As many people are still only just getting to grips with social media bookmarking websites there are a few small things you should know. It doesn’t matter how good your story is – you might have discovered a living Dinosaur at the bottom of your garden but if you don’t follow a few basic tips no-one is going to know about it – to be honest I wish that example was real, dang! Do not expect to pop on to Digg or Stumble and post your website or story and expect the traffic to roll in, be friendly!

1. A title of your story is as important as the story itself – Now this is also relative to which social media website you are going to post this story to. Websites like Digg and Reddit demand a catchy interesting title to quickly grab the attention of the browser. The more wacky the better usually works well in this field, I like many people use Digg to be entertained and to quickly find out if there is anything funny or interesting happening on the web. For websites like StumbleUpon, Sphinn and BlueDot you have a more techie based audience so the theory of the story would be a better choice of title.
2. Include images – I enjoy a good article as much as the next person but images help break up the reading and keep the less educated viewers happy.
3. Write your story or article in your perspective - people are becoming more interested in what individuals have to say about stories rather than a company name, they can relate to it more and relationships can be created.
4. The top 5 social media websites in my opinion and experience are: Digg, Reddit, Stumble, Flickr and Sphinn. These websites can give you thousands of unique hits per day! If you don’t rank particularly well in the search engines this can really help you. Sign up to these sites and just start socializing, bookmark and review till your hearts content. Why? Well because each of these sites have various ways of making your reputation more valuable. For example, if I stumble 1 page, just me, I can expect to see around 150 unique visits to that page – from just pressing a button! The more you give to these sites, the more you get back, a lot of people have not grasped this yet.
5. These categories work best with the top 5 social media sites:
· Digg – Entertainment/News/Photos
· Stumble – Internet
· Reddit – Facts/News
· Flickr – Photos, art
· Sphinn – Technology/Internet/webmasters

If you just follow these small guidelines you can dramatically increase your websites traffic, not only that but you will be helping the social media community, thank you.