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Del.icio.us is a website that offers you a place to store your favorite sites where others can view and visit them. It is a useful site for those interested in link sharing and in promoting their favorite sites on the Internet, and it couldn’t be easier to use!
Getting started with Delicious is easy; all it takes is an email address and a few minutes to register. You can look at the site like the favorites folder that you can find in your web browser. Then you can put those favorites into your Delicious favorites folder – easy enough, right? The site is really useful for working on reports and articles, as you can sort the links by tags. Tags are simple words used to describe a site or link in one’s profile. So if you were listing a news site in your profile you might use the tags Politics, News, Current Events, or other news related phrases. A sports site would carry a sports tag, and so on. This system of tags helps users to find the site they need easily, without having to sift through too many links. Naturally, there are some absurd tags and links to be found on Delicious, but finding the site you need is usually a snap.
The effect a site like Delicious has on social media is pretty impressive to say the least. Being able to share sites easily with other users looking for similar content is extremely useful for even a casual user. However, it takes on a new level of importance for web developers and enthusiasts, because it can be tied into internet marketing pretty easily. When a user bookmarks a site on Delicious, it is essentially free advertising for the site. So by creating a Delicious profile and adding your own site to your bookmarks, you are creating more exposure for your site. More exposure, of course, means more page views!
Delicious is very easy to use, and there is no learning curve at all. The site has an attractive, simple layout that any user can get familiar with quickly. Managing your bookmarks is simple, you can edit tags, delete or add bookmarks, and browse other’s bookmarks with ease. Finally, there is a search function that allows you to quickly locate a bookmark on someone else’s profile. The search function can be switched so that it goes from searching the site, to searching the entire Internet. All these functions combine to create an extremely attractive and useful web tool. Delicious is easily one of the more exciting sites to emerge in the social media boom. Allowing easy trade of site links makes for a much more open and accessible Internet. This in turn creates a much more integrated community of users, and that makes for better content.
So if you are looking for a fun and interesting way to not only share your links, but view other’s links on a wide and varied scale, then Delicious might just be the perfect site for you. It definitely provides and important service for the active web enthusiast, and while it may not be the only tool to do so, it certainly does it quite well!
Reddit.com is a very interesting website designed for those who want to read news found by fellow Internet users. Sharing news stories has been around for a long time, through the use of email, message boards, and other communication. However the catch was that you had to know someone in a community in order to get to these links.
Sites like Reddit aim to change that.
Reddit’s concept is simple, users create accounts like on any other site, and then upload links with a custom title to the page. The beauty of Reddit is that all the content is located on other sites, and is uploaded by users. The site it’s self does little work. What’s more, users can vote on links they like or dislike, and that then enters a filtering system. This system filters results to stories that are similar to ones you have marked as liked in the past, and filters out the ones that are similar to the stories you have flagged as dislikes.
For example, if you tend to stick to sports and entertainment news, Reddit would move those story types to the top of your list, and place stories on politics closer to the bottom. This system can work very well in most cases. However, there are problems with the site.
Since users post all the links and also are able to give them a title, sometimes a link is added that is named improperly or doesn’t make much sense. These links, however, are usually pushed to the bottom of the list by people who rate them poorly. As with any site geared toward user input, the content is only as good as its users. However, since the content found on Reddit is usually content from a professional source, good links quickly make it to the top of the list. This once again highlights how competitive and important the Internet news scene is. It also demonstrates the need for news websites to really step up when it comes to content creation. Because page views are going to increase based on sites and services like Reddit and search engines like Google.
Reddit’s layout leaves a little to be desired. Links are displayed in a very standard list, nothing very attractive, but also not ugly. You can sort links by a surprisingly small amount of categories, which include hot, new, controversy and top. The links can be further sorted by date added, which is a very nice feature. There is also a search function in place that works pretty nicely. What is very nice about the site is lack of ads cluttering up the place. There is a standard sized ad box on the left side of the page, but it doesn’t encroach upon page content, while still being in clear view of the user. You can also quickly “Reddit” the ad if for some reason you decide others might like it. In the end its sites like Reddit that fuel the social media, and use of them helps to build a better internet.
Written by admin · Filed Under Reddit
What Type Of Traffic Can You Expect From StumbleUpon?
The type of traffic you stand a chance at getting from StumbleUpon is quite different from traffic you would get from a search engine like Google - which of course is more specific and offers very targeted traffic that matches the end users search query with the content on your site. Duh, right?
StumbleUpon traffic is different in a few lights, mainly because it’s not very targeted, and it gives you a chance at gaining visits from people who may not have regularly came across your site in their normal, every day search routine. Also, because the sites are so loosely tagged among the community, you may have someone that specializes in plumbing come across your site about carpentry just because you share ‘similar’ interests. The way I just described SU traffic sounds pretty crappy, huh? Well, I’m here to tell you, it’s not.
StumbleUpon Traffic, as well as traffic from other popular social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Delicious have their benefits. Perhaps the most important one is that it’s rather easy to get traffic flowing from these sites, and best of all – free!
Here are some observations of StumbleUpon traffic from experts in the field of social media, and myself. Some good, some not so desirable, but hey, we’ll take them!
Very low Adsense or contextual ad click through rate - Users who are actually “stumbling” through pages are often searching for an eye catching design or article that grabs their attention. If you don’t have this, and have more Adsense ads than content, then don’t expect many clicks, even if you got lucky and have thousands of visitors coming in. Not only that, but I’ve seen circumstances where someone gets 5k plus visitors from SU, which gave them 48 Adsense clicks, and Adsense only counted 4 of them. Yeah, they were pissed.
Good web design - is paramount for StumbleUpon visitors. The average time spent on a web page can be less than 10 seconds. As I said above, SU users only tend to stop when something really catches their eye. This isn’t always true, and there are exceptions to the rule, but if your site or blog looks junky and amateurish, then don’t expect average page times to be high.
Diverse demographic. Visitors from StumbleUpon come from many countries from all over the world, this can play out well if you are marketing something worldwide. If you have a more local or national product, this obviously doesn’t help anything besides your stat counter. Also, obviously an article about the Queen of England would probably bring in more UK Stumblers than anywhere else…
Resulting RSS subscribers are shady, but not bad. I’ve had traffic spikes from SU that resulted in feed count numbers being boosted quite a bit. Depending on the blog, I’ve seen them go right back down the next day, and on the other hand, some blogs that get big spikes of traffic and resulting RSS boosts actually bring long term subscribers. This will vary from blog to blog, but again, I’ll take the boost whenever I can get it.
Not all websites are of equal design - Video, Humor, Web 2.0 and crazy websites do extremely well with SU. Having said that, those kinds of sites seem to do well with any type of social bookmarking situation. Keep this in mind the next time you launch a new site and plan on getting traffic from SU or the others.
Traffic is definitely long-term. Large traffic spikes can bring an initial rush of traffic (which is very addictive), and weeks or even months later, you’ll still see remnants of the initial surge. This is awesome, in my opinion, and the more posts you have that become popular, the more long term traffic you’ll receive from sites like StumbleUpon.
‘Digg’ing is useless, unless…
You have just set up a website, and you’re looking for exposure – a lot of it, because that’s what you’ll primarily get out of Digg. Even if you are an experienced webmaster who makes a killing on the internet, read on. This page could well talk a bit about why ‘Digg’ing and other such social bookmarking sites may not work BIG wonders no matter what you do. But, they sure do make some difference; and with the competition online, you can’t ignore that bit.
Let’s start up with some not-so-good effects of Digg and then see how Digg can work mini-wonders for websites / blogs. We’ll list out both the bad and good points about ‘Digg’ing for websites that have made it to a certain point online.
Why ‘Digg’ing could be bad?
Going by the stats and trends, Digg doesn’t convert into revenues, even substantially. Add your bandwidth to this factor. That not only means that there’s no new sales happening, but it results in expenses. Also, you will hardly ever see any new visitors from Digg. Again, if the Digg page containing your link is not ‘Digg’ed (a.k.a. ‘Dugg’) enough, you’ll become history on the popular social bookmarking site. Eventually, you will find out that it did no good to your Google pagerank, even if your content got Dugg a lot.
What makes ‘Digg’ing special? This one holds good for people with new websites, as well)
Digg brings your site / blog a lot of new readers and a good number of new visitors. While chances are that many of them won’t return to your site again, if you can attract their attention to build a relationship (of a sort) with your website, they will become warm prospects for you. That’s something you should take the credit and/or blame for, not Digg, so to say. Digg could bring your website a good number of incoming links, if people write about your site in their content and share it with the world.
A very good Digg effect (or that of just about any other social bookmarking site):
If your site becomes famous in Digg, there will be a lot more readers and a lot more new ‘Digg’s. Consequently, the particular Digg page will reach the search engines’ top pages and people may share it through other bookmarking sites like reddit, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, furl, etc.
With that said, let us come back to what you’re here for. You have a new site and are considering using Digg for reaching up to a certain point online. It will bring you a lot of exposure, and a few new visitors. While you may not see any / many comments on your ‘Digg’ed blog page, the chances of your blog / site getting visits are fairly good, depending on the content on your page. Once they come to your site, it’s again your part to see that the visitors stay there for long, and come back, or at least subscribe to your feeds. But, isn’t that what organic (or SEO traffic) can do for you? In any case, strategize your online Web 2.0 business or information / content filled site, and ride along with the social bookmarking wave, in limits though. Don’t give it an entire day.
Written by admin · Filed Under Digg
Social Media And The Influence On Our Media Driven Society
The term “social media” refers to the integration of technology into the social scene. Without even realizing it, you contribute to society and how we perceive events just by participating in services like message boards, wikis, and social networking. By using a message board, you express opinions about topics that may or may not have an important impact Read more
