Hi Wendy,

Here is how it works and there is a slight twist with each one.  First of all DON"T post several things about all your lenses on any of them! That will look like SPAM to them and get you banned for sure!

One lens here and one lens there a day or so later.  Space them out over time so as not to really load them up all at once.

First is Twitter.  Twitter allows you to make one liners about just about anything you want and attach a link to the post.

So folks do everything from make hour by hour statements about their lives like a diary, to others who use it as a sounding board for opinions and other stuff.

How it gives you traffic is two fold.  One the folks who start following your Twits will see your posts, and can opt to click on the links placed in them.  Two you are placing a back link to your lens the the Search engines will see as well and will use them to give your lens more weight over time.

The way to promote a lens is to start a twitter account and start making posts about, lets say widgets.  Just a comment here and there, say two or three over an hour or so.  Then make a comment on widgets that is the perfect lead into your widget lens with a link to your widget lens.  Then don't comment on any other lens for a day or so.  You can leave all the comments you want on anything you want, but don't flood the place with one lens after another.

Next is Delicious, I don't find it as good as others for lens promotion but it is a way to get a back link placed on another recognized site for the search engines and if someone out there likes what you wrote, (an article on something with a link to your on topic lens) they might decide to visit as well.

Stumble is very powerful if you approach it the right way.  First you have to establish yourself on Stumble.  It is not an overnight thing like others.  Stumble is a very unique type of random site viewer.  When you sign up for an account you tell Stumble what Categories of sites you would like to view.  Photography, Art, Internet, and etc......

Then when you install the Stumble widget in your FF or IE browser you can hit it and it will bring up a web site that some other Stumbler has submitted for rotation in a particular category.  When they appear you have three options, one thumbs up you like it, two thumbs down you don't like it, and three do nothing and hit the stumble button again to go to the next site in the rotation.

You can find some fascinating sites on stumble and that is why it is worth its weight in gold.

After you have spent some time on Stumble, rated several sites of others, and gotten some friends you will have established your self.

At that point you can type the URL in your browser of a site, lets say your lens on widgets.  A new window will open with boxes to fill in that you can submit a review on the site and place it into a category, assign keywords, and put that site into rotation.

Then the hits come rolling in, usually a boatload all at once and then it tapers off to very little depending on how many people thumbs up your site!

Digg is a little different even yet, and I don't get much from Digg.  But you submit a story or article or sentence with a link to your site.  Then the whole community gets to opt in to vote your post up or down.  Unless you are doing something that a lot of people want to read it will disappear off the radar screen rather fast.  But you will still have placed a back link to your lens for the SE's

Hope this brief explanation helps!

Terrific tips posted here.

BTW, what I've seen that's happened to me one night had to do with some feeds to Twitter.  I had a block of time and was updating many of my lenses.  Unfortunately, some glitch did a straight feed of way too many of my lenses.  I'm not really sure why/how that happened.  I didn't 'tweet' those lenses -- but it looked like I was spamming Twitter which is something I don't want to do.

Adez7, that is a great explanation of the different social medias. I am sure there are many new members who would love to learn more about these sites.

Digg has been pretty good to me lately.  I once had 350 stumblers on one of lens in a few short hours. That was just traffic and nobody interacted in any way with the lens. I use Delicious only for backlinks. I don't think i have ever had a visitor directly from delicious.

TagFoot is getting me traffic too nowadays. Give it a try.

thrivingmom wrote:

Wouldn't it be the same as having a MySpace or Facebook page where it'd be just yet another site you'd have to advertise, market, etc to get traffic to them so then you can get traffic to the lenses you have linked to them?

The idea with setting these up surrounded by friends and family is they visit your page by default because they like you.  That's the social part.  And then hopefully they read your links and click through.

If you went somewhere where you had no friends or family to connect with, or no one with similar interests, sure, you'd have to start all over promoting yourself and getting people to be interested in what you have to say. 

The same is true with a blog.  If you spend your time talking about cool stuff, ppl will follow you because you're talking about things that interest them.  Then they'll want to learn more about what you care about, and click through to your lenses.

Think of Seth's blog, for example.  He talks about stuff a certain group of readers care about, which is why they follow him.  Then when he posts a link or shares a recommendation, his readers want to learn more because they trust him.  It could have nothing to do with the main content of his blog. 

That should be part of your goal.  Create that following that will click no matter what.  You may achieve total follow-ship, but chances are good you'll land somewhere close.

thrivingmom - I suggest just trying out one at at time and see what works best for you. For me, it's StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, and Bumpzee. I'm kind of half-heartedly doing Tagfoot and Stumpedia at the moment, but I don't do Twitter or Reddit or Delicious or any other ones at all.

I've just found what "feels" most comfortable for me and what seems to be working as far as promoting my lenses. With a lot of these sites, after using them for a while they either just feel intuitive and easy or not. The thing is, it's different for everybody. I've got a rhythm down on the ones I use a lot now, and have built up a nice supply of friends on them so it just feels comfortable for me to use them.