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If you’ve been blogging and bookmarking for any time at all you’ve likely heard that social media traffic receives a high bounce rate. I have seen that in some cases, but I recently checked my traffic at some of the social media sites that I frequent and I’ve found that just the opposite is true. The following statistics represent traffic from popular social media sites within the last month for a blog that I write for poetry, a popular blog within that niche.

Reddit = 20% bounce rate
Delicious = 25% bounce rate
Furl = 26.67% bounce rate
StumbleUpon = 36.62% bounce rate
LitMixx = 50% bounce rate
Mixx = 57.14% bounce rate

All of these bounce rates are well below the average for blogs, which tend to have high bounce rates by nature. Most blogs are around 80% bounce rate due to people just reading one post and moving on. It’s interesting to note that my bounce rate from Technorati and BlogCatalog are both considerably higher - 71.43% at each site. Likewise, at forums targeted specifically to the poetry niche market, I have higher bounce rates (75% at one), and my bounce rate from other poetry blogs are also high, some of them reaching to 75% or 80%. What gives?

I’d also like to note that my bounce rate at Digg is 100%, but I’ve only had one visit from Digg in the last month (I’ve concluded that Digg is not a good place for bookmarking my poetry site).

Traffic Figures Unveiled
Before moving on, I’d like to point out what my traffic numbers at these sites are (you’ll see that some of them are quite low):

Reddit = 5
Delicious = 8
Furl = 15
StumbleUpon = 822
LitMixx = 2
Mixx = 7

You could argue that the sampling from most of these sites is too small to be really analyze the data effectively, but I disagree. One would expect that the higher the traffic number from any traffic source would increase the bounce right, but that hasn’t been the case at StumbleUpon. In fact, I’ve historically received high traffic numbers from the StumbleUpon community. But I’ve seen my bounce rate get lower and lower. I think that’s very significant.

LitMixx is a new social community that I started within the Mixx umbrella. It’s focus of course is on literary bookmarking - poetry, fiction, journalism, nonfiction, etc. It’s only about a week-and-a-half old so the data is very fresh and I don’t have a full month of data to analyze, but what I do have is significant, particularly since there are only 6 members in the community right now. I’ve only just started promoting it.

My big surprises are with Reddit and Furl. I really did not expect to get as much traffic from Furl as from other sources such as Delicious and Mixx. I consider those communities much more interested in arts and literary topics. I guess not. But Reddit is the real surprise because it’s mostly a news site and if I got any traffic from it at all I’d be happy. What I sense from these numbers is that Reddit users will only click a link to visit a site if they’re really interested in the topic, but if they click on a link and read the material then they are more likely to stick around if they like something. Reddit users, in other words, are more conscientious. I’m going to have to do more experimenting with Reddit.

Critical Factors For Social Bloggers
I believe my lowering bounce rate at StumbleUpon can be credited to just one thing: Consistency. I have been a consistent poetry blogger for almost a year now. And during that 11 months I have Stumbled blog posts on a regular basis. I have attracted the following of several of my friends who vote on and comment on many of the posts. Even people who are not regular readers of poetry blogs like my blog because

• It’s attractive
• I write interesting posts
• Though I write on literary topics, I do not write “stuffy” literati stuff that is over the average layperson’s head
• I write every day, but only Stumble posts occasionally (in other words, I don’t spam them)

I think these are critical factors. If you have an attractive blog with interesting writing then you’ll attract more followers. Social media users in particular care about the writing style of your blog posts. I’m talking about people are interested in more than just “share yours and I’ll share mine.” I’m talking about people who care about real content that is interesting, lively, and well written. The StumbleUpon community is largely made of people who are there because they like the interaction with other people who care about good content. The same with the Mixx community; that’s why I’m excited about the new literary community I’ve created in LitMixx. I’m anxious to see how well it does.

New Visits And Average Time On Site
A study of the new visitors and the time they spend on my blog is just as interesting as the traffic and the bounce rate are. Consider these numbers:

Reddit = 0% new, 5:21 average time on site
Delicious = 12.51% new, 2:56 average time on site
Furl = 6.67% new, 9:04 average time on site
StumbleUpon = 90.39% new, 1:23 average time on site
LitMixx = 100% new, 1:52 average time on site
Mixx = 28.57% new, 6:20 average time on site

Again, I’m surprised by Reddit. All five of my visitors from that site within the last month had visited the blog before. Either they are subscribers (which I have no way of knowing), or they are friends of mine from another social site, or they have visited the site before from a link saved to Reddit. Whichever the case, they spent a lot of time on the site. Only one of them bounced (left the blog without sticking around to read more than one post) and the average pages the five visited was 3.0. Incredible!

Note that these numbers only reflect a modest number of bookmarks at each site. For instance, since July 9, I’ve bookmarked at each of the above sites this many times:

Reddit = 2
Delicious = 4
Furl = 3
StumbleUpon = 3
Mixx = 4

While these numbers represent how many times my poetry blog has been knowingly saved at these sites by myself or someone else, they do not represent how much time I’ve spent voting for other sites submitted by others or making friends and networking. The time I spend at StumbleUpon on those activities is far more than what it is at any of the others, though this may change since the start of LitMixx.

StumbleUpon, I’m convinced, is the best place to go if you want new visitors to your website, but be prepared for those visitors not sticking around very long. I see StumbleUpon as much like sending out a direct mail piece. You might send out a lot of mailers and get just a meager response. But from those who do respond, if your content is solid then you’ll see some fabulous results. That’s been my experience.

Looking at the bounce rate of the poetry-related forums and blogs that I comment on, I’d say that the small amount of traffic that I get from those is due to the trust that other bloggers have with their readers. But the high bounce rate can be attributed to a higher degree of discrimination with regard to tastes among those who have a higher interest in the topic. In other words, poets tend to know more about what they like and don’t like with regard to poetic commentary whereas non-poets who read about literary topics may enjoy reading an in-depth analysis of a topic even if they are not as familiar with it because they’ll have less to disagree with.

Conclusions
Bottom line conclusion: I think social media bookmarking works if you do it consistently long-term. Most people still only bookmark their content occasionally. I bookmark my content somewhere every day, though I don’t bookmark it at the same place everyday (and I think that is vitally important). Another thing that makes a big difference is the number of friends you make at the social sites you frequent. At those sites where you have fewer friends, you’ll likely get less traffic and higher bounce rates. At those sites where you have more (and more loyal) friends, you are more likely to get more traffic and lower bounce rates.

These results may reflect what literary blogs are capable of, but one other aspect to consider in bookmarking is making sure you approach the right target. Where you bookmark makes a huge difference. Diggers have less interest in poetry, for instance, than Mixxers and Stumblers. They have a greater interest, however, in technical topics. And I’d always consider that.

My favorite social website is StumbleUpon. I like it because it is so easy to use, especially if you have the SU toolbar. I can save a website that I like with one click and share it with a handful of friends very seamlessly. Plus, it’s fun to see what others are bookmarking too. Unfortunately, StumbleUpon has limited its users to only 200 friends. If you want more, you can’t have them so you’d better choose your friends selectively. This policy favors those who are less popular at the expense of those who are most popular. Is it fair?

Well, that’s a question for others to answer, but I’m happy to see that StumbleUpon has changed its policy. StumbleUpon is nixing its 200-friend limit.

Other changes are occuring at SU as well. I like the fact that StumbleUpon is deleting useless friends, known as “ghosts.” I blasted Propeller last week for making changes to its site and dropping half of my friends. In this case, if I lose a few friends at StumbleUpon, I’ll be quite glad. There are some users of SU who are just there to promote themselves and it’s really annoying. But it’s a time consuming process to go through all of your friends and delete the undesirables. So SU has offered to do that for me.

I’m anxious to see how the new changes at StumbleUpon will affect my experience there. I have high hopes and big expectations. Here’s to hoping StumbleUpon doesn’t let me down.

Earlier this week I blasted Propeller for its new look. It clearly was a step down. Today I’ve got another social bookmarking service as my target. And this time I’m going to praise them for their new look.

Delicious did things the right way. We heard about Delicious planning a new look last year. And it took every bit of the entire year to tinker, test, and roll it out. It is evident that AOL didn’t go through that trouble to introduce the new version of Propeller. But here’s what I like about the new Delicious:

• It’s beautiful - The new design is a huge improvement over the old the design. Bravo!
• It’s not a drastic change - Yes, Delicious looks different, but it’s not a drastic change. The format is still basically the same as it was before. It just looks a little bit more Web 2.0, or 21st century.
• The bookmarking process was streamlined - Propeller gets kudos on this, but unlike Propeller, Delicious didn’t drop any essential features. They kept all the same features as before, but now they’re prettier and work better.
• A new domain name - If you type in the old URL - del.icio.us - you’ll be redirected to the new one at http://delicious.com. That may seem insignificant, but it isn’t. Delicious is popular enough that people will hear about it from a friend and try to type it into their web browser. What will they type? No one will intuitively figure out del.icio.us, but almost everyone will automatically go for delicious.com. It’s intuitive and it was a brilliant move.
• I didn’t lose any friends from my network in the process - Propeller killed my friends. Delicious saved them. Do I really need to elaborate?
• Figuring out subscriptions is easier - I couldn’t figure out how to start a subscription with the old Delicious. I’ve already started two with the new Delicious. Great going guys!
• The tag cloud is cool - I’m not a big fan of tag clouds, but when I click on the “Tags” link in my profile, I see a big tag cloud with all of my tags and it looks cool. At a glance, I can see what my most popular tags are. I can do the same with my network of friends. Awesome!
• Saving bookmarks from my network of friends is just like it used to be - Wow! Can you do that? Propeller didn’t. They made it more cumbersome even while they made other aspects of their service less cumbersome.

I like the new Delicious. I will likely use it more often now. I will definitely use it more often than Propeller. Before Propeller’s remake, I liked it better than Delicious but not as much as StumbleUpon or Mixx. Now, Delicious has moved into my No. 3 spot and Propeller is dropping. Aren’t facelifts fun?

More and more, I see social bookmarkers recommending Propeller as one of the best bookmarking sites. Before their recent face change, I’d have agreed. Now I wouldn’t send my dog to Propeller - even if he thought it was a tree.

What’s So Wrong With Propeller?

It’s the design.

Before the redesign, Propeller had some issues, primarily technical. It was cumbersome, for instance, to try and send a prop to your friends. You could only send bookmarks to five friends and then you had to send another internal message. Plus, if you wanted to bookmark someone else’s material then it was at least a three-step process, and country music was never my thang. Bad puns aside, Propeller had a Coke moment.

The Deep Propeller Analysis

For starters, Propeller now looks like AOLs battered wife. You would think by the top menu that AOL users were the only people who used Propeller. That wasn’t true before the redesign, but it may be true after it. Propeller would have been better off not associating itself with AOL at all.

The color scheme is awful. I loved the previous color scheme despite the aforementioned technical difficulty of sending out props to my friends. And speaking of friends, since the redesign, I’ve lost half of mine. They just disappeared. I went through all that trouble to network with people and add them to my friend’s list only to have Propeller kidnap them and throw them off the plane. Not a smart move.

Propeller’s new architecture makes it look like the female version of Mixx, which isn’t good. I like Mixx, but one of the things that I do like about it is it’s uniqueness. Propeller just stole that away. The layout isn’t exactly like Mixx, but it does have a little bit of a Mixx flavor to it, only softer and more feminine. The hard blue of Propeller’s previous existence is gone and has been replaced by the tampon blue of today. It makes me want to stand in front of the mirror and primp myself until I overdose on the melodic overtones of up-and-coming boy bands.

Note to Propeller: Get rid of the Love Me Tender blue highlights and silly looking Jeeves character and put some meat on for grill.

One Thing Propeller Did Right

The redesign wasn’t a complete loss, however. Propeller did do at least one thing right. It is now easier to vote for stories that have already been submitted. It’s a two-step process. Read it and click on “Prop It”. Simple and easy. I like that.

I do a lot of bookmarking. I’ve worked out a system with some of my friends where we send each other spreadsheets with the names of articles and where they’ve been bookmarked. All I have to do is click on the link in the spreadsheet and bookmark a story. Before, I had to click the link, open the story, and vote. Now, I just click the link and vote. Very simple.

I don’t know, beyond that, whether Propeller has improved its system for sending messages to other users because I’ve decided to limit my use of it based on its design. I don’t like looking at it. It’s ugly, and I don’t date ugly girls. Never did. One thing I did notice, though, was that when other users send me a message to check out a story they want me to vote on, I cannot click the URL of the story. It’s a copy/paste job and that just won’t cut it. I’ll still use Propeller, but it will be on a limited basis. It’s time to re-introduce the original formula. Call the Coca-Cola Company and ask them how well that plan worked for them.

In Other Social Bookmarking News

Mixx is having technical issues today. I’ve never seen that before. With everything I try to bookmark I get an error message. Hmmm….

New bookmarking sites are popping up on the ME TLD. I’ve found two already and will likely find more before the end of the week. UPP.me is one site and Uan.me is another. What’s this mean? I don’t know, but you can bet it probably has something to do with a darned propagated myth. Or, maybe not.

If you’re wonder whether blogs or websites are easier to rank in the search engines, consider these attributes of blogs that make them easier to rank and allow you better marketing opportunities:

1. Daily posting invites search bots more often - A daily blog post will keep the search engine spiders returning to your website to crawl it every day.
2. More opportunities to rank in the search engines - For every post that you post on your blog, that’s one more way a visitor can find you.
3. Ping services keep your blog posts visible - By pinging the various ping services every time you post to your blog you are keeping your blog visible in the blog directories and ping services such as Technorati.
4. Ping services also build your links faster - As more people read your blog they will link to it.
5. Social bookmarking drives more traffic and links to your blog - By using social bookmarking services to promote your blog, you attract more visitors and more links and the social bookmarking links sometimes act as inbound links that drive up your PageRank.
6. A well-optimized blog post can rank faster - Since the search engines are visiting your blog more often any activity that you do on that domain will get your blog ranked faster for the keywords that you are targeting.

Even though a blog has the potential to get you more traffic and get you more visibility in the search engines faster than a static website, you still don’t want your blog to be your primary website. People don’t buy from blogs. They read them for information. They will then visit your website and make their purchase there.

I’ve been deleting my Facebook friends. The reason is pretty simple. I’ve discovered that the best way to go about social networking online is the same way you’d go about it off line. I call it the segmented approach.

Let’s say that you have a day job where you make specialty marketing products, you have a networking marketing business on the side where you sell herbal health products, and your hobbies include bicycling and gardening. Obviously, these are very different interests and many of the people currently in your networks within those three areas won’t have any interest whatsoever in your other interests. That is, your marketing customers won’t all enjoy bicycling or gardening, nor will they all be interested in your herbal health line of products. Why waste their time trying to talk about things in which they have no interest.

When you go to your motivation meeting for your herbal health products, you don’t stand around talking about biking up your favorite mountain range, do you? That is, unless you meet another bicycling enthusiast there. And you don’t stand around discussing gardening with your marketing specialty customers who have no interest in gardening. So why would you do that online?

I’ve decided that, in order to manage all of my interests better, to focus my networking efforts at each social media site that I use on specific goals related to my areas of interest. And that’s why I’ve been deleting Facebook friends. I’m about to completely delete my MySpace profile (because I’ve started another one that is specifically geared toward one of my interests).

I virtually have two interests that I manage online. Naturally, Internet marketing is one of those. The other is poetry. For those of you who don’t know, I write poetry and have done so for 20 years. I’ve decided to use Facebook and MySpace completely to network with other poets and people interested in literary topics. I’m using both of those networks to market my poetry and connect with others with that interest. If I decide to start networking with others interested in Internet marketing through either of those sites, I’ll set up another profile geared specifically toward Internet marketing.

But I think I can network with other Internet marketers in other ways. Sphinn, for instance, is a great networking site for Internet marketers. So are a few other places that I like to hang out. But because of the content nature of Blog Content Provider, we are a service provider to a variety of types of businesses, some of which may not be Internet marketing specialists, I have other ways of connecting with potential prospects.

There are a ton of social media sites that are useful. The trick to using them most effectively is to find the ones that can benefit you the most and through which you can meet the type of people you want to meet. I’m a big user of StumbleUpon and I’ve figured out that it’s a great place to show my versatility of interests. I can network with poets and other literary types, Internet marketers, other small business people, and persons interested in politics - all through StumbleUpon. Otherwise, I’m segregating my social networks.

Many small businesses and companies entering the blog marketing arena for the first time are a little bit confused about the purpose of blog marketing. While it possible, and we’ve had some success with it, that blogging can lead to sales, that is not the primary purpose for starting a company blog. Most consumers are not going to make a purchase from a blog. That’s not what they read blogs for.

Blog marketing can be seen as a lot of like TV and radio advertising. No one buys an ad on TV or radio expecting the ad to sell their product - that is, unless they are in mail order. Local businesses that have a service or product to sell - especially retailers - use TV and radio to drive consumers to their businesses, either in person or by phone call, to discuss business opportunities. That’s when the sale is made - in a face-to-face or voice-to-voice meeting over the phone.

Blogging is a lot like advertising on TV or radio. The purpose is not to close the sale right then. You really just want to spark enough interest in the consumer to drive them to your website and that’s where you’ll close the sale. So what needs to happen before that?

How A Blog Fits Into Your Sales Cycle
Successful companies build their sales funnel then chart their strategy for making sure the sales process is followed. Do you have your online sales funnel drawn out? If not, then isn’t it about time?

For most businesses, the company website is the place where the sale is going to be closed. If you have a local retail store then you might use your website to provide information to people in your community who will drive to your store to purchase an item, or they may place the order online and pick it up in person. You may want them to call you to place the order. That’s fine. Whatever your sales cycle is, you need to define it and make it work for you. But where should your blog fit in?

Your blog should be seen as a pre-sales tool. Whether you close the sale on your website, use the website to drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar store, or have your customer call you, you’ve got to get them to the website. A blog is a great tool for driving customers to the website. Here’s why:

1. Your website is a static tool that doesn’t change often
2. Your blog is updated every day, increasing your chances of getting your website crawled daily
3. A blog can be used to add new pages with fresh content to your website every day; that in turn brings the search engine spiders back to your website to crawl it more often
4. An off site blog can be used to build link popularity for your website, which in turn affects the search engine rankings and authority of your site within its niche
5. The longer you keep your blog running, the more effective you’ll be in gaining a loyal readership over time; that loyal readership can translate into increased links and traffic for your website
6. Your blog can drive targeted traffic to your site as the traffic to your blog increases

So, to boil it all down, your blog can be used for three overarching purposes:

• Search engine saturation
• Link popularity
• Traffic

And, of course, all of that translates into branding.

Two More Tools To Make Your Blog More Effective
Your blog fits into your overall sales funnel by being a conduit between the search engines and your website. As more and more websites compete for your key terms due to more and more businesses going online, adding a blog can give you an added advantage in your niche. New businesses entering your niche to compete are less likely to start a blog so you’ll be ahead of the game. Your blog can be most effective in achieving the three stated purposes above if you make it effective in these three areas:

• SEO
• Social Media Marketing
• Viral Marketing

We’ve talked about SEO - remember? Search Engine Saturation and Link Popularity? - but what about social media and viral marketing? The key to social media is to use sites like Digg, Technorati, and StumbleUpon to reach traffic that you might not find through SEO. Plus, SEO and social media marketing reinforce each other. When fellow Stumblers and Diggers see your website in the search engines, they’ll recognize it because they’ve seen you on the social sites. Again, that’s branding. That’s why we offer the additional service of social bookmarking, to add to your edge.

Viral marketing is a bit different. Social bookmarking can be a part of that, and so can SEO. But viral marketing involves giving your customers a reason to do your marketing for you. One term that is used is customer evangelism. It’s a term that encompasses the idea of customers talking you up and driving traffic your way. One tool that is excellent for doing that is a newsletter. Some of our customers use a blog marketing newsletter to keep loyal readers. The newsletter goes out weekly and highlights that week’s blog posts so that busy professionals who don’t have time to stop by your blog every day and haven’t quite figured out the RSS thing (which is most small business people and new Internet consumers) can receive your newsletter in their e-mail inbox and visit the blog posts that interest them based on this unique viral marketing tool - and you can make it easy for them to share your newsletter with their friends!

So, you see, it’s all about your marketing funnel. If you have not added a blog to your sales cycle or you’re not quite sure what a blog can do for your company, find out more by paying a visit to Blog Content Provider or give us a call at 786-317-8774.

If you use social bookmarking and social networking sites for very long then you’ll eventually run into a situation where you are banned or threatened with banishment for not following the website’s guidelines. It behooves you to learn the guidelines of the sites that you use before that situation arises. I myself have been banned from one site and I have a friend who was banned at the same site just a few weeks later. Neither of knows what offense we committed to be banned.

Propeller is one site in particular that will ban you for offenses and not give you any indication as to what the offense was that got you banned. If you inadvertently break a guideline or someone reports you for behavior that you thought was acceptable then you have no recurse for appeal. They make it difficult for you to contact site administrators to inquire about your dismissal. Your account is simply closed and the next time you go in to log in you find that you can’t. All you can do is go back and read the site guidelines to try to figure out what you did wrong. And in many cases it is simply an innocent mistake that could have been avoided by being more familiar with site guidelines.

Every social site has its own guidelines and they vary from one site to the next. What may be acceptable at one social site may not be acceptable at the next one. If you are going to be active at the social sites then you need to familiarize yourself with the guidelines at each site and make sure that you behavior on the site conforms with their policies, guidelines, and terms of use. Otherwise, you could find yourself on the outside looking in.

Much has been said about using a blog as a marketing tool but most people writing about this subject don’t really get into specifics. I think it’s necessary to define the purpose for your blog before you begin. Is it going to be a traffic tool where you send traffic to your website then close the sale? Is it going to be a way that you draw people to subscribe to your e-zine? Are you trying to sell through the blog? It’s important to define what you want it to do before you begin.

One of the legitimate purposes for a blog is to use it as a lead generation tool. There are several ways to do that, but they all involve writing compelling content that draws people to read. Then, every blog post you write needs to focus on helping you obtain that overall goal.

Two aspects of blogging that you will use to draw traffic to your blog are SEO and social media marketing. The SEO part is the use of keywords and links to get your blog posts to rank in the search engines for words that you think people will use to find you. If you do that part successfully then you’ll draw more traffic to your blog from organic search rankings. But just because you appear in the SERPs doesn’t mean they’ll click on your link.

Your blog post title will go a long way to getting people to click the link. You want it to be compelling. It must contain your primary keyword and it must get people to click your link in the SERPs to read your blog post. Then your blog post must contain some great content that gets people to take the next course of action: Opt in to your e-zine, visit your website, etc. Make sure that you pick one thing for each blog post that is the goal for that blog post. What do you want people to do? Define the action you want readers of that blog post to take then write the blog post toward that end. This is lead generation. You are leading your readers to a specific course of action.

In November, I mentioned on this blog a social bookmarking tool called SocialMarker. I recommended it then and I recommend it now.

At that time SocialMarker had 18 or 20 sites that you can bookmark at. I don’t remember exactly how many. But they’ve expanded their list now to 46 websites. That’s a great list!

The good thing about SocialMarker is that you can select only news sites, only bookmarking sites, just the “best” sites, or sites that give you link juice. But I did find one error. When I click on the Dofollow button to select those sites that offer link juice, it doesn’t check Propeller for me. The last time I checked, Propeller does offer link juice so you might want to click on Propeller to select it too if you decide to use SocialMarker.

I like SocialMarker and I commend them for being interested in continuous improvement. A lot of times these types of websites go up then it seems like the owners forget about them. But not SocialMarker. They seem to have to right attitude.