How to Set Up a Domino Effect of Traffic
Published September 16th, 2007 in Social Media
Do you think your blog doesn’t have enough traffic to become popular with major social media sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us? I don’t normally have a huge amount of traffic either, but I’ll show you how I was able to get over 34,000 unique visitors in two days without submitting the page to any of the sites mentioned above. And best of all, I think it is a strategy that many of you can duplicate.
With dominoes, before the fun begins you have to strategically set up the pieces. You set them up to flow from one to the next, and to multiply from one into two. As the dominoes spread, those small multiplications add up and suddenly you’ve got a whole mess of them knocked over.
With website traffic, if you’re lucky, the domino effect can happen on its own. But to have the best chance of success you’ll need to strategically put the pieces in place and push the first one to get things started.
With the right strategy even small blogs can maximize social media marketing and create more traffic than ever before. After somewhat accidentally coming across this concept, I’ve attempted the strategy three times, and twice it has resulted in new traffic highs.
How Does it Work?
Social media marketing is used by most bloggers, because if successful it can bring thousands of visitors, new links, and new subscribers in a very short period of time. Contrary to the opinion of some bloggers, having success with major social media sites does not require you to already have a popular, highly-trafficked blog (although that certainly doesn’t hurt).
Many social media sites share users. For example, a del.icio.us user may come across a blog post and submit it to StumbleUpon. Likewise, another user may come across that blog post on StumbleUpon and submit it to Digg. This is one of the keys to the domino effect.
Some social media sites, like StumbleUpon, are easier to have success with, and others are more likely to require a large list of “friends”, like Digg. With StumbleUpon, one person submitting your blog post can lead to thousands of visitors. With Digg, the post is very unlikely to generate much traffic unless it is submitted by a user with a lot of friends (or more accurately, a user who has been be-friended by a lot of other users).
The Importance of 2nd – Tier Social Media Sites
If you’ve done much reading on social media marketing, these statements are probably not new to you. But what many people overlook is the power of 2nd – tier social media sites. There are a number of smaller social media sites that send a significant number of visitors and are easier to have success with than the major sites. Many of these sites focus on specific niches, which can bring even higher quality traffic than say Digg or StumbleUpon.
These 2nd-Tier social media sites are essential to the strategy that I have used to produce the domino effect of traffic. As mentioned earlier, many of these sites share users, and 2nd – tier sites are no exception.
In order to set off the domino effect, I’ve been able to have blog posts become popular with 2nd – tier sites and then have the traffic that is generated from that popularity carry over and result in popularity with major social media sites.
To best explain this, I’ll lay out the strategy that I used (and how it played out) with last week’s post, 77 Resources to Simplify Your Life as a Web Designer. Back in July I started using a 2nd – tier social media site, Dzone, which is a niche site for web designers and software developers. If your post gets to the front page of Dzone it can send about 300 – 600 visitors in a day. (Note: Dzone very strictly enforces that content be on topic. Anything off topic will get nowhere and will probably be deleted. Trust me, I found this out on my own.)
In July I had two posts that became popular on Dzone (83 Webmaster Resources and Find the Perfect Colors for your Website) that also immediately began to rack up a lot of bookmarks, and wound up on the front page of del.icio.us. It didn’t take a genius to realize that a large percentage of Dzone users are also del.icio.us users.
While Dzone sends a few hundred visitors in a day, del.icio.us sends a few thousand visitors in the same amount of time. The del.icio.us numbers are obviously higher, but for me the traffic from Dzone was essential and it actually provided a springboard to the traffic from del.icio.us. Without the popularity on Dzone, the popularity on del.icio.us would have never occurred.
After I realized the connection between the users of the two sites I started to think of how I could maximize this traffic. To start with, I needed to have a post become popular on Dzone. After using Dzone for a little while I’ve realized certain types of blog posts that are likely to have success. So creating the right kind of content is obviously important.
Setting Up the Domino Effect
In order to benefit from the connection between Dzone and del.icio.us I decided that I needed to optimize my blog posts for del.icio.us users. I did this by adding a large link at the bottom of each post that says “bookmark this on del.icio.us”, and it also shows the number of people who have bookmarked the page (you can see how to use this tool in my post 10 Tips for Making Your Blog Posts More del.icio.us). My experience is that this tool is very effective. As Dzone sends a few hundred visitors in a short period of time those visitors will be seeing increasing numbers in terms of how many people are bookmarking with del.icio.us. As the number grows, it of course looks more tempting for them to bookmark it as well.
About a month ago I also discovered another site that seemed to have a similar audience to Dzone. CSS Globe (web design related) is a little bit different from most social media sites. There is no voting up or down, but members are able to share their links with subscribers. Adding your link will easily bring 100 – 200 visitors in a day. The audience of CSS Globe also seems to include a high percentage of del.icio.us users.
Now that I feel like it is very possible to get a few hundred visitors from Dzone and 100 – 200 visitors from CSS Globe, I wanted to make sure that the content of the blog post was attractive to those users who also keep their bookmarks with del.icio.us. If you spend time on del.icio.us you’ll notice that lists are very popular and draw more bookmarks than the average article. Using numbers in titles also tends to help.
With that in mind, I created a list post that I felt was unique and would appeal to the audience of CSS Globe, Dzone and del.icio.us. This part of the plan worked extremely well as 77 Resources to Simplify Your Life as a Web Designer was published late Monday September, 10 and I immediately submitted it to Dzone and CSS Globe (it’s important to get the traffic all at the same time because sites like Digg and del.icio.us factor in how quickly people and digging or bookmarking the page).
It reached the front page of Dzone on Tuesday September, 11. That day Dzone sent 577 visitors to the page and CSS Globe sent 280 visitors. Many of these visitors bookmarked the page with del.icio.us, as I had hoped, and it quickly appeared on the front page of del.icio.us.
A decent percentage of visitors who come to the page through all of the sites listed above are also StumbleUpon users, so part of my strategy is to also include a reminder on blog posts for readers to Stumble the page. This is easily done with a button at the end of the post. I’ve chosen to only include links for users to del.icio.us and StumbleUpon because I feel that providing too many links, buttons, and widgets causes all of them to loose effectiveness. Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon are the best fit for my audience and I don’t want other buttons to take away from these two.
I knew that if I was able to create a rush of traffic from Dzone, CSS Globe and del.icio.us, someone was bound to submit the page to StumbleUpon and the domino effect would spread again. This also happened like I had hoped, and StumbleUpon sent 9,228 visitors to the page that day.
The final piece of the strategy involved Digg. I use Digg a little bit, but I’m far from a “power user”, so I chose the highly complex strategy to do nothing and hope that someone with a better profile and more friends would submit the post to Digg. If I submitted the post myself there is no way it would have gone anywhere, but fortunately for me someone else with a lot of friends submitted it (thanks Lyndoman, if you’re reading). Digg sent 13,997 visitors that day.
The last part of the domino effect involves what happens after popularity on these sites. Yahoo Site Explorer is currently showing 2,656 links to this page (Technorati is showing 82 links). Some of the links have also brought significant traffic, and many of the sites are not even in English (which I think is an advantage of a list post rather than a long article, although this traffic is probably not the most targeted). PresseCitron has sent 1,346 visitors to date. Infected-FX has sent 1,331. PopURLs has sent 1,243. Many others have sent smaller amounts.
The Results
In total, the post has had 69,000 pageviews in about 5 days, 25,000 visitors from Digg, 19,000 from StumbleUpon, 4,000 from Del.icio.us, 990 from Dzone, and 436 from CSS Globe.
Conclusion:
- My blog doesn’t normally draw enough traffic to have success with major social media sites, and I don’t have enough friends on Digg.
- Instead of going directly to these sources in hope of thousands of visitors I used smaller, targeted social media sites to quickly send a few hundred visitors.
- I choose those sites strategically and optimized my blog post to have success with del.icio.us and StumbleUpon.
- I got lucky with Digg.
- Lots of other links came as a result of the exposure to this post, and those links together sent a substantial amount of traffic.
I’ve tried this strategy 3 times now in the past 4 or 5 weeks. The first time was with 31 Sources of Quality, Free Icons which became popular with Dzone and del.icio.us and also got a few thousand visitors from StumbleUpon (no love from Digg). That day was an all-time traffic high for me at the time. I tried the strategy again with 89 Community Sites for Webmasters with very little success. And then the third time was last week, which resulted in a new traffic high.
How Does this Affect You?
While Dzone and CSS Globe are not applicable to bloggers in other niches, there are likely some other sites that can accomplish the same thing. All you need to do is find sites in your niche that can send a quick rush of visitors, and try to direct them to submit your page to another, larger social media site. Have a strategy targeting specific sites and you’re more likely to have success.
223 Responses to “How to Set Up a Domino Effect of Traffic”
Very interesting point. Many people overlook the importance of the smaller sites and want to hit a home run with Digg or SU.
This is indeed an educational post
And I am glad that it has worked so wonderfully with you.
Jeremy,
Thanks for reading. Yes, I think we all hear so much about Digg and StumbleUpon that it’s easy to overlook a few hundred easy visitors from smaller sites.
Pelf,
Thank you. I hope the information helps you.
In fact, I’ve tried digg, and never got “Popular” before. Ha!
Time to try smaller sites!
Steven,
I’ve never tried the smaller sites for myself before. Thanks for sharing your awesome tips, and congratulations on all that traffic!
Hi there,
I am search engine marketer and I have tried to use DIGG as traffic enhancement tool but all in vain. There r not many takers for CAD and CAM in DIGG. mine is a CAD conversion company named http://www.designpresentation.com.Any help on it wud be gr8
Regards
Awesome post man!
Definitely going to be trying this method out!
How hard was it to find tier 2 bookmarking sites?
Felix,
I had never gotten popular with Digg either before last week.
Tia,
Like any other site, Digg has it’s own audience and certain content is more popular than others. I don’t know what you’ve tried on Digg before, but I think you would probably have to get creative. Maybe try a page that has photos of really unusual or amazing architecture. These types of things have succeeded on Digg in the past. Look at topics that are related to yours (but maybe not directly CAD or CAM) that might appeal to larger audiences. It’s also important that it be submitted by someone who has been be-friended by many other users.,
David,
For me it wasn’t hard to find the sites. Technical niche sites, like web design, are more common than any other. People in certain industries will have a harder time finding niche sites that actually send traffic. There are a ton of smaller social media sites that are general, like furl as opposed to delicious.
Tay and Dave,
Thanks for the positive feedback. I hope you’re able to get something out of it.
That’s very cool. I shall have to try out this kind of strategy.
Adam,
Thanks for reading. Good luck!
I would like to know what happen if your targeted users do not uses social bookmarking at all? Let us take the example of a blog specific to a country where the inhabitants do not even know the utility of social bookmarks?
Good article and so true. I discovered this myself and completely by accident I’ll admit. I also use Dzone, which I really like and watched develop, and Recruiting.com, a 2nd-tier Digg-clone for the recruitment industry. In fact, I suggest that if you did a good writeup of 2nd-tier sites, that too would be popular.
Jacob
Great post Steven. I use the 3 main social media sites regularly, but I’ve really tried any sort of marketing with them.
I love your idea here. I did notice that you submitted the guest post you wrote on PBD to CSS Globe at the time. I can see why now, and might even try out a similar strategy.
Great post.
(And ironically, I’ve del.icio.us’ed it. 
)
Vincent,
Obviously that makes things really difficult. My suggestion would be to pick one social site to target and introduce your readers to it. Show them how it works and how they can bookmark your pages for when they need them later. Also show them how to sign up for an account. Then, include links or buttons on your pages that will make it easy for them to use.
Israel Jobs,
Thanks for your feedback. The recruitment site is a great example. It’s not one I’m familiar with since I’m not in the industry, but the traffic it sends is probably targeted very well. Tropical SEO has a pretty good list of 20 – 30 2nd tier sites that send real traffic.
Michael,
Thanks for your comments. Yes, I did submit that article to CSS Globe. I submit ones that I feel fit well with their audience, which may be 1 or 2 a week. I figured you would see them in your referral stats if you weren’t already aware of CSS Globe.
Sharp ideas….many marketers forget that there is life outside the major social media sites. Great example of using all resources available to you!
I agree with u 100%.
Mike,
Thanks for commenting. Yes, I think most people do overlook the smaller sources, which makes it less competition for the rest of us (but a little less traffic too).
I smell a great post!!
50 of the best ‘unknown’ 2nd – Tier Social Media Sites!!
You write it, I’ll Sphinn it.
-mb
Yeah, it would be a great post. Tropical SEO has the best one like that so far.
Excellent idea and strategy. Stumbled.
Great post – it’s always nice to hear a success story!
I gave you a stumble as well – let’s see if we can keep that momentum going.
Nice article , never knew about these smaller sites .
Thanks for the Tips Vandelay
Great post! Thank you for all tips. I will try to make the wave on social sites.
Great in-depth article. Thanks for sharing this information. I’ve never thought about tapping into some of the smaller niche bookmarking sites before. Something to explore further. I stumbled your post too
Congratulations on winning the project at Daily Blog Tips!
I’m glad atleast one of my votes was important
Hope you put the money to good use
Karthik,
Thanks for the vote! I’m sure the money will get put to good use.
where can i find a list of those smaller niche social bookmark sites, health niche orientated to be more precise
forgot to say…GREAT POST!
health,
the best list that I know of is at tropicalseo.com, although I’m thinking of putting together my own list since several people have asked.
yes i know about that list but i hoped there are more than 1 health social sites
thanx
I must say I was sort of biased and was a little busy when i reviewed the posts but I never did read your posts out of the so many other posts that were posted on the DailyBlogTips site.
I’m so happy you won and that I had a chance to see this great post.
Jonathan,
Thanks for taking the time to visit. I certainly wasn’t able to read all of them either. I think a big part of it was creating a title that would make people want to click.
Hi there
thanks for the information. that will help anyone, and with a bit of sense and reserch I ma sure that we can all benefit from the information.
thanks
geoff Lord
http://www.geoff-lord.com
Geoff,
Thanks for visiting. I hope you can use this info.
Great site keep up the good work
Very useful article, going to try some of the methods!
this is a real great research and experimentation. What you have suggested is just huge to achieve in 48 hours. At the same i would correct my mistakes in social media using this post. I used to submit my post to stumble and digg and never to delicious.
I guess for something’s that you like (content, etc)
makes a huge difference, I’m glad you seems to enjoy it.
Great article. Thanks for sharing so many useful ideas.
Thanks for sharing your solution of getting traffic. Indeed the domino strategy seems very possible. As that saying, crazy enough to work
Good article
great overview – and I think you are spot on about the importance of the other sites to help push you up in the toher ones.
I will try this and let you know if it works.
-Greg
http://i-ebooks.blogspot.com/
nice tips to share
nice share
Nice article – many thanks.
good and relevant thougths – very helpfull
very useful ideas – keep on tracking
Are these ideas also relevant for europe blogs ? Or do you have a more improved idea to successful traffic improvement for europe blogs ? Especially german written blogs ?
to build a kick ass website and to have traffic flooding to your website i recommend using http://www.registereddot.com to all your web publishing needs.
We will try this – very helpful ideas.
Great post! Thank you for all tips. I will try to make the wave on social sites.
hey thanks a lot!
I have a spanish blog.. and I have to find the right niche..
its very complicated to find a spanish niche.. there are major spanish social media sites.. but they work like digg..
although thanks!
Great advice. I have had success with StumbleUpon and Mixx and a smaller site Mahalo. Thanks for the info.
Excellent information, I will get some tips. Certainly, StumbleUpon is a great social media network
.
Big list. Bookmarked!
What a fantastic post. Some great ideas you have mentioned there, all of which im about to try with one of my new blog posts, so thanks very much. Keep up the good work. You will have a loyal reader for life in me!!
Andy
and me too!!, believe me your blog its awesome!
We will try this – very helpful ideas, thanks
Public acceptance, both in its features and pricing, in short people need the product.
“34,000 unique visitors in two days” – hmmmm. Really good work!
Awesome, great job. I’ll try to do it, thx
I’ll try to do it too
“I no believe”
Interesting! I’ll try to realize.
Thank you!
Interesting post, a lot of usefull things.
Thanks a lot!
I will try this in Russia – i think it could bevery helpful, thanks
I agree with u 1000000%
Very interesting. Gathered a lot of new. Thank you!
interesting post
How to Set Up a Domino Effect of Traffic rulezz!!
Thanks
Very interesting.Thank you!
Very useful. bookmarked
Interesting post, a lot of usefull things.
Thanks a lot!
Just another interesting idea.
Thanks
Very Good site Thanks
Wow! It’s really interesting and very useful. Let’s try it
this is a real great research and good job. useful, informative.. good.
Да, помогают такие статьи, я вот только начинаю, и с удольствием читаю ваш блог
Thanks for thise good article.
Omg! Tnx ))) I will try this method ))))
Great article, I will defiantly try this strategy.
tried it.. didnt work!..
very excited about your success.
I would very much like to have a go myself however I am unable to lacate where to make my post. Could you please help?
Thanks in advance
Geoff
thanks for the information. that will help anyone, and with a bit of sense and reserch I ma sure that we can all benefit from the information
very usefull
in bookmarks!
Hmmm… Smaler sites? I’ll try, thank you
Very interestingly, it is necessary to try
Interesting finding and a great concept. Cannot wait to try it out for myself. Thanks for sharing.
moserw
http://www.nela.in
Very interesting post and great blog. I bookmarked this page. Big thanks for this helpful article!
Good Suggestion, Thanks, i will try
I got a lot from this information but I am the only one working on my site so it would be beneficial to know the which step should be done first.
Very informative article! Great job!!!
I like it..:) Tnx!
http://manygold.ru
Informative!
Thanks!
I will try to make the wave on social sites.
I have a software product for designers and will try this strategy for it. Thank you.
Thanks:) It’s article is good and interesting for me.
Looking Great, really usefull to!
really usefull !thanks
Ok
It is very interesting
This post is joke
Another interesting article!
[...34,000 unique visitors in two days...]
its not real, but article whery intersting – thanks
Awesome! Thanks for the great resources.
Agree that it is rather an eductional topic, but it contains quite an interesting ideas, espesially about the Domino effect
Really interesting article, I will try the idea!
Good strategy, with you it completely agree. Thanks for the Post
+1
and me too!!, believe me your blog its awesome!
This is an awesome articles.Have bookmarked this site as it has so much great information
Awesome! Thanks for the great resources.
Another interesting article!
I’ve never tried the smaller sites for myself before. Thanks for sharing your great tips, and congratulations on all that traffic!
Thank you! Its very interesting for me!
nice
It’s nice to find real content that’s spelled out to readers who need a 1-2-3 layout of real instructions instead of another “guru” whose trying to get rich off of little known info.
Thank you for being a contributor to the information super highway and not another snake oil salesman.
Kari E. Gray, CEO
1stchoicefunding.com
The information is very useful indeed. Thank you!
It is interesting indeed. I’ve studied your article closely, and I would personally thank you for it.
I used your view, and add my own social networking site (built in to my website as a substitute to mailing list) developed by Sandy Rowley to maintain users and then generate traffic and good Digg placement with your strategies. I managed to retain 50% of the traffic spike.
Of course, every people have their own way. But I must say, this article really inspire me a lot.
Thank you.
Thanks for telling us about DZONE, i’ll check it out!
thats great — I’m interested in knowing what you saw for a spike in RSS/email subscribers?
Eric,
I had about 250 new subscribers after the first day and a smaller jump the 2nd day.
Very useful information. Thanks in advance. I will be your frequent visitor.
Nice to hear that friends and word of mouth still hold power. Thank you.
you should’ve added an article on how to stand those 34k visitors a day
all the traffic is useless if your site is down
Thanks for sharing but if you survive traffic you need strategy to keep this up.
Good Suggestion, Thanks, i will try
Excellent strategy…may be a co-incidence, I was thinking about this same strategy couple of days back and came across your post. Even though I got kudos for the excellent content at DemoGeek.com, I haven’t seen much traffic spikes so far. I might have to try this strategy and see if this can help. Thanks again for sharing such a detailed post.
Thank you!
Digg and StumbleUpon traffic convert is awful
interesting idea
Wow! Thank you. I’ve tried Digg and got nowhere and have just spotted this on Solinkable. Will check out dzone and css globe.
Very educational article. Continue podderzhiat your blog.
I also agree with an earlier comment – this is a beautiful looking blog.
This is indeed an educational post And I am glad that it has worked so wonderfully with you.
The first time I hear about the domino effect in SEO. It was very interesting! Thank you!
[...] them can be multiply by 2, 3 or even 10. In fact, second tier sites may be the starting point of a domino effect in term of traffic. Let me explain. Most of the time, people are users of many social media sites. [...]
Digg and StumbleUpon traffic convert is awful
LoveLib,
It depends what you are trying to do. For selling anything or getting ad clicks, yes it is terrible. There are still other things that the traffic is good for, such as gaining subscribers and link building.
Seems like a great strategy. I will have put some blog posts on Dzone!
Neat strategy. Just out of curiosity (since this post is almost 2 years old) is the “tweet” thing better than del.icio.us now?
Jump Higher,
Yes, Twitter is generally a better source of traffic for me than Delicious. Although on days when I have a post on the Delicious front page it sends more traffic than Twitter.
It’s veru interesting strategy. Thank you for information.
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