Whether it’s getting on the front page of Digg, receiving a bunch of thumbs up on Stumbleupon or getting a sudden blessing from Google, we’ve all grown addicted to that sudden surge in traffic.  It’s addicting, it’s exciting and it’s something we just want more of.

A reader asked me about social media and Google the other day, so let’s talk about these two today.

Social Media
Since readers will seldom be the first to submit an article into the social media networks, those who are just starting out might need to submit their own articles in hopes that it will get picked up by the main stream as people continue to vote up the post.

Something I’ve found is that the person who submits the article can be the difference between front page stardom and zero traffic boredom. In order for your content to be successful in social media networks, heavy participation is very important. This means submitting articles from other sites that interest you, commenting on the posts within the social media sites, adding friends to your network and in general embracing all activities within the network.

Once you participate, your articles will have a much better chance of gaining that traffic love you were seeking.

Google
It is possible to gain a huge surge in Google traffic. The advantage of this is that unlike front page Digg traffic that lasts 1-2 days, the Google surge can last months. The trick is to write about news that is related to your blog that is very hot with lots of new sudden searches. Since no one else has articles written around those keywords, there is a much better chance that your article will gain traction.

As an example, my friend wrote an article on the economic stimulus check when the United States government was handing them out, and instead of getting 500 visitors a day, his traffic jumped to getting 250,000 unique visitors a month. (As of this writing, he is still enjoying 150,000+ visitors a month after a few months)

Side Note: Although Google webmaster tool is supposed to tell you when the Google bots last crawled your site, I find that the date is wrong. Whenever I write a time sensitive post, Google always seems to be able to find it right away while checking the webmaster tools will often give you a day that’s a day (or more) old.

Follow me on twitter! Alternatively, subscribe to my RSS feed or get blog posts through email if you enjoyed this post!