How to increase online exposure through social bookmarking

Are you having the exposure blues?

Do you write articles that few people read? It may be because they aren’t finding your article! Writing on your blog is not enough when you’re starting out. It’s important to spread the word.

Doing a little legwork after you write an article makes a large difference in the traffic you will get.

When you write a blog post, what happens?

Depending on the blogging platform you use (WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type to name a few), when you write a post, a few things happen:

Upon posting:

• Your sitemap will get updated
• Search engines and other websites will be notified of the update
• Your RSS feed will be updated
• Gremlins dance a jig around a cauldron of boiling yam juice and frog eyes

These processes will notify the search engines, but in order to increase your website’s exposure, there are a some websites you should submit your article to. After writing an article, take 5 more minutes and submit your site to bookmarking websites.

There’s a long list of social bookmarking services, but I’ll list a few here:

Some good places to start submitting articles:

• Digg.com — the largest social bookmarking site. From their website, Digg is “…a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users.”  Post your article to Digg here.
• StumbleUpon.com — Add your article to StumbleUpon, and be discovered by people looking for interesting content online. “Channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations.”
• Reddit.com — Submit and vote on your article. Similar to StumbleUpon, “reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web — personalized for you. Your votes train a filter, so let reddit know what you liked and disliked, because you’ll begin to be recommended links filtered to your tastes. All of the content on reddit is submitted and voted on by users like you. 

So when you’ve written your opus, and you want someone to find it, don’t leave traffic up to the search engines. Submit your article to multiple sites and watch as you get more users flowing in.

Long term effect

When you share your articles on these websites, you will experience an impact beyond the one-day increase in viewers.

• Receive hits from users searching these sites for your article topics
• Attract new readers who may decide to subscribe to your feed
• Expand the reach of your website beyond the search engines
• Increase exposure on the search engines
• Attract fans and meet an online community

So, when writing your next article, don’t post and forget. Post and submit it!  Plan on spending 5 minutes signing up and setting up each service, and another 2 minutes per article submission.