My Blog Traffic Graph

Recently, I’ve started experimenting with social bookmarking sites to increase the traffic on my blog.  So far, the social bookmarking web serviceDelicious appears to be working very well.  Yesterday, a Google Wave blog post that I wrote back on 9/5/09 was rediscovered by mpouse, and then was saved multiple times by many other Delicious users.  As you see from the graph, I do enjoy the sudden spike of traffic that Delicious brought to my site.  This graph also tells you that the most viewed article is “7 Reasons Why Google Wave Is Going To Be Awesome,” exactly the one that was saved bympouse.  Having carefully studied the Delicious bookmarking site, this is what I have learned so far to help you increase your website/blog traffic.

1. What is Delicious?

Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source.  Unlike the regular browser bookmarking, Delicious bookmarking allows you to access all your bookmarks anywhere via the Internet.  You can find all your Delicious bookmarks at delicious.com/username.  In my case, it’sdelicious.com/webstudio13

2. How to share and find bookmarks using different Delicious features?

Tags – Use Delicious tags to organize different topics and bookmarks that interest you.  In my opinion, the tag function exactly equates the“folders” we are used to for the regular browser bookmarking.  It lets you find content in a subcategory fast and easy.  Not only that, Delicious also makes it easier for you to discover what’s hot by looking at its popular tags. For example, on the Delicious popular page, you get a snapshot of bothpopular bookmarks and popular tags (on the right hand side), kinda likeTwitter’s Trending topics.

Network - The Delicious “Network” feature lets you add other users to your network in a snap.  In other words, you become a fan of the people you are interested in.  By adding them to your network, you get updates on whatever they bookmark on their pages.  Even better, you can share your own bookmarks with specified Delicious users in your network by notifying them once you bookmark something.

Subscription - Subscriptions are a way to see the recent bookmarks that everybody has saved with the tags that you’re interested in. After you add a tag to your subscriptions, the latest bookmarks for that tag will appear on your subscriptions page. You can subscribe to multiple tags to create an automatically updated list of interesting bookmarks. To me, this concept sounds very similar to the RSS subscription feature that I have on my blog because it allows you to get on-time updates on topics that interest you.

3. How do you get the most out of Delicious?

If you are like me, consuming tons of information on the Internet, you would need Delicious to help you organize your “information folders.” In my opinion, the best way to learn it is to get on it, and use it often.  From now on, make a habit to bookmark interesting articles and blog posts on Delicious and share them with other Delicious users whenever possible.  Lifehack has a great post about Delicious called Top 10 Ways to Use del.icio.us.  You are also welcome to go to my Delicious page and search for the tag “Delicious.” I promise you will find a slew of great articles on this subject!

4. How do you get started with Delicious?

In case you don’t have a Delicious account yet, here is a mini-tutorial to get you properly started.

1. Go to the Delicious homepage.
2. Click the Get Started or Register link.
3. Choose a username and password.
4. Fill in your email address.
5. Click the Register button.
6. Click Install Extension Now to add Delicious buttons for Firefox or Internet Explorer to your web browser. In my case, I installed a script on my Chrome bookmarks bar.
7. Go to your email, and verify your new Delicious account.
8. Now you’re ready to start bookmarking.

Here is a simple visual demonstration if you work better with videos.

How do you use Delicious?  Let us know in the comment area if you have additional tips.

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