How To Leverage The Crap Out Of Social Media

It seems no matter where you turn lately, some internet marketer is pushing the importance of social media (or social networking) for generating free, targeted traffic to your sites.  Whether it’s using Facebook, Twitter, Digg, YouTube or some other Web 2.0 phenomenon, everyone has an opinion on which site is the best for pulling traffic into your sites.

After spending some time figuring out how to maximize each of these sites individually (which is something I will go into detail in subsequent posts) I’ve come up with a little system in which I can have each of these powerful social media sites feeding off of one another, and ultimately drive even more free and targeted traffic to my sites than I could ever imagine.

Here’s my powerful little system in a nutshell:

Let’s take one of your recent blog posts; it’s something that you put a lot of time into, is relevant and useful to your blog’s target audience and is a post you think has the potential to go viral.  You’ve written an attention grabbing headline, along with thorough and entertaining content, and now you just need to get it out to the masses so you can sit back, relax and watch your opt-ins and affiliate sales go through the roof.

Take your great post and submit it to Digg, Reddit, Fark, StumbleUpon and Yahoo Buzz.  When posting to these sites, make sure to write attention grabbing headlines.  Don’t be bland, go for broke and be bold, funny or controversial.  Writing a good headline is the most important part of doing well on these social bookmarking sites.  You could write the greatest content in the world, but if you mess up the headline on your submission, nobody’s going to vote for your article or bother to click on it.

If you’re required to submit a synopsis as well, make sure it’s just enough to wet the whistle.  Make it a slight extension of the headline and don’t give away too much.  Entice the reader to click through to your site to read the whole article.

After submitting to each of the social bookmarking sites, make sure to keep track of the link to each of your submissions.  Just copy the links into a text file or a Word document; you’re going to need them in a little bit.

Now, go ahead and post the link to your article/site on your Facebook and Myspace pages.  Since you’re dealing with people you already know, you can get away without having to be as clever or bold as you had to be when submitting to the social bookmarking sites.  Just post your link, explain why people will benefit from reading your post and, most importantly, ask people to click and read.  Again, they’re likely already your friends, so simply asking them to read will increase your traffic dramatically.

Finally, post the link to your article on Twitter (after using Tinyurl or a service like that).  Like the social bookmarking sites, be bold and be brief.  Then, most importantly, ASK PEOPLE TO RT (re-Tweet) right after the link.  For example:

Make blogs, not war http://www.yourlink.com Please RT!

Again, ask and you shall receive.

Ok, you got all that?  Now comes the fun stuff!

Remember those submissions to Digg, Reddit, Shoutwire and Yahoo Buzz?  Go back to that file I asked you to create, grab the URLs that point to your submission, and submit each of those links to Stumbleupon and Twitter.  Again, be brief and bold, and be sure to ask for Diggs, up votes, etc.

Finally, take just the Digg link and post it on your Facebook and Myspace page.  Tell people you need their help to get this ranked and you want them to click on the link and Digg your submission.  Thankfully, since many of them have already read your initial submission, you shouldn’t have any problems getting people to take the time to Digg your post.

Now do you see how we’re leveraging the power of these sites and having them feed off of one another?  We’re having a lot of these sites point to one another, and each site ultimately points back to your article or post.

At this point if you’re so inclined and have the capability, make a quick YouTube video about your post.  I personally use a Flip HD video camera, or I make a quick Power Point presentation and use Camtasia screen capture software.

Make the video 3 to 5 minutes, highlighting your post and why it benefits your readers.  Or, if you’d like, just go ahead and sort of make a verbal blog post and put your article into words.  No matter which way you go, make sure to introduce yourself with your link, end with your link, and throw your link in somewhere in the middle.

(As a side note, if you have some editing software, go ahead and have your URL run as a footer throughout the entire video.)

After watching the video to make sure everything’s clear, go ahead and upload the video to YouTube.  After successfully uploading the video, make sure to grab the video’s link.

Now go ahead and repeat the steps that you followed above when submitting your article/blog post.

Again, you’re leveraging the power of social media, having everything point back to your video, which in turn points right back to your site.

I know it seems like a ton of work – and at first it will be – but you’re going to start to get a TON of free, targeted traffic.  Thankfully, too, the more you do this, the easier it will become.  And once you start getting more recurring traffic a lot of this submission work (usually minus the YouTube video creation) will be done for you since your readers will be submitting your articles to the social bookmarking and networking sites.

All things considered, if you write a great post that you want to go viral, it’s probably worth it to take the 30 minutes to an hour to get it out in front of hundreds of thousands or millions of potential visitors.  All it takes is one post to go viral and make it big, and you’ve got yourself a huge flow of traffic for years to come.