del.icio.us, Furl’s homepage also shows the most popular items.
Alexa rank: 4,052

Listible: Social site that has a voting system for user submitted articles.
Alexa rank: 25,921

This is just a small sample to give you an idea of what’s out there. I have a list of social media sites at www.vandelaydesign.com/socialmedia/listofsites.htm. As you’re looking for sites to join, look first for those that specialize in your particular niche. Those that are of a general nature probably have users that prefer a certain type of content. Take a look at what is popular there and see how you would fit in.

With less users competing for the top spots, these sites can all help to increase your traffic and readership quickly. The best method is to pick one or two of these sites that you want to target, sign up, and become an active member.

How to Succeed with 2nd Tier Social Media Sites

1. Provide good content. It’s the same key to success at any social site, large or small.
2. Be active. Read what other users have submitted and vote for the articles that you like. Also, submit other articles than just your own writing.
3. Build your network. If your blog already has some readers, write a post about the site that you are targeting and encourage your readers to sign up as well. With some of your readers signing up and voting for your articles you will be on your way to being one of the top users.
4. Make it easy to submit or vote for your site. After you join, many of these sites will give you the option of placing a button on your page (similar to a “Digg This” button) for readers to vote for your page. This is especially effective if you’ve already introduced the site to your readers.

The Possibility of Even More Traffic

If the amount of traffic that you can generate from these sites doesn’t excite you, take a look at the bigger picture. People who use these 2nd tier social media sites are probably also using some of the leaders. They may find your website at Furl or Sphinn and add it to Del.icio.us or Stumble it.

In fact, that’s exactly what happened to a few of my articles recently. I am an active user of DZone, and I’ve seen the rolling effect that social media sites can have. Getting to the popular page with DZone is not that difficult with the right content and it can easily bring a few hundred visitors in a day from one article.

I had one of my articles (that was generating little traffic on its own) become popular on DZone and within a few hours I got an email that it had made the front page of Del.icio.us. Sure enough, over 500 people have now booked the article. A day later that same article started getting traffic from Stumble Upon. In the next week Stumble Upon sent several thousand visitors to that page. The point of this example is that all of the traffic I received from major social media sites would probably have never happened if it hadn’t started with DZone.

Make the most of the time you spend marketing your blog by getting involved in some lesser-known social media websites. You may be surprised by the results.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 7:57 am by Sarah Lewis and is filed under Code, Marketing Your Blog, Social Networking & Marketing Sites, Tips. It's also tagged alexa, blogging, digg, interactive marketers, marketing, netscape, networking, publicity, reddit, RSS, seomoz, social media, Social Networking & Marketing Sites, sphinn, Traffic, voting system, Writing. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.