White Hat Guys

Is internet marketing using web 2.0 for real?

Can you drive traffic to your web site or blog with social marketing using sites like Digg?

The short answer is yes.

I was able to drive quite a bit of traffic from Propeller.com (formerly Netscape) to a blog that was only a few weeks old.

In fact, I managed to drive over 1,000 visitors to my blog in less than 24 hours from one blog post that was submitted to Netscape!

All told that blog post submitted to Netscape drove over 2,400 visitors to my new blog for the month of August.

So let’s discuss some important copywriting tips you can use in your social marketing so that you can maximize your success when trying to generate traffic using web 2.0 sites.

Write a powerful, attention grabbing headline.

When writing an article, whether it’s for your blog or an article directory, you should think about your headline the same way you would think about a headline for a sales letter.

The headline is the first thing people are going to see when they come across your article.

If it doesn’t compel them to keep reading, you won’t see any results, no matter how great your information might be in the body of the article.

This is just as true, if not more so, when incorporating social bookmarking and social news sites in your marketing plan.

Your headline MUST grab the attention of the reader immediately.

Let’s use Digg as an example.

If you submit your article to Digg, you’ll first appear on a page of Upcoming Stories with 15 or so other submissions.

You’re competing with all those other submissions for the attention of the visitor. Your headline is crucial to get their attention.

You need to think like a copywriter when writing your article headlines.

Two great ways to get attention with your headline are controversy and curiosity. Check out some top submissions on Digg and you’ll see both controversy and curiosity in a lot of the headlines.

Let’s look at a controversy example. If I had a site on obesity I could use the title “Information on Obesity.”

Sure, but do you really think people are going to click on that headline? Heck no!

But something like “Why Obesity Is Your Fault.”

These are just off the top of my head and aren’t the best examples but you get the point.

That brings up another point on the headline. Unlike a lot of headlines you see in sales copy, your headline for Digg needs to be short.

You only get 75 characters and you’re probably better off keeping it even shorter than that.

Keep in mind, the headline you give for Digg doesn’t have to be the headline for your article on your site.

You also get a story description when submitting to sites like Digg and Propeller.

Think of this like you would the sub headline on a sales letter.

You need to compel people to want to click and continue you reading.

A great way to do this is to spark curiosity and then leave them hanging so they just have to click to read the completion of your thought.

If you want to really develop the ability to write great headlines, start reading the cover on the tabloids when you’re standing in line at the grocery store.

They know how to write headlines that generate curiosity or controversy. They have to.

Compelling you to purchase the magazine by seeing the headlines while standing in line is how they stay in business.

You should take time and care to your headline and story description when submitting to sites like Digg.

If you don’t, you won’t get any traffic from it.

Keep the old fashioned headline copywriting tip in mind, AIDA.

Attention: Interesting/Controversial/Short headline

Interest: Okay, I sort of folded this into attention but you can expand on this in the short story description.

Don’t give the story away. Make them interested enough to want to read the story.

Desire: By writing something that is interesting, you can create the desire in your reader to want, or even need, to answer the questions you’ve brought into their mind with your headline and story description.

Action: Get attention, create interest and desire, and you’ll drive the reader to action, which in this case is clicking on the link to read your story. Success!

Tags: copywriting, digg, propeller, social marketing, traffic generation, web 2.0