Barry Schwartz offers tips and tricks on driving traffic via social media

Getting the right traffic to your blog or site is the key to your success. Social media’s all the rage these days, and there are dozens of services out there. How can you use these services to help drive traffic?

We asked the advice of Barry Schwartz, one of the big guns over at Search Engine Round Table, which gets about 250,000 unique visitors each month. His advice is delicious. We think you’ll dig it.

Michael Mattis (M2): What social media sites do you use most often? Why?

Barry Schwartz: I use Twitter big time. I have downloaded this little application to my Mac, named Twitterrific, which helps me stay on top of my twittering.

Twitter is this fun little site where you basically type, in 140 characters or fewer, what you are doing at any given moment. For example, right before I began this interview, I twittered that I am doing an interview (here is that twitter, if you are interested). Twitter is fun and also keeps me up with those I have befriended. If you want to “follow” me on Twitter, just visit and add me.

You can set up a Twitter account for your blog or blogs. For example, I set one up for the Search Engine Roundtable at: http://twitter.com/seroundtable, and if you follow seroundtable on Twitter, you will find a link to all recent posts, within a ten-minute time period. My friend Danny Sullivan does it for Search Engine Land, TechCrunch has one, and heck, even the New York Times!

M2: Any others?

Barry: OK, let’s talk about Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit and Techmeme.

If you get on Digg’s home page, you will get a nice amount of traffic. My blog, the Search Engine Roundtable, ends up on the Digg home page several times per week. A tip for bloggers is to know when someone submits your content to Digg. When you’ve been Dugg, you tell your friends and maybe they will want to Digg the submission, as well. If you get between 30 and 60 Diggs within a 24-hour time period, you will most likely make it to the home page. But if you game the system, the submission will most likely be “buried” (i.e., removed from the Digg home page) within a matter of minutes.

How do you track if your blog post was submitted to Digg? Go to the Digg search at http://digg.com/search and then type in your URL into the search box without the “www.” Then from the drop-down, select “URL only.” Then click “Search.” You can then see all the articles that were submitted to Digg from that URL. You can also subscribe to that search via RSS and always be notified of new submissions.

del.icio.us is also a nice source of traffic. If you get ten or so people to “bookmark” your article, you can then make it to the del.icio.us front pages. If you make it to the home page, you can get a nice amount of traffic. Not as much as Digg, but still, a nice amount of traffic. Plus, the traffic may be more qualified.

Reddit is like Digg, but probably sends less traffic. Still, Reddit can send a few thousand unique visitors your way.

Techmeme just rocks, not because of the traffic, but because it is really cool to see how they group the stories together. I use Techmeme several times a day to see what is up in the search industry. It shows you the top stories, who is sourcing who, and how your article fits into the mix. The trick with Techmeme is to see who is sourcing who and make sure to source the articles you want to be branched under. One tip is to make sure your link to the article is at the top of your own article, preferably in the first paragraph.

M2: About how much time do you spend every week engaging with social media sites?

Barry: Hard to say… Social media sites like Twitter are always on my mind. They sit in the background and I might jump over to it for a second, say something in a matter of three seconds, and then jump back to what I was doing.

If I had to give you a number, maybe two hours per week on average.

M2: What kind of results do you see from your engagement with these services?

Barry: A Digg submission that makes it to the home page and is tailored specifically for the Digg user can send upwards of 80,000 unique visitors within the same day. Smaller Diggs can send 5,000 to 20,000 unique visitors. But it is not all about the visitors you get from that social media “engagement.” It is also about the long-term rewards.

By getting your article in front of thousands of new faces, you have the ability to get more links. If one percent of the 80,000 visitors decide to write about your article, that is 800 new links to your site. If two of the 800 users who write about you have a large audience for themselves, then others might pick up on your article through them, and the wave continues. A great Digg can lead to hundreds, if not thousands, of new, relevant, targeted and powerful links to your site.

M2: Do you think it worth the time investment?

Barry: Yes. Not so much for the well established sites like my blog, but newer blogs and sites can reap the rewards much quicker. I have some clients who were getting a few hundred visitors a day and after a popular Digg, they are averaging well over 1,500 visitors per day.

M2: What are some tips for making these services work for you?

Barry: With Digg, it is about tracking your submissions and helping them get popular. With del.icio.us, it is about getting ten others to bookmark the page and let that ride the wave. Reddit needs those “ups.” StumbleUpon needs “thumbs-ups.” Twitter needs an audience following. The tips and tricks are, basically, keep up with it.

M2: How do you manage engaging multiple services?

Barry: Tools! RSS, applications like Twitterrific, and using FeedBurner’s FeedFlare. FeedFlare allows you to dynamically add these social bookmarks and buttons to your content without having to do much work on your end. I cannot say enough about FeedBurner’s FeedFlare for helping users interact and engage in your content through social media sites.

M2: Thanks for taking the time out of your Twittering, Barry, and may the Schwartz be with you!

—Michael Mattis