Part 4 – How to leverage social bookmarking to drive traffic to your website

part 4 of your training series on how to leverage social bookmarking to drive traffic to your website. Presuming that you’ve already begun to see a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon and MySpace, we’re going to look at another major social book marking site – Twitter – and how you can tap it for traffic.

Tapping Twitter for Traffic

If you haven’t tried Twitter yet, you’ll soon see why you should sign up there. Twitter is a very rapidly growing social bookmarking site and everyone’s excited about it. Quick to sign up with and easy to manage. Twitter is an online community where members ‘twitter’ through ‘twits’ or short status messages. This could range from ‘I am off to the disco” or “I love the new iPod’ and stuff like that. Each twit can be 140 characters long. People on Twitter basically keep a track of or ‘follow’ what their friends and contacts are up to.

So How Can You Find Your Traffic On Twitter?

Twitter lets you add links in your twits. See how this link will bring traffic to your site? Your twits could be optimized headline after headline written creatively to communicate with your page visitors. Its as easy as that. Here are more things you can do and enjoy that huge traffic rush to your website:

Since Twitter is a social media website, you have to browse around and make the effort to connect with others. You can check to see who are already members from your own email lists and automatically add them as friends. You can also invite those who are not yet on Twitter. The more friends you have, the more people will see your twits on their home page.

You can enhance your chances of being seen by the millions of users on Twitter by adding a picture to your profile. You get to choose the pic and you can make sure it is something your contacts will want to see and act upon.

Being active is a big activity on any social bookmarking website and Twitter is no different. So long as you keep posting interesting info that appeals, you will be found and befriended. Nonparticipation is a no-no. Why not talk about Twitter on your blog and add a link to your Twitter profile?

Make use of available resources. You probably still think that it’s a tough job to multiply your ‘friends’ on Twitter. Why not use the Twitter Widget for WordPress on your blog? Not on WordPress? Sign up now! Or use the Twitter badges on your website and let your visitors see it and head there.

The idea is to connect with as many people as you possibly can and add them as friends. Check out the Top 100 list on Twitter and work from there. Keep track of what is happening on Twitter.

Social bookmarking is here to stay and its only a matter of knowing how you can get the most out of it. Most of all it is fun and it’s easy. Apart from building your lists, links and traffic, you also develop long-lasting relationships. In the concluding part of this training series, we’ll list some valuable tips that will help you optimize your social bookmarking campaign.