Every blogger, every webmaster now knows the importance of social networking. They are the prime medium of traffic to your blog or website. If you want your blog(lets stick with blog) to be popular then have a good network in social networking sites. This traffic may be perennial or for a short duration.
The advent of large number of social networking websites suggests that they know their importance on the web. Every now and then a new website comes up with little variation from that of original one. That little variation may be sufficient to make it popular. Though this doesn’t happens always and these sites vanish six feet under after a year or are sold to other networks.
With so many choices it is very difficult to choose which is the best one for you? Which is the best one for traffic? I was in the same confusion as you are. But lately I came to know that if you build a good network then any site will do good for you. More the friends you have more traffic you get. So don’t hesitate to make friends.
Out of the many I registered I have focused myself now on Digg and Twitter. Digg is the mother of all social bookmarking sites. It has gone wild lately due to the way popular topics are showed, still it’s the best. Twitter is the latest trend and it’s hot. My twittercounter will show you how popular I am. I am still in the building stages of the network. It’ll take 2-3 months more to get established. My blog is yet to get success from both the sites. But I am sure that it will come one day.
After all this I would like to repeat the mandatory sentence that you read on all blogging related sites. Focus on your content because it is the best way to get attention. If you have good content then you’ll get popular the easy way.
Mouth to mouth is sow but very effective publicity. You get sure shot readers and they stay for long. But you cannot neglect social networks completely. If you have good network then it works. I’ve seen blogs out of bandwidth. Such traffic drops but this doesn’t get to zero. I get hits from a post I posted in March just bcoz I submitted it to an article submission site.
Another advantage of good network is that you get good topics to write about. Two targets in one stone.
I think it really doesn’t matter. I’ve dabbled with some of the networks but ultimately the traffic they generate is just a small drop in my daily stats. The best you can really hope for is a click with some of the people so they’ll become regular readers and as such spread the word for you.
But it’s fun to dabble nonetheless.