Social networks



Social networks are websites that are driven by the community. So they provide community driven content which means you do less work if you own one (although moderating one is enough work in itself!)

This has to be one of my most active traffic generation methods and there are plenty to choose from including Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, MyBlogLog, and other less popular ones.

I join because they allow me to post events, classifieds, bulletins and messages that other people will read. In addition you also have your own profile that allows you to talk about who you are and link to your website(s).

Articles

Writing articles is still one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your site. Not only because the article site will feature them but also because other people will use them in their blogs, on their websites, in their ezines and in other places online.

As each article contains your signature file with your details in it (which must remain as part of the conditions of people using your article) you are given free advertising on other people’s sites!

Of course you also gain a link back to your site (back linking is still one of the MOST effective ways of driving traffic to your site)

There are loads of article sites on the internet and a search engine search will find them for you.

Podcasts

A podcast is an audio which has been given a special xml link.

The great thing about podcasts rather than audio is the fact that people can download your audio mp3 file and listen to it whenever they want to using their ipod, PDA, computer or other device.

The other great thing about podcasts is the fact that people can subscribe to them using an RSS link which is shown as an orange button. A subscriber clicks on that link and all your podcasts are automatically downloaded, which means they do not have to keep returning to your site to download your latest podcast.

It also makes your job as the podcaster easier because you only need to put your link into a podcast directory once and every time you update your podcast link (or feed as it is known) it will automatically be updated in the podcast directory. So once you go through the work of submitting your feed once you never have to do it again.

Social Book Marking Sites

It has now become popular to add your articles, blog posts, videos and podcast to popular social book marking sites like Stumbleupon, Digg and Del.ici.ous because people can vote on them as well as save them for future reference.

The more votes you receive the higher up your post is moved and the more it is shown on the site. These are fantastic places to get instant targeted traffic because people will naturally come over and take a look at your site after reading your post on a social book marketing site.

Also if people are interested in something you have shared or said they will also tell other people about it and this is one of the easiest ways. The thing to do here is to make sure that your post is key word rich so that you will also rank high if someone searches the site for that key word.

These are four ways that I use to drive traffic to my blog and of course there are many more so focus on discovering which four or five work for you and stick to them.