Of course, social media will always benefit a small percentage of marketers and users the most, as the nature of social media is to provide exposure only to the best or most popular content. However, your chances of success can be greatly improved if you understand the community of users that you are marketing to and if you create the right content.

If you are not getting results with social media, check this list to see of any of these issues apply to you.

1. You’re a Marketer, Not a User

Yes, marketers can certainly have success with social media, but the key is to be an active user who contributes to the community of the site. Be a user first and a marketer second. If other users feel that you are only there to market, they will not be receptive to your submissions, votes, or suggestions.

2. You’re Only Submitting/Voting for Your Own Content

I had a client a while back who told me that she was getting no results with social media despite working very hard at it. She sent me links to her profiles at a few sites and as soon as I checked them out I could see that they only links she had ever voted for were her own submissions. If you’re doing this you are not able to be a true member of the community and it’s very obvious that you are only there to promote your own content.

Make a habit of going to your targeted social media sites every day just to be active and vote on quality submissions from other users. It’s a good idea to also submit some content that’s not from your own site, and at some social media sites it’s frowned upon to submit your own content. In these cases you can either wait for someone to submit it or ask a friend to do so if you don’t think it will be submitted naturally by a random reader.

3. You’re Not Creating Content Specifically for Social Media Audiences

Not all types of content will do well with social media, even if it is high quality. Social media users like to be entertained and each social media site will have its own unique audience. Take some time to observe what the users of a particular social media site tend to appreciate. Pay attention to the types of content that draw a lot of votes and comments and this should help you to know what type of content you need to create.

Effective social media marketing involves creating content that will pique the interest of social media users. Once you are familiar with the community at your targeted social media sites, take some time to brainstorm article ideas that may appeal to them.

4. You’re Not Targeting Specific Social Media Sites

One common problem is trying to use too many different social media sites. Because being an active part of the community requires that you visit the site frequently to submit and vote on content, it’s very difficult to be effective with more than a few different social media sites. Evaluate the various sites and try to identify a few that would be a good fit for your content and your audience. Think about your blog’s readers, what social media sites do they use? It’s better to be active and effective with 2 or 3 social media sites than to occasionally use 25 with no real results. Just because you are not active at a particular social media site doesn’t mean that you can’t get traffic from it. Others may submit your content without your prompting, or you could ask friends to submit if for you if you know that they use that site.

5. Your Visitors Are Not Social Media Users

Many sites and blogs, especially those with large audiences, benefit from having readers who are social media users. This makes it more likely that your content will be submitted without you initiating it, and it will make it easier to get votes. If your blog has a low number of social media users you may want to consider introducing them to specific social media sites in your posts. For example, if your blog covers finance related topics, you could write a post about Tip’d, which is a financial social media site. If the site is useful to your readers, they may start to use it, and they may vote for your posts. Also, in addition to introducing them to specific sites, you could mention that if they like your content they could help to support you by voting at their favorite social media site or by voting at a particular site.

6. You’re Posting Commercial Content

Social media users do not like to feel like they are being marketed too, and many social media sites even prohibit commercial content. If you are trying to promote your company with social media you will need to do it passively in order to have any success. The best approach is to use social media to build links and exposure to your site, and leave the marketing to other times and situations. If people find content that they like and appreciate at their site and they become a regular visitor, they will be more receptive when you do start to market to them.

7. You’re Only Focusing On Digg

Another common mistake is only focusing on the major social media sites, especially Digg. While the major sites are the ones that will send the most traffic, they also have far more users who are competing with you. If you focus on smaller sites or niche social media sites you may be able to get a “popular” submission with only a few votes. This traffic is much easier to come by and at least you will have something to show for your efforts. A very small percentage of Digg users will ever get results with their submissions.

My advice is to pick one or two major social media sites to use as well as one or two smaller sites. This way you can still go after the more significant traffic of Digg, Reddit, or StumbleUpon, but you will also not put all your eggs in one basket and you’ll be very likely to get some results with the smaller sites.

8. You Haven’t Built a Network

The most successful social media marketers are very well connected. Having a network of friends and fellow social media users allows you to help each other with votes and submissions when needed. Many social media marketers share voting requests with their friends via email or IM, and sometimes even via Twitter. If you haven’t yet built a network, focus on getting to know some fellow social media users, particularly those who are bloggers or marketers. These people will likely be interested in building a connection with you because of the potential for mutual benefit.

9. You’re Asking for Too Many Votes

Although it is good to be well connected, you don’t want to be annoying to your friends and contacts by asking for votes all of the time. People who do this are likely to alienate others and not get the votes that they are requesting. Save your requests for situations when they can make a real difference and don’t be requesting votes for everything you submit.

10. You’re Not Using Voting Buttons

I’m sure you’ve seen voting buttons and widgets on blogs. When used appropriately they can be very effective. Ideally, you should not put too many buttons on your blog or it will look cluttered and will be more of a distraction than anything. Pick one or two sites that you want to target and try using voting buttons on your site. If you have some established traffic you may be able to rack up a lot more votes this way. I have had good success with the Tweetmeme button on my blogs for getting more tweets and visitors.

What’s Your Experience?

What have you learned through your own social media marketing that you can share with readers?

For related content please see:

• 10 Ways to Improve Your Results with Social Media TODAY
• Social Media Marketing FAQ
• 9 Reasons to Build a Strong Social Media Profile

Other types of traffic like search engine visitors, direct visitors, and those who come via links from other sites are more significant in the long-term, but getting to that point can take considerable effort and time. In fact, most bloggers who set out to build a profitable blog wind up getting discouraged and quit before they ever see those long-term benefits.

On the other hand, social media allows anyone to get some exposure for their blog almost immediately. Of course there is work involved and you will need the right content, but social media marketing provides opportunities for bloggers to make an impact right now.

This immediate impact is what most bloggers who use social media are after, but the real strength of social media marketing is that it can help you to be more successful with those other important long-term sources of traffic. Popular posts with social media tend to attract links from various blogs and websites, and those links lead to click-through traffic and better search engine rankings in the future.

Keys to Balanced Blog Growth

Although there is a lot to like about social media, the visitors you receive from these sites typically will be less likely to subscribe to your blog, to visit multiple pages, to click on ads, to buy any products, or just about anything else you want them to do. This doesn’t mean that social media traffic is useless, it’s always good to get more exposure and to help people to become more familiar with your blog, especially if it’s new. However, what it does mean is that you need to have a balanced approach that works to build traffic from a variety of sources. Get what you can out of social media, but don’t attempt to build a website or blog without focusing on other types of traffic as well. Here are some keys:

1. Search Engine Friendly Blog Theme

Search engine visitors are highly important for the long-term health of any blog. There’s not a whole lot of on-site factors that are going to make-or-break your blog’s ability to attract search engine visitors. Page titles are obviously important, but for the most part you should focus on having a site that is search engine friendly, and spend your time on producing the best content that you can rather than spending hours worry about meta tags or other details that aren’t significant.

What is a search-friendly website? Basically it involves building a site that makes it easy for search engines rather than making it difficult or trying to trick them. If your blog has a search-friendly theme, attracts a decent number of inbound links, page titles that include keywords, and content that people will search for, you will be in good shape for generating search engine traffic. To get a detailed look at the subject, see Derek Edmond’s article How to Create Search Engine Friendly Websites. The article is over 2 years old, but it has a lot of valuable information.

2. Consistent Efforts for Link Building

Inbound links from other websites are critical for long-term blog growth because of their impact on search engine rankings. There are a number of different things you can do to build links, but the effort should be consistent in order for the growth to continue. Once your blog gets to a certain point, most of you link building efforts can be spent on creating great content. A blog that has an established audience doesn’t really need that much promotion to attract links if the content is high quality, but in the beginning you need to get your content in front of people to attract links. Some effective link building techniques include social media marketing, writing guest posts for other blogs, blogroll link exchanges, and article marketing.

3. Networking

One of the most consistent characteristics of successful bloggers is that they are almost always very well-connected. Take the time to get to know other bloggers in your niche and take a genuine interest in them and their work. People tend to link to people that they know and like. Plus, you may be surprised at some of the ideas and opportunities that arise from having a strong network of other bloggers.

4. Efforts to Build Subscribers

The definition of a successful blog is going to be different to various people. Some would define success in terms of money that is generated from the blog, others by the amount of exposure that the blogger receives, the number of visitors, or maybe by the number of subscribers. Regardless of how you measure your own success, getting people to be interested in your content and keeping them coming back for more is critical. Gaining subscribers is a great way to improve your long-term chances of success.

5. Consistent Emphasis on Content

This point isn’t mentioned last because it is less important than the others, but more so because it is kind of obvious but still needs to be said. A blog is really all about the content, and in order to have a balanced approach to building the blog you will need to consistently put effort into creating the best content that you can. A blog with great, unique content will open up a lot of possibilities and your marketing efforts will be more effective.

Using Social Media as Part of the Balanced Plan

So now that we have seen the keys to balanced growth, let’s look at some specifics for ways that social media fits into that plan.

1. Consider Social Media, But Don’t Let It Control Your Decisions

One of the keys to getting traffic with social media is creating content that is well-suited for the social media audience. While this is a big part of building a blog with the help of social media, not all of your content should be created in this way, and it should not completely dictate what is published on the blog. In many cases your regular readers will appreciate posts that may not appeal to social media users. If you get too caught up in targeting social media, you may miss some good opportunities to build your blog in other ways. Using social media as part of a balanced plan requires that you don’t ignore other types of content and marketing opportunities in order to go after more social media traffic.

2. Don’t Rely On Social Media Traffic

Social media is often unpredictable. Sure, you can learn more about it and drastically increase your chances of having success, but there will always be a lot of peaks and valleys with social media traffic. Try to build diverse traffic sources and avoid relying too much on getting traffic from social media sites.

3. Don’t Focus Strictly On The Major Social Media Sites

One of the most common mistakes in social media marketing for bloggers is putting all of their attention into sites like Digg and Reddit. Yes, they do have potential to send much more traffic than smaller social media sites, but the chances for success are very slim. Most bloggers would be better off to spend a little bit of time on the major social media sites, and spread out some of the effort to include smaller social media sites and niche social media sites. Niche sites are great because the traffic will be targeted more effectively, and because it’s much easier to have success.

4. Publish Some Content Specifically For Social Media Audiences

I mentioned that it’s not a good practice to ignore your blog’s subscribers by publishing only content for social media audiences, but it is a good idea to publish some posts that are catered to social media. Take the time to browse through the popular items at social media sites that you use and see what they have in common. What types of posts do the users respond to? With that knowledge you can apply it by creating your own content that fits.

For new bloggers one of the biggest challenges, even with quality content, is getting the first few votes. If you don’t have a strong social media profile that will help you to get attention, you may have great content that you submit to social media and it does nothing. Major blogs can put voting buttons on their posts and get a boost that way, but newer blogs don’t have the amount of visitors that will result in many votes. One thing you can do to help get over the hump is to find some other bloggers who are also attempting to grow their blog and form a group to share votes. That way when you have content that you want to get some attention, you can email a few friends and get some easy votes to get it started. And you can help them with votes as well. Of course, it’s good practice to only vote for quality content, so be careful to choose the right partners.

5. Consider Using Voting Buttons On Your Posts

Voting buttons can be effective when they are used properly. Having tons of buttons on your posts is not a good approach because it looks bad and each button will get very little attention. But simply using one or two buttons can be very effective. Even if you have a new blog with low traffic levels, a voting button for a niche social media site may help to get you the few votes that are needed to get your post promoted to the front page.

I’ve had good results on my design blogs with the Tweetmeme button. Traffic from Twitter has grown exponentially since I added it to the blogs several months ago.

6. Consider Post Topics That Will Be Searched For

Search engine traffic is not something that I consider very often when I am working on a new post, but the few times that I have created posts for search traffic the results have been very good. A post that winds up doing well in search engine rankings could continue to send hundreds or even thousands of visitors on a daily basis.

If you have a topic that you want to cover, use a keyword tool like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Type in a few keywords and it will show you a bunch of related searches and how often they are searched. This can help you to see what people are looking for, and you can use the keywords in your post title.

Next, think about how you can create a post on the subject that will appeal to social media users so that you can attract some attention and links to the post. Using keywords in your post title is important because most of these inbound links that you draw will use the post title as the anchor text. Once you have the post idea, spend plenty of time to make it as useful and interesting as possible to get the maximum impact. Then get some of your friends to give you a hand with the initial social media votes, and hopefully it will take off from there. If the post draws links and has an optimized title, search engine traffic should follow. Of course, the more competition that exists for the keyword the more difficult it will be to achieve high search engine rankings.

What’s Your Experience?

How do you use social media in your own plan for blogging growth?

In my opinion, many new bloggers miss out on some great opportunities by not being more active at niche social media sites. These will not have nearly as many users as the major social media sites, so they will never send a comparable amount of traffic, but there are many reasons why they are every bit as valuable for the new blogger.

1. Targeted Traffic

Niche social media sites provide links to content that focuses on a specific topic, which means that most of the people that use that niche social media site will be very highly targeted if your content is a good fit with that topc.

While the most popular social media sites may be able to send thousands of visitors very quickly, those visitors are typically not very well targeted. Some of them may be interested in the subject of your content, but most would not fit in your target audience. With niche social media sites, a very high percentage of the visitors you receive will be exactly the type of readers that you want to reach.

2. Better Conversion to Subscribers

Social media traffic is usually pretty poor at converting to subscribers. There are a few reasons for this. First, the average social media visitor is just browsing for interesting content, they’re not looking for a source of information that they will keep coming back to. Second, because the traffic is not targeted they will not be interested in subscribing and receiving the content on a regular basis. B

ecause visitors from niche social media sites is more targeted, part of this issue will be taken care of. Additionally, users of niche social media sites tend to have a strong interest in the community of other users of the site who have similar interests, and this can carry over to the links that they find through the niche site.

3. Higher Chances of Success

One of the most significant reasons that I think new bloggers should be submitting their content to niche social media sites is that it is much easier and realistic to get your content to the front page. You could spend tons of time using Digg and trying to push your content and you may never get a post to the front page. Most bloggers that try to get traffic from Digg never have much success.

On the other hand, a much higher percentage of submissions at niche social media sites will get promoted to the front page. If your content is not making it on its own, you can even find a few friends and request some votes. With most niche social media sites it only takes a small number of votes to get from the front page and this is often possible to achieve just by asking a few friends for a vote.

4. Networking Opportunities

Social media and social networking sites provide plenty of opportunities to get involved with the community and get to know other users. With niche social media sites you will be able to network with like-minded users who have a lot in common with you. Making strong connections is very possible through this contact.

5. Can Lead to Success with Other Social Media Sites

Most social media users are active at several different social media sites. You may be able to easily get 100 visitors from a niche social media site. That may not seem very significant, but maybe from those 100 visits you will get a few Stumbles that will lead to even more traffic, or some Delicious bookmarks that will help you to make it to the frontpage. This domino effect is something that I have been writing about for a long time, and it sometimes can have big impacts.

What’s Your Experience?

Do you use niche social media sites? If so, how have they helped your efforts to grow your blog?

If you’re not familiar with any social media sites in your niche, see our categorized list of social media and social networking sites to see if you can find anything that may be of use to you.

There is a great deal of variety in the sites that are featured (hopefully the categorization helps to make it more useful). Some are social media sites with user submitted links and voting to see which links get promoted to the front page (Digg-style), and others are intended to allow people with common interests to connect in various ways.

Here is a listing of the sites that were just added. Be sure to visit the list of social media and social networking sites for more.

Bookmarking:

Jack of All Links

Mister Wong

Cars and Auto:

Car Community

Dating:

BachelorPlace

Education:

Curriki

We the Teachers

Fashion/Clothing:

Springleap – T-shirts

General Networking:

ECpod

MyWebProfile

Plaxo

Health/Medical:

DrConnected

Sanewire – recovery

Internet Marketing:

Gooruze

Movies:

Reelempire

News:

BookmarkUs.net

Mad or Love

Zoomit (Canada)

Photo Sharing:

eSnips

Professional:

CitiAlly

MyCareer.ge

Naymes

Venture Capitalist Network

Sports:

KeeCricket

Prep Champs (high school sports)

Strands

Travel:

TrekCafe

Miscellaneous:

Clubnet UK – clubbing

Freagle

GreekStrength – fraternities and sororities

Match A Dream

Scoop.at – Austria

Sydney Networkers

Velospace – Bicycles

• Week One
• Week Two
• Week Three

Throughout the first three weeks of this series we’ve taken a look at the process of setting your goals with social media, getting involved at some targeted sites, building a network of social media users, brainstorming ideas, and publishing your first content to target a social media audience. At this point hopefully you’ve had some success with social media, although it does take some time, so try to stay patient if things haven’t gone exactly as planned. Now our focus turns to refining the process and focusing on the big picture.

1. Continue to Visit Your Targeted Social Media Sites Each Day

If you’ve been reading through this series, you know that I feel it’s very important to be active at the social media sites that you’re specifically targeting. Being active is essential to understanding the users of the site and to build your own network. After you’ve been using the sites for a while and you’ve established some consistent success with social media marketing, you may want to cut back a little bit on your usage of the sites, but it’s important to still have an active presence.

2. Continue to Network

For those who are hoping to build a strong social media presence, the need for networking will never end. Keep meeting new people through social media sites and through blogs, and work on strengthening the connections you’ve already made. Everyone who is successful with social media marketing is well-connected.

3. Focus on the Details

Throughout this series, we’ve looked at the process of creating content specifically for the purpose of targeting social media users. We’ve focused on finding the right sites to target and on creating content that has a chance to do well with social media. At this point it’s helpful to look more at some of the specific details of the posts you’ve created with the purpose of targeting social media.

A lot of different factors can influence the success of a post with social media. In order to maximize your success you’ll need to focus on some specific details of the post, such as the time of publishing and submission, formatting of the post, headlines, etc. At this point you’ve probably published a few posts in the past month, so take a look at the posts and see how they could be improved to be more appealing to social media users.

In order to test things and see what works, try mixing things up in terms of when you publish and how you format the posts. Pay attention to the results to see what works best for you. In most cases you’ll find that publishing early in the week will work best, and formatting posts to be easily scannable is important.

4. Look Back at Your Goals from Week One

The very first step of this whole process was to decide specifically what you wanted to accomplish with social media. Maybe you wanted more subscribers to your blog, or maybe you wanted to gain exposure to a wider audience and work on developing a brand. At this point it’s helpful to go back and look at your original purpose. Has your work through the past four weeks helped you to get closer to achieving this?

It’s possible that through your first month of experience with social media marketing, you may have realized that your initial impressions and assumptions were off and what you set out to accomplish may not be the best approach to take. If this is the case, now is the time to re-evaluate your priorities with social media and focus on developing a sustainable plan to get you there. I’m sure you’ve learned a lot through being active for the past four weeks, so be sure that you allow yourself the flexibility to adjust your priorities and your goals as necessary.

5. Focus on Sustainability

Now that you have gone through the process of jumping in to social media marketing for the past month, you’ll need to develop a plan that you’ll be able to carry out successfully over a longer period of time. You’ll want to think about the social media sites that you have been targeting. Do you still feel that they are the best platforms to promote your site? If not, don’t be afraid to change things up and move your activity to other sites.

Think about your schedule and how much time you’ll realistically be able to spend on social media sites and developing content to target these users. There’s no right or wrong approach to posting schedules, but it’s important to have some sort of plan or schedule if you hope to be able to sustain the success on a longer term.

Conclusion

I hope this series has been helpful for those of you who were looking for some step-by-step content for getting started and improving results with social media. If you have questions or if you would like to see any part of the process covered in more detail, please leave a comment.

• Week One
• Week Two

Last week we looked at the process of developing a blog post for the purpose of targeting specific social media audiences. This week we’ll look at a few steps that will help to determine how successful we were and to build on that.

1. Continue to Use Your Targeted Social Media Sites Everyday

This is the same as the first step from week two, so there’s not a whole lot I need to go into here. Basically, in order to have a strong presence on your targeted social media sites, you need to be consistently active. Set aside a little bit of time each day to vote, comment, submit, and add friends.

2. Analyze Last Week’s Post

The steps from last week included publishing and promoting a post. Now it’s time to take a look at the stats and see how successful we were. Of course, there are some obvious stats you can look at, such as overall unique visitors, total pageviews, number of visitors from social media sites, etc. But don’t forget to also look at some other numbers, such as growth in subscribers and inbound links (you can track your blog’s Technorati rank over time to see an increase in in-bound links).

Remember the stats can only tell part of the story. In the first week of this series, our very first step was to decide what you wanted from social media. When you’re analyzing your results it’s easy to get distracted by numbers, but you must not lose focus of what is most important to you. For example, say that your priority is to increase exposure and branding, not so much about the number of visitors you receive. In this case you may want to gauge your success based on factors like links and mentions from other blogs, mentions on Twitter, and comments on your own blog as well as on social media sites.

Remember that it takes time to get results with social media. Simply creating one post that targets this audience is not enough to get serious results. An effecive social media campaign needs to involve an ongoing plan to help you reach your goals.

3. Learn Something New

During the first two weeks, we spent some time on the targeted social media sites with the intent of learning more about the site’s audience, what they like and what causes them to respond. This information was used along with your brainstorming to develop the content that was published last week. Now it’s time to learn something from your first hand experience.

Did the social media audience respond to your post in the way that you thought they would? You can evaluate the number of votes you got, the comments that were left by users, and the amount of visitors you received. On your first attempt you can’t expect everything to go exactly as planned, so take the opportunity to learn something from your experience that you can use for your future efforts.

If things didn’t go the way you had hoped, try to identify where the post came up short. Was it the content of the post itself? The formatting? The title? The title and description used on the social media sites? The profile of the submitter? A lack of a network to get votes? Once you can identify some weak points, you now have an area to focus on for the next attempt.

4. Continue to Network

From my experience, the two most important factors in social media success are 1) the content itself, and 2) the network of the blogger or the submitter (or both). Your network can consist of friends and contacts that you requeest votes from, your regular readers that are interested in voting for your content, and your friends on social media sites.

Keep making efforts to get to know other bloggers in your niche and keep working on building contacts with other users of your targeted social media sites. Well-connected bloggers are successful bloggers.

5. Think About Scheduling

As I said earlier, a social media campaign requires on-going work. Because these posts take time to develop, it’s important to think about your post schedule, how often you want to publish new content, and how often you want to make a push with social media. There’s no right or wrong approach to posting frequency, but for building results with social media you should be posting at least somewhat frequently. I would recommend at least a few times per week, with maybe one post per week, or one post every two weeks, for targeting social media.

When you’re working on your own posting plan be realistic about how much time you have available and how long it will take to develop quality content. It’s important not to rush so much so that the quality of posts drops below what is likely to get results from social media users.

6. Continue to Brainstorm and Refine Your Ideas

In the first week we took some time to brainstorm ideas for potential posts. As you continue to learn more by being involved at your targeted social media sites, and from your own experience with your posts, you will continue to get a better idea of what is likely to draw results.

Set aside some time to continue brainstorming for post ideas. If you’re going to be publishing content consistently, you’ll need to have a steady flow of ideas. Also, go through the ideas on your list from previous weeks and analyze them based on what you are currently learning about your targeted social media sites. You may find that some of these ideas are not perfect, but you may be able to tweak or refine them in some way that will make them more useful

Looking Ahead:

Next week will be the final edition to the series, so we’ll take a deeper look at setting yourself up for long-term results.

In effort to make this series as practical and usable as possible, the activities for each week will be broken down into specific steps that should be taken. This week we’ll focus on taking action and moving towards that first successful social media post. So let’s start week two’s activities.

1. Continue to Use Your Targeted Social Media Sites Everyday

Last week we talked about the need to target a few specific social media sites rather than just taking a general approach. The reason for this is that as a new social media marketer you will need to be very active at these sites in order to maximize your results, and it’s just not possible to be active everywhere.

Since you should already have your targeted sites chosen, you’ll now need to continue to visit them on a daily basis and become an active user. Vote for submissions that you like, leave comments on submissions, add friends, and even submit some items if you find any that would be appropriate for that particular site.

As a new user, it’s best to submit items from sites other than your own at first. If active users notice a new account that has started submitting his or her own content right away and not really been active in other ways, it throws up a big red flag.

The goal here is to be truly social and get integrated into the communities of your targeted sites. Each social media will have its own community, and in order to help your chances for success, you’ll need to be useful member of the community.

You don’t need to spend hours at these sites each day, but set aside at least a little bit of time to start to build a profile. As you’re on these sites each day, continue to pay attention to the types of content that are doing well and to the content that is not doing well. You may want to subscribe to some RSS feeds from your targeted sites to save yourself some time. Knowing how an audience will likely react to a submission is a huge part of the process.

2. Take One Idea from Your Brainstorm and Develop a Post

At the end of week one we looked at the need to brainstorm for ideas of content that you could use to target social media audiences. By now you should have a better idea of what types of content are getting results for others, so you’ll want to take that into consideration as you choose the first idea to develop. Of course, you don’t want to copy the ideas that others have had success with, but you want to pay attention to the type of content. For example, you may see that users of a particular social media site tend to vote for resource lists, controversial articles, or some other specific type of content.

Before you start to write the post or put the content together, take some time to plan out the post to make sure that it is well thought out. I like to outline posts before writing as it helps me to get end results that are more thorough and organized.

As you’re developing the content, don’t skimp on time. It’s better to put in twice as much time and actually get positive results than it is to rush through it and wind up with something that doesn’t generate much interest. Especially at first, you’ll need to create something that is exceptional to get the best results.

Pay attention to formatting and layout of the post. Regardless of the type of content, make sure that it is easily readable and scannable. Use plenty of whitespace, short paragraphs, headers and sub-headers, bold text, lists, and anything else that will make it easier for visitors to quickly read the content. Formatting has much more of an impact on social media users than you may realize.

Also, using photos really tends to help with content that targets social media. You can either buy stock photos at sites like iStockphoto or StockXpert, or browse through Creative Commons photos at Flickr.

Another important issue that deserves plenty of attention and consideration is the post title. Titles can make or break the success of a post, so don’t just give it the first title that comes to your mind. This is another area where it is helpful to observe what types of titles are drawing results at your targeted social media sites.

For more details on creating content that will draw results, see How to Target Social Media with Specific Posts.

3. Publish and Submit to Your Targeted Sites

Once your post is ready and it has been proofread for mistakes, you’ll need to decide on a time for publishing. Timing can play a factor in terms of how many readers will see it and how much exposure it will get with social media. Typically, the weekends will draw less traffic, and Monday through Thursday will be the best days for getting exposure.

Personally, I recommend publishing this content Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. If you’re able to achieve success with a social media site the traffic will usually last for a few days before tailing off. If you’re able to get that success early in the week you’ll have time to benefit from its peak before the weekend when the numbers will decrease faster. However, there are some benefits to posting on the weekend that can be considered, such as the reduced competition.

Once you’ve published the content you’ll need to get it submitted to your targeted social media sites. Some sites, such as Digg, tend to look down on self submissions, so you may want to consider asking a friend to do it for you. At most sites however, you can submit your own content and it won’t be an issue.

Many established blogs do not worry about getting their content submitted because someone will do it anyway, but for newer bloggers who don’t have much of an established audience are unlikely to get their content submitted to social media if they don’t give it a boost themselves.

4. Give it a Push

You’ve now taken the time to target the right social media sites, study the types of content that do well, use that knowledge to craft your own content, and published and submitted the content. However, the job isn’t done yet. In order to get anywhere, you’ll need to get people to see your content or it will get no votes.

It’s important to consider that social media votes come from a few different sources. Some social media users will see content on the upcoming page and vote for what they like. Other votes will come for visitors on the website or blog itself. For example, sometimes I put Sphinn buttons on my posts here at Traffikd, and some of the readers see the button and give it a Sphinn (I do recommend using one or two buttons on your posts for your targeted social media sites). Other votes may come from requests made to other social media users. Most major social media sites have a method for allowing users to share requests, such as Digg’s shout feature, but this is also done by email and IM by a lot of people.

To help your content out and give it the best chance for receiving votes, consider sending a request to your friends that are social media users, but be aware that this can be a touchy situation. It’s a very common practice among bloggers and social media users, but not everyone appreciates it. My recommendation is to use your knowledge of your contacts that you know pretty well.

You probably have a good idea about who would be interested in helping you in this way, and who may be uninterested. Limit your requests to those that you know well, and don’t bombard them with requests. It’s always a good idea to offer to vote for their requests as well  if they want to send them to you. If you have several friends who are interested in helping out, you may want to set up a group where everyone can help each other when votes are needed.

5. Watch Your Stats

In order to improve your results with future posts that target social media, you’ll need to know what worked and what didn’t. Pay attention to your stats. See where your traffic came from, how long people stayed on the site, how many pages they visited, how many subscribers you gained, etc. Stats can’t tell you the whole story, but especially at first they’re necessary to know if you’re on the right track or not.

6. Have Patience

Ok, this isn’t really a step, but it’s something that needs to be said. Even if you do everything right and you create a great blog post, it’s possible that you won’t get the results that you want. Especially for small blogs that don’t have much of an established audience, achieving success with social media is a challenge. If it doesn’t work on your first try, don’t get discouraged. Just learn what you can from your experience and keep trying and tweaking your approach as needed.

Looking Ahead

At this point in the series you’ve now started to establish your presence on your targeted social media sites and you’re working towards achieving your first success. Next week we’ll look at what you can do to build on this and to take it from a one-time thing to something that has more lasting results.

As more and more bloggers and website owners turn to social media as one of their major promotional methods, the need to understand Social Media Marketing becomes even more important. I put this post together in effort to help those who are new to social media, or those who simply want to get better results. If you have suggestions for questions that should be included, please leave a comment.

What is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?

SMM involves promoting content in various ways to social media users, in attempt to increase traffic and exposure. SMM can involve developing content that targets social media users, building a network of other users, requesting votes from others, and anything else that involves getting votes and traffic from social media websites.

What is the difference between SMM and Social Media Optimization?

The term Social Media Optimization usually doesn’t include the act of promoting content through such methods as requesting votes. SMO involves creating the right content and setting a website up to be friendly to social media users, but doesn’t go as far in terms of promoting the content.

Can I submit my own content to social media sites?

Almost all social media sites allow users to submit their own content. The bigger issue here is the reaction from the audience of the social media site and any unwritten rules that may exist. Digg users, for example, are known for not appreciating self submissions. StumbleUpon users often also look down on someone submitting or giving a thumbs up to their own content. Most smaller social media sites, including those that target a specific niche, have audiences that welcome self submissions.

How many social media sites should I use?

While there are hundreds, if not thousands, of social media sites out there, it’s impossible to use them all. Generally, it’s more effective to use a small number (I recommend 2 to 5) actively, and if you want to have accounts at other sites that you use ocassionally, that’s fine. Because part of being a successful social media user involves building a profile and a reputation at the site, it is much more realistic to achieve this when you’re using a small number of sites consistently. (See our categorized list of social media sites.)

Should I vote for someone else’s content when they send me a request?

Requesting votes is a common practice among social media users, and there’s likely to be a time when you want to request votes from others. Whether you request votes or vote for the suggestions of others is up to you, but be sure to treat others as you would like to be treated. If you expect others to vote for your requests, it’s a good idea to reciprocate. Of course, you should not vote for everything just because someone asks. Part of building a strong profile involves submitting and voting for quality content, not junk. When someone sends you a request for a vote, pay attention to the content and make your decision accordingly.

How can I use social media to build links?

There are basically two different ways to build links with social media. First, by submitting your content (or having someone else do it for you) you may be gaining a quality inbound link from the social media site itself. However, some social media sites use nofollow tags on links to discourage spam submissions. The second, and more effective, way to build links through social media is to develop excellent content that creates a lot of buzz with social media and will encourage other bloggers and website owners to link to you. Social media sites are an excellent platform for added exposure that will lead to more links.

Why does traffic from social media websites convert poorly?

Users of social media sites are generally arriving at your site just because they want to see what content is hot or popular with other users of the site. In most cases they have no interest in buying products or clicking on ads, that doesn’t fit into their purpose for using the social media site in the first place. Another factor is their attention span. Since social media sites provide such a high quantity of links and content, it’s very easy for social media users to leave your site and move on to the next option.

If social media traffic converts poorly, why is it worth my time?

If your intent is to directly sell products (or something similar) it probably is not worth your time. In this case there are other things you could be doing with your time that would likely create better results. However, in most cases social media marketing is worth your time because of the exposure, name recognition and branding opportunities that it presents. In addition, it doesn’t cost anything to promote content with social media (unless you hire someone for this purpose), and there are other benefits, such as increased search engine traffic through link building, and the opportunity to gain new subscribers.

Why do I need to add “friends”?

Many social media sites include a friends feature that allows users to connect. Social media is after all “social”, and building a network of other users and a stronger profile for yourself will lead to more influence. Many “power users” of social media get tons of votes for their submissions because they have so many friends, and those friends are more likely to see their submissions and to vote for them.

How can a network help me with social media marketing?

Other users who are a part of your network will be more likely to vote for your content or your submissions when they see them. People like helping others that they know and like, so being well-connected can lead to a lot of other users that are eager and willing to help you. Additionally, many social media users request votes for their submissions or for their content. In this case, having a large network of other users can lead to more votes.

Should I add those voting buttons/widgets to my website or blog?

Voting buttons and widgets can be effective, but they are also used in excess by some people. If you’re going to use voting buttons, stick to using just a few (one or two preferably) for the sites that you want to target the most. Using too many different buttons makes each of them less effective. They tend to drown each other out, and visitors don’t know which ones are most important for you. Giving less choices can lead to more success with those that you target, plus it results in a blog with less clutter.

What are niche social media sites?

Some social media site, such as Digg, include content that covers all different kinds of topics. These are general social news sites. Niche social media sites are create to showcase a specific type of content, rather than focusing on general news in all different kinds of categories. As a result, niche social media sites can result in visitors that are highly targeted and more likely to be interested in the content, although their audiences will be smaller than the major social news sites.

What are the biggest social media sites?

Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Yahoo Buzz, and Delicious are some of the leading major social media sites.

What are the best social media sites for newbies?

StumbleUpon is an excellent source of traffic for new blogs and websites because it doesn’t require a large network or a lot of votes to get decent results (see 7 Reaons StumbleUpon is a New Bloggers Best Friend). Niche social media sites are also a good place to start because they are generally easier to have success with as compared to major social media sites (many niche sites might only require 5 or so votes to become “popular”, while it may take 200 or more with Digg).

Is it ok to ask for social media votes?

Asking for votes is a very common practice, but there are some basic rules of etiquette that you should follow. First, only ask for votes if you’re open to receiving requests from others. Second, only ask for votes from people that you know, otherwise it will come off as being spam. Third, don’t over do it. Nobody wants to receive requests from the same person constantly. Fourth, only request votes on quality content. In my opinion, it’s best to “save” your requests for times when they will have significant impact. That way you’re more likely to get the votes when you request them, and you’ll have some control that will help to promote your best content.

How can I get started with social media?

the best thing to do is to be active. Pick a few sites that are well-suited to your interests or to the content that you want to promote, and be active everyday. Vote for others, leave comments, add friends, and submit content. For a more detailed look at the subject, I recently started a four-part series, 28 Days to Improved Results with Social Media.

How much traffic can I expect to get from social media?

The amount of traffic you can get is all over the place. You may get nothing, or you may get 100,000 plus visitors. Generally, major social media sites are capable of sending several thousand visitors, while smaller social media sites may send a few hundred or less. While this traffic is significant, it’s not the end of the story. Pages that draw a lot of inbound links are also likely to rank well in search engines, which can lead to tons of on-going traffic as well.

How much time should I spend on social media sites?

How much time you spend is up to you and what you want to accomplish. If you’re using social media primarily for fun and for connecting with others, there’s nothing wrong with being on these sites a lot. However, if your main purpose with social media is to promote a website or blog you should limit the time you spend. Other activities like content development and site management should not be sacrificed due to the time you spend on social media sites. Generally, you may need to use social media sites a little bit more at first in order to get familiar with the site, its users, and to build a profile. But later you should be able to cut back on the amount of time that you spend, but still be active on a regular basis.

There are so many different social media sites, how can I keep up?

You’ll never be able to keep up with all of them, so don’t try to. Instead, find a few that you like and that are well-suited to the type of content that you want to promote, and just focus on them. You may want to use other sites occasionally, but dedicate most of your time and effort with social media to a few specific sites. This way you’ll get better results with the sites that are most relevant, rather than spreading yourself too thin and getting poor results with all social media sites.

Are small social media sites worth the time?

Some are, some aren’t. There are some smaller social media sites, niche sites in particular, that have very strong and targeted audiences. Although the amount of exposure and traffic that you receive will be less than you could potentially receive from the major social media sites, it can still be a very valuable resource. Additionally, they’re easier to have success with than major social media sites, because there is less competition. Some social media sites, however, have such a small audience that it’s just not worth your time. If you’re getting items to the font page and only getting 10 visitors, it’s probably not worth the effort.

What can a social media consultant do for me?

There are a number of different things that a social media consultant can do for you. They may help you to develop an overall strategy for using social media to effectively promote your site. They may help you to determine what types of content you could use to target social media users that would be relevant to your site. They may actually write the content for you. And, they may also help with promoting the content and getting votes for you.

How long do the effects of social media last?

Most social media sites will send a surge of traffic that may last from a few hours to a few days. At that point the traffic will trickle away and things will be back to normal with a few days. StumbleUpon is the one notable exception here, as it tends to send traffic a little bit slower but will last longer. The indirect effect of social media success can last for a very long time if you’re able to use social media to build links and generate on-going search engine traffic. Another effect that can’t accurately be measured is the exposure that comes as a result of social media.

Why are Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization often mentioned together?

Many SEO experts also offer SMM services, and in most cases it is primarily for the purpose of link building. Search engine rankings are heavily influenced by inbound links, and one of the best ways to build links is to leverage social media.

How much of my content should target social media?

Many bloggers develop content with the specific purpose of targeting a social media audience, and this is a big part of improving your results. However, it’s generally not a good idea to publish all content with the purpose of generating traffic from social media. If you’re hoping to build a blog that will be successful long-term you’ll need to be able to satisfy your regular readers and subscribers. For more information, see Practical Tips for Targeting Social Media Users AND Satisfying Your Readers.

Why are the biggest and most popular blogs always on the front page of social media sites?

There’s no doubt that established blogs have a decided advantage over small blogs when it comes to social media. In some cases, all the largest blogs need to do is add a voting button to their pages, and with the amount of traffic they get it’s easy to rack up a lot of votes. Smaller blogs don’t have the existing audience to easily get votes from, so they have to rely on getting votes from their network, getting their posts submitted by influential users, funneling traffic from other sources, or any other way that they can get votes. This doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for small blogs to be successful, it just means that they have to be more resourceful. See the Small Blogger’s Guide to Social Media Marketing for a more detailed look at the subject.

Why does it matter who submits an item to a social media site?

Many social media sites, Digg in particular, place a great deal of weight in the profile of the submitter. if the user that is submitting an item has lots of friends and an established reputation, the item will almost always get more votes than it would if the average user submitted it. The item being submitted is benefiting from the strong profile that the user has developed over time.

Where can I learn more about Social Media Marketing?

One of the best things you can do is to subscribe to blogs that cover topics related to social media on a regular basis. A few weeks ago I posted 35+ Internet Marketing Blogs that are Worth Your Attention, and that list includes a section for blogs that focus on social media. You can also subscribe to Traffikd since social media is the focus here.

Should I specifically target social media users with my blog posts?

If your goal involves getting more traffic from social media, yes. Most blogs that do well with social media take this audience into consideration when they are developing content. As you use your favorite social media sites, pay attention to the types of content that draw the best results, and the titles that people are using to attract attention. There are a several different types of content that tend to work well with social media, including breaking news, controversial content, video, and resource lists. Content that is meant to appeal to social media users is much more likely to attract votes.

I’m submitting my posts everywhere. Why am I getting no traffic?

Most content is not well-suited to be submitted everywhere. Doing so can cause users of these sites to see your submissions as spam, and they’ll never achieve success this way. Rather than spending a lot of time submitting your content all over the place, spend that time developing the best content possible and building a strong presence at a few choice social media sites. Once this is accomplished you should have much better results.

How can I make money with social media?

Social media sites aren’t intended to be a money making opportunity for users. Instead, they exist to all users to connect and to share content that they think others will like. It is possible to make money indirectly through social media by leveraging social media to help you build a stronger, more successful website or blog. Additionally, you could offer some type of service that relates to social media, such as consulting.

Suggestions

What other questions do you think should be included?

While social media marketing and optimization provides an incredible opportunity for website owners who want to make a big impact without spending a lot of money to advertise, using social media with the wrong approach can easily result in a lot of wasted time, and in some cases it can even do more harm than good.

I’ve had a few requests from readers who wanted a step-by-step guide for marketing a site with social media, so I’ve decided to put together a small series of posts that will explain the approach I would recommend to those who are looking for better results.

The focus of the series is to break down the steps that are necessary in order to get a blog or a website noticeable results within a month. There will be four parts to the series and each will look at the steps that should be taken in a particular week.

The activities of each week will be broken down into specific action steps that can be taken regardless of the content or niche of your blog. Additionally, I’m assuming that readers don’t have endless amounts of time, so each week’s activities are very realistic.

The idea here is to create a basic plan that anyone cal follow for real results. New bloggers can use it to get their blog off the ground quickly, and others who have been around for a while can use it to start getting the results they’ve been after for a while. Let’s get started.

Week One:

For the first week it’s important that we establish a strong foundation for the efforts that will be taking place in future weeks. If you compromise and rush through these activities, chances are your results will suffer. There’s not a whole lot of exciting action taking place at first, but it’s necessary to get things moving in the right direction.

1. Decide What You Want from Social Media

The first thing that you should do is to come up with a specific idea of exactly what it is you hope to gain from social media. In most cases we associate SMM with generating a lot of traffic, but traffic in itself is worth very little. Ideally, this traffic will be converted into something useful, such as subscribers, inbound links, branding, name recognition, or even sales (of course, some things are more difficult to accomplish than others).

Without know exactly what you hope to accomplish you’ll be unlikely to accomplish anything significant. Everyone’s approach and reasons for marketing a site are different, so there’s not a right or wrong answer, you just need to know what you are working towards. Take a little bit of time to think about your own situation if you’re not already certain about what you want to accomplish.

2. Pick Two or Three Social Media Sites to Target

One of the biggest reasons for failure with social media marketing is being spread too thin. If you try to use a whole bunch of different social media sites, you’re unlikely to get decent results with any of them. My advice is to pick one or two of the major social media sites to target (StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Delicious, etc.) and one or two niche sites or smaller second-tier media sites (like Mixx).

Most people tend to gravitate towards Digg because of its popularity and reputation. I don’t suggest targeting Digg unless you have a lot of time to spend building a profile or a large and well-established network of friends that use Digg. My recommendation is to make StumbleUpon your first priority with the major social media sites, and pick one or two niche sites (if they exist in your niche).

StumbleUpon is much better than Digg for the average blogger, because Digg is all or nothing. If you’re not on the front page with Digg, it’s not going to do anything significant for you. On the other hand, StumbleUpon has big potential, similar to Digg, but there’s also a middle ground for pages that can still produce considerable results, unlike Digg.

With StumbleUpon it only takes a few thumbs up to get some decent traffic, and the algorithm loves new sites. Each time a StumbleUpon user gives a thumbs up to a particular site, it will gradually have less and less impact. As a result, new sites can fairly easily get a lot of traffic because everyone that gives a thumbs up to one of its pages is doing so for the first time, and that carries more weight with the algorithm.

Additionally, StumbleUpon has so many different categories that anything can have a home there. Digg and some other major social news sites have a lot of different categories, but not nearly as many as StumbleUpon.

3. Start to Use These Sites Everyday

Once you have you targeted sites identified, create accounts if you haven’t already. Get in the habit of visiting these sites every day. Visit the items that are listed there, vote for what you like, leave comments if that is an option, and add some “friends” and interact with other users. Some sites, like StumbleUpon, have toolbars or other useful resources that can be used to make it easier. Take advantage of what is available.

At first, don’t worry about submitting a lot of content or getting traffic to your own site. The most important thing is to get involved at your targeted social media sites, make yourself visible by voting and commenting, and pay attention to the types of content that are generating a lot of interest. If you do submit items right away, it’s usually best to submit content from other sites at first, rather than submitting your own the moment you join the social media site.

As you’re visiting these targeted social media sites, evaluate the popular content for the following items:

• Content type and subject matter
• Headlines/titles
• Who submitted it?
• How many votes are required to become “popular”?
• Is “popular” content being self-submitted (person owning the website is submitting his/her own content)?
• What type of comments are being left?

Getting to know the sites you are targeting is critical to your success. Without knowing the audience, what they like, and what is appropriate to market there, you will just be throwing out blind submissions, and loyal users of the sites may even feel like you’re spamming if your submissions aren’t in line with what usually happens there.

As you’re using these social media sites, try to pay attention to see if your blogging friends or others in your niche are using the same sites. If so, there should be opportunities where you could help each other to promote content. It may even be a good idea to get in touch with other bloggers in your niche to ask them if they’re using the same social media sites, and send a link to your profile. Building a network of other users can help you at any social media site.

4. Brainstorm for Post Ideas

The last thing that you should do during your first week is to start brainstorming for post ideas that would target the audiences of these specific social media sites. Since you’ve spent some time this week getting familiar with the sites and their users, paying attention to the content that has done well, you should be able to apply this knowledge to come up with some post ideas of your own.

Ideally, you’ll want to find some topics that will generate interest for social media audiences, but will still be highly relevant for your blog and help you to work towards your goals. In other words, don’t go way off subject just to create content that will appeal to social media users if it has nothing to do with the topic of your blog.

Dedicate some time to just coming up with lots of ideas, don’t worry about writing the content at this point. For more on brainstorming, see 3 Ways to Develop Unique Blog Post Ideas, and Idea Development: The Most Important Phase in Social Media Marketing.

Next week I’ll post the second part of the series and we’ll get into some more details about creating content and starting to see results.

I get a lot of emails and questions from bloggers and website owners who want to know what they can do to improve their results with social media right away. When it comes to building traffic with social media, the results can happen quickly, but they can also take a long time to build up. Yes, you may be able to achieve some success here or there by chance, but to reach the point where you get any kind of consistent results you need to have a plan and an understanding of how social media works.

Fortunately, there are some things that you can do right away that can have a considerable impact on your level of success with social media. In this post we’ll take a look at ten of them. Pick a few that look appealing to you and put them into action if you’re looking for better and quicker results.

1. Brainstorm for Post Ideas

I’ve written before that idea development is the most important phase of social media marketing. Professional link baiters and social media marketers put a great deal of thought into the content that they’re developing. Most bloggers who are using social media to promote their blog give the post topics a little bit of thought, but for the best results you should make brainstorming and idea development a major part of your blogging process.

If you’re looking for immediate results with social media, you could be just one idea away. Take 30 minutes with a notebook and a pen and do nothing but jot down ideas for potential posts. Make it your goal to come up with so many post ideas that you’ll only be able to ever pursue the very best ones. Once the brainstorming session is done you can get started on creating the content and you could be hours or days away from a great deal of traffic and exposure.

2. Focus on Quality not Quantity

Do you put pressure on yourself to publish a new post everyday or on some other tight schedule? If so, you may be doing more harm than good. Rather than trying to churn out a high quantity of posts, take more time on each post and publish less. If you’re looking for a big hit with social media, why spend so much time writing posts each day that aren’t drawing results? Put your other posts off for a while so you can focus on creating the best content possible that is targeted to a social media audience.

3. Find a Niche Social Media Site

There are so many social media sites now that niche sites exist for just about any topic your blog could cover. Niche sites are great if you are looking for a place to have an immediate impact. Most of them will only require a small number of votes to get your content featured, something that is much more attainable than reaching the front page of Digg.

In addition to being easier, niche sites provide a more targeted audience for your content, and the audience will be more receptive to types of content that won’t do well at major social media sites.

4. Stop Wasting Time on Too Many Social Media Sites

Are you using a number of different social media sites consistently? It’s important to be able to build a presence or a profile at social media sites in order to help your chances of success, and this is impossible to do at too many sites. Rather than spreading yourself thin by voting and submitting at a lot of social media sites, pick a few that are well-suited towards you blog on focus on them.

5. Focus on Post Formatting and Readability

Your posts will have a much better chance with social media if they’re easy to read/scan and pleasing to the eyes. Although most blog readers tend to scan instead of reading word-for-word, social media visitors are even much less likely to read an entire post. In order to cater to them, your posts should be created with this in mind. Use short paragraphs, sub headers, whitespace, bold text, lists, etc.

In addition to these text formatting issues, it also helps to include pictures and images in your posts to make them more interesting for readers. That’s something I rarely do here, but I do it at my other blogs all the time and it does help.

Before publishing your next post, take a few minutes to preview it and format it as well as possible.

6. Add Voting Buttons to Your Blog

I used to be opposed to voting buttons/widgets/links on blogs, but before too long I came to realize that they can work in the right situation. The wrong way to use buttons is to include tons of them for every social media site you think might be used by your visitors. This approach leads to a cluttered blog and the buttons have little impact because they drown each other out and because visitors don’t know which ones you really want them to use.

Rather than including too many buttons, choose the sites that matter most to you, and hopefully those that are used by your visitors, and put them somewhere on your posts. On my primary blog I have a Design Float button at the bottom of every post, along with a link that counts the number of Delicious bookmarks and allows readers to add to their own bookmarks. Both draw good results because they are well-targeted to my audience.

Add a button or two to your posts and you may see a quick boost in votes and traffic.

7. Vote for Others

Many bloggers that are trying to promote their content with social media are not very active at voting for the content of others. In order to be a part of the community, start voting for more content from others. If you’re not voting for others, it’s possible that people will notice that and it will reflect poorly on your intentions. More importantly, it’s the right thing to do since social media is all about the community and not about the individual. Start voting more for others and you’re likely to see it come back to you.

8. Take Advantage of Available Resources

Blogging and social media can take up a lot of time. In order to be successful and not spend your entire life in front of the computer, efficiency and time management are critical. There are a number of existing tools and resources that can help to improve your productivity. For starters, see the lists of Firefox add-ons for social media users and for bloggers.

Make an effort to streamline your process and you should see the immediate results of having more time to spend on your work, and you’ll probably be more effective as well.

9. Join or Start a Group for Voting

This may not be something you hear from a lot of bloggers, but the truth is that most social media marketers are a part of some type of group that votes for each other. It can be either a formally managed group or just informal emails or IMs from one friend to another. If you’re aware of an existing group, see if you can join. If you’re not aware of any groups, consider reaching out to a few fellow bloggers in your niche to see if they would be interested in being part of an informal group.

Whichever path you choose here, always be careful of what you are voting for. Regardless of whether you’re in a group or not, what you vote for can and will have an impact on your profile and reputation at social media sites. If something isn’t up to par, don’t vote for it just because you’re part of a group.

If you’re looking for quick results this is one of your best options.

10. Follow Some Experts on Twitter

Twitter is becoming more and more important for connecting with other bloggers and for promoting your own work.  The best way to learn about Twitter and understand how it can be used is to follow some leading bloggers and marketers. Many bloggers are now posting links to their Twitter profiles on their blogs (mine is here), so it should be pretty easy to find some leaders in your niche. Twitter is capable of creating quick buzz about one of your posts.