Social Networks

Social Networks are a modern phenomena on the web. Essentially it's where people can gather and recommend to each other sites, services and more as well as communicate and chat.

There are two main types that of use to the site owner. The first kind of social network actively recommends and rates various websites, such as Stumbleupon and Digg. The second type is really a communication medium, such as MySpace and Facebook.

With the bookmarking sites, you can simply add your site, then attempt to get as many votes as you can. With a high vote your site can be shown, for example, on the frontpage of Digg (resulting in the infamous "Digg Effect", literally thousands of hits overnight). Or you can grow your own personal network - by adding "friends" - on sites such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.

Other social networks are more specialized, such as YouTube and Flickr, but you can still use that sites specific kind of content (videos and pictures in this case) to build a traffic flow. You just need to ensure your site link appears somewhere with the content.

Really this becomes a race for votes. It can snowball easily, so the more people who see your site on Stumbleupon or Digg the more people there are to click the vote button you provide. And with Facebook, for example, the more friends and contacts you get the more likely you are to get even more.

It's well worth using social networks for traffic but it becomes an ongoing task, otherwise you'll just get traffic spikes and not a steady flow.