Social bookmarking is a term that is often defined as Web 2.0 because it has an online community atmosphere.  It is basically a site where people get to list their favorite sites for other people to see and the other people can comment on them and put in their two cents on the content of the bookmark.

Now the question is, how do you use social bookmarking to help your blog?

You use social bookmarking in a couple of ways.

1.)    To get your site indexed quickly as the video below will show you.

2.)    To get traffic to your site.

I have literally seen over 1,000 visitors in two days because of a site that was submitted to Stumbleupon.  You can actually see this in the case study for the blog that I am giving away at Blogging Beginners which is free, but below are a couple of screen captures that show  you the increase in traffic and where it came from.

A key point to remember is that you don’t want to submit only your sites to the social bookmarking sites.  You want to submit other good content as well so it doesn’t look like you are spamming the sites.

I use a couple of tools to submit to the social bookmarking sites the first one I use is Bookmarking Demon.  It is great because after you set it up not only can you submit to numerous sites quickly and easily but you can ping your pages in the sites.

Bookmarking Demon will let you add a bookmark to over 100 sites out of the box and you can easily add more as you find them, but I only have mine set to send to a little over 60 services.  The reason for this is there are a lot of services that use the Pligg script which is known to be susceptible to viruses and I avoid those services just on principal.  My computer is unlikely to be infected because I have all the proper software installed but why take the chance? Don’t worry, it comes with a comprehensive user guide that will tell you about all of this and even show you how to set up your linking campaigns.

Bookmarking Demon is what I used to get the post in the video above indexed and I highly recommend it to get your site indexed and get backlinks to your site.

The other tool I use is OnlyWire.  You can see this by mousing over the Bookmark and Share button below this post.  I highly recommend you put this plugin on your blogs because if I see a post I like I will use that button to submit your post to over 16 services.  But if I don’t see that button your post I still have a browser plugin that will let me submit any page I am on to multiple services.

Now why do I recommend using OnlyWire when I have already used the Bookmarking Demon?

It is because the Bookmarking Demon does a great job at getting me backlinks and getting the post indexed but there are three services that can get you a lot of traffic that Bookmarking Demon doesn’t do that well with.  They are StumbleUpon (as you saw above), Digg and Technorati.  These are the main services that I use OnlyWire for.

The combination of these two guarantees that my posts are indexed within 48 hours and I usually see at least a little traffic from them within 24 hours.

There is one more effective technique you can use for social bookmarking and that is to find a community of bloggers that have set up a social bookmarking group (like we have with Blogging Beginners) and you submit your site for bookmarking and if they like your post they bookmark it for you. Having your posts bookmarked by numerous people helps you get traffic and indexed.  But remember if you join one of these groups you need to actively participate in the group to get the most from it.

Overview:

Social bookmarking will get your site indexed quickly and bring traffic to your site.

Tools:

Bookmarking Demon – for quick and easy distribution of your posts to a LOT of social bookmarking sites.

OnlyWire – for quick distribution to a number of social bookmarking sites including the biggies, StumbleUpon, Digg and Technorati.

Social Groups – to submit a specific post to be bookmarked by numerous people.

It has been brought to my attention that I have never made a post on simply how to blog.

I actually thought I did but after reviewing the post on this blog I saw that I really didn’t cover the basics of how to blog.

Basically blogging is just writing that is shown on the internet for the whole world to see. That is all it is and to blog all you have to do is write.

The key is to (as Wizzer would say), “Do It Now!”

That’s right to get started just write, don’t worry about RSS, SEO, widgets, plugins or anything else just get your first post up and available for the world to see.

Why do I say the secret of how to blog is just getting that first post up there?

Simple a lot of people want to blog but they don’t have any idea what to blog about. Getting that first post up is a major step in blogging and it could be in a niche that will be profitable for you or is could just be about the weather but if you can’t make one post then you will have a hard time posting every week.

This doesn’t mean that you should blog about just anything, if you want a profitable blog you need to stick to subjects that people read but this can come later.

The key point is to get comfortable with writing a post. This can be on a free service like WordPress.com or you can install WordPress on your site.

Please note that I only recommend free services for getting started I don’t recommend them for running a profitable blog because of the limitations in what you can do, but for starting out the key thing is to get started.

The more post you write the better you will get at coming up with ideas and the more comfortable you will be at entering your posts on your blog.

Once you are comfortable creating post it is time to get serious, you need to find a topic that you are interested in that can be made profitable. This is called finding your niche.

Once you find a niche you like that you know people look for you can just start blogging and hope that you will turn up in the search engines or you can do some keyword research and target the keywords that people are searching to get targeted traffic to your blog. I have actually seen both ways work but if you the target the keywords people are searching for you will get visitors to your site much faster.

The reason that the just start blogging method will work is because if you create enough posts on any topic you are sure to cover some of the keywords people are searching for and this will get you some ranking in the search engines. But if you know your keywords and work on them you will find traffic coming to your site much, much faster.

With that said there are a couple of things that really contribute to the demise of a blog.

1. Burnout

2. Giving up

Burnout comes when you post constantly and you end up feeling obligated to post every single day or multiple times per day. This makes it seem like work instead of fun. Blogging should be fun! Yes, it is good to post everyday but if you get burnt out and stop posting will you still get traffic? That depends a lot on how the blog was set up, but we aren’t covering that here.

To avoid burnout write when you are inspired to write, this can be one post per day, one post per week or 20 posts in one day. When you have extra posts schedule those to be added to your blog in the future instead of posting them all in one day. This way you are covered if you feel like taking a day off.

Giving up, a lot of bloggers give up because they don’t see a lot of readers and think what they are doing is just a waste of time. I hate to say this, but it might be a waste of time in that niche or it could just be that you haven’t cracked the keywords that you need in the search engines yet.

They keep writing posts and when they look at their blog they don’t see comments and they don’t see sales through their affiliate links. This actually adds to the burnout because it is harder to write when you don’t think anyone is reading it.

But here a not so secret, all blogs start with very little traffic, very few readers and very few comments on the posts. From looking at my traffic stats I average about 1 comment for every 500 visitors and most of those are from regular readers. If you have done your homework for the niche and keywords you will end up with visitors sooner or later so just keep posting and use some of the other techniques to get traffic to your site.

How To Blog synopsis:

Do it now, get your first post up. Don’t worry about appearance or anything else that can come later.

Your topic should be something you love or at least like this will help you avoid burnout.

Once you are comfortable writing a blog you should do some niche research and keyword research but if you aren’t comfortable writing something for the whole world to see you probably shouldn’t be blogging.

Once you have found a niche you can work in it is time to actually set up your blog the right way and get your traffic from the search engines, social sites, RSS feeds and anywhere else you can get it from but the key on how to blog is to get your first post up for the world to see.

Just in case you haven’t noticed yet there are a lot of blogs out there and they are all looking for traffic.

Now the question is what should you be doing to get traffic to your blog or more precisely what should you be doing to keep traffic coming to your site consistently?

It is common sense that the more traffic you get to you blog the more known you become, the more known you become the more you can profit from your blog.

1) Pay Attention To Your Content

Like I pointed out in the post on Rock Star Blogging, your readers are your audience and your fans. They come to see your blog for a reason. The reason they come will vary because no two people write the same way but there are three basic reasons:

• Entertainment
• Information
• Education

Entertainment is pretty much self explanatory but some people get confused when it comes to information and education. What is the difference?

Information is just that information, it can be about your organization or it can be on a topic that you know, for example a blog on Internet Marketing Seminars providing you with the information of when the events are and who will be there would be information. It doesn’t teach you how to put together a seminar yourself but it does provide information about them.

Education, on the other hand, will still provide information but it will provide information on how to do something. For example, this blog provides information and education on how to blog.

Most blogs won’t provide step by step complete education mainly because there are too many variables in what they are trying to teach but they will usually give you enough information to get you started and will usually direct you to a course that will teach you more (usually an affiliate link).

These are key things to remember when you create your content or publish content you got somewhere else.

Try to get your punctuation, grammar and spelling correct.

This doesn’t mean you need to be an expert (you already know I’m not) but you do need to be able to get the message across.

If don’t have a spell checker in your browser then install the TinyMCE Advance plugin which includes a spell checker for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Flock both have addons for spell checking.

For grammar I use Microsoft Word and type my post in and look for green underlines that suggest there is a problem with the grammar. It is no where near perfect but it is better than nothing.

After I have written my post I will copy and paste it into notepad to get rid of all the unwanted coding that Word puts in. Then I will copy and paste from notepad to my blog.

Pay attention to whitespace. Whitespace is the area that doesn’t have any text written. You can increase whitespace and make your post easier to read by keeping your paragraphs short and making sure there blank line between paragraphs.

2) Tell The World About Your Blog

I know, I know, if you could tell the whole world about your blog it would already have more traffic than you can handle.

What I mean by this is get your blog listed in places everyone in the world can find it.

Such as search engines, ping services, social bookmarking sites, other blogs, blog directories and any where else you can think of to list it.

With a WordPress Blog search engines and ping services can be notified as soon as you post it is just a matter of having the right plugins.

Social bookmarking and blog directories can be handled with services like OnlyWire and software like Bookmarking Demon.

I have covered listing with other blogs in a previous post Blog SEO Using Comments for Back Links

For all of these methods you should do some keyword research and use those keywords when you list your blog.

3) Create Posts Often

The more you post the more people will have to read and the more the search engines will find you.

The more you give people to read and choose from the more likely it will be that you have answered one or more of their questions and that makes it more likely they will come back again.

Once your blog is established you can cut down the frequency of your posts but you should still average at least once per week. Until your site is indexed by the search engines you should post once per day or more.

4) Use your blog to tell other people about blogs you like.

You can use the blogroll to list blogs that you visit often. If the blog master is paying attention they will see a link from your blog to theirs and quite often they will provide a link back to your blog.

You can also mention specific post in other blogs in your blog posts to create pingbacks for example Wizzer cover a new blog tool on his blog an this is a link to it. When I submit this post it will automatically ping Wizzersays and if he accepts the ping it will create a link back to my site automatically.

5) Use Your Blog’s RSS Feed

More and more people are staying updated by RSS feed.

Put a prominent link to your RSS feed on your blog. This makes it easy for them to subscribe to your feed.

If you use FeedBurner (now run by Google) you can also let them subscribe to your RSS feed by email for those people that don’t check their feed reader everyday.

It isn’t hard to add the RSS feed buttons to your site and if you pick up regular readers you will find that your traffic increases as they come back to the site to read your latest posts.