Sites similar to digg.com, reddit.com, stumbleupon.com etc can bring you a LOT of traffic. How about getting 20,000 and more visitors a day once your listing hits the front page?

The steps below will surely help you to get traffic form the social bookmarking sites.

Pay more attention on your headlines

Many great articles go without being seen on social bookmarking sites because their headline is not catchy enough, so your headline is the first (and very frequently the only) thing users will see from your article, so if you don't make the effort to give a catchy headline, your possibility of getting to the front page are small.

Here are some examples to start with: -

The Two Types of Cognition: Original Headline
Learn to Understand Your Own Intelligence: Modified Headline

Write a meaningful and short description

The headline is very essential to draw attention but if you want to keep that attention, a meaningful description is essential. The description must be somewhat provocative because this draws more attention but still, in no way use lies and false facts to provoke interest. For example, if your write "This article will reveal to you the 10 sure ways to deal with strain once and forever and live like a king from now on." visitors will hardly assume that your story is true and facts-based.

You also may be tempted to use a long tell-it-all paragraph to explain your great masterpiece but have in mind that lots of users will not bother to read anything over 100-150 characters. In addition, some of the social bookmarking sites limit descriptions, so you'd better think in advance how to explain your article as briefly as possible.

Always have a great first paragraph

This is a rule that is always true but for winning social bookmarking it is even more essential. If you have successfully passed Level 1 (headlines) and Level 2 (description) in the Catch the User's Attraction game, don't allow a bad first paragraph make them leave your site.

The content is king

Though, the first paragraph is not everything. Going further along the chain of drawing (and retaining) users' attention, we attain the Content is King Level. If your articles are just trash, bookmarking them is useless. You may cheat users on one occasion but don't count on repetitive visits. What is more, you may get your site banned from social bookmarking sites, as you persistently post junk.

Make it easy for others to vote or to bookmark your site

It is best when other people, not you, bookmark your site. As a result, you must make your best to make it easier for them to do it, for this you have put a bookmarking button at the end of the article, so if users like your content, they can simply post it. If you are using a CMS, make sure if there is an extension that allows adding Digg.com, Del.icio.us, and other buttons but if you use static HTML, you can always go to the social bookmarking site and copy the code that will include their button to your pages.

Know when to submit

The time when you submit may be crucial for all your attempts to get to the front page. On most social bookmarking sites you have just 24 hours to get to the front page and stay there. So, if you post when most users (and particularly your supporters) are still sleeping, you are wasting valuable time. By the time they get up, you may have gone to the tenth page.

You would better try it for yourself and observe if it works for you but normally posting earlier than 10 a.m. US Central Time is not good. Lots of people say that they get more traffic around 3 p.m. US Central Time. In addition, workdays are normally better in terms of traffic but the downside is that you have more and more competitor for the front page than on weekends.

Submit to the exact category

Sometimes a site may not work for you because there is no right category for you. Or else you don't submit to the right category - technology, travel, health, whatever - but to categories like General, Miscellaneous, etc. where all unclassified things goes. And since these categories fill very fast also your chance to get noticed decreases.

Make a top profile

Not all users are identical on social bookmarking sites. If you are an old as well as respected user who has posted tons of interesting stuff, this increases the possibility that what you submit will get noticed. Posting links to interesting articles on other sites is very important for building a top-profile. Moreover, it is suspicious, when your profile has links to only one site. Many social bookmarking sites frown when users submit their own content because this feels similar to self-promotion.

Cooperate with further social bookmarkers

The Lonely Wolf is a suicidal strategy on sites like StubleUpon, Digg, and Netscape. Lots of stories make it to the front page not just they are great but because they are backed up by your network of friends. If in the first hours after your submittal you may get at least 15 votes from your friends and supporters, it is more apt that other users will vote for you. 50 votes can take you to the top page of Digg.

Submit the content in English

Linguistic diversity is great however the majority of users are from English-speaking countries and they don't understand exotic languages. So, for the majority of the social bookmarking sites submitting whatever thing in a language different from English is not recommendable.

The languages that are at an especial drawback are Chinese, Arabic, Slavic languages and all the other that use non-latin alphabet. French, German, Spanish are other understandable but still they are not English. If you really must submit your story (i.e. because you need the backlink), include an English translation as a minimum of the title. However the best way to proceed with non-English stories is to post them on wherever they belong.

Don't submit old news

Submitting old news will not help you in becoming an appreciated user. Yesterday's news is history. But if you still have to submit old stuff, think about feature articles, howtos and alike pieces that are up-to-date for a long time.

Check the facts

You should be flattered that users read your postings but you will barely be flattered when users bear out that you haven't got the facts right. In addition to sarcastic comments, you may also receive negative votes for your story, so if you want to avoid this, verify the facts - or your readers will do it.

Check your spelling

Several sites do not allow editing your posts later; therefore if you misspell the title, the URL, or a keyword, it will stay this way everlastingly.

Not all topics will do well

But sometimes even great content and submitting to the right category may not push you to the top. One feasible reason might be that your stories are about unpopular topics. Lots of sites have topics that their users love and topics that don't sell that well. For example, Apple sells fine on Digg and The War in Iraq on Netscape. Negative stories - about George Bush, Microsoft, evil multinational companies, and corruption with crime also have a chance to make it to the front page. You can't know these things in progress but some research on how many stories tagged with keywords like yours have made the face page in the previous year or so can give you a clue.

Have Related Articles or Popular Articles

Traffic gurus joke that traffic from social bookmarking sites is like an attack - the crowds pour in and in a day or two they are gone. Unluckily this is true - after you are listing rolls from the front page (provided that you reached the front page), the drop in traffic is considerable. Moreover, many users come just following the link to your article, have a look at it and then they are gone. One way to keep them longer on your site is to have links to Related Articles or Popular Articles or else something similar that can draw their notice to other stuff on the site and make them read more than one article.

RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions and affiliate marketing

RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions and affiliate marketing are the areas in which the traffic from social bookmarking sites can help you a lot. Lots of people, who come to your site and like it, will subscribe to RSS feeds and/or your newsletter. Therefore, you have to put these in visible places and then you will be astonished at the number of new subscriptions you got on the day when you be on the front page of a major social bookmarking site.

Don't use automated submitters

After a few time of active social bookmarking, you will find out that you are spending hours on end posting links. Yes, this is a lot of time and using automated submitters may look like the solution but it isn't. Automated submitters frequently have malware in them or are used for stealing passwords, so if you don't care about the fate of your profile and don't mind being banned, automated submitters are not the means to go.

Reply to the comments on your stories

Social bookmarking sites are not a newsgroup but exciting articles can trigger a pretty heated discussion with large number of comments. If your article gets comments, you have to be proud. Always reply to comments on your stories and even better - post comments on other stories that seem to be interesting. This is a way to make friends as well as to create a top-profile.
Set up your server for the expected traffic

This is hardly a point of slight importance but we take for approved that you are hosting your site on a reliable server that do not crash twice a day. However have in mind that your presence on the front page of a major social bookmarking site might drive you a lot traffic, which may cause your server to crash - literally!

Snowball effect

But in spite of the differences in the likes of the different social bookmarking communities, there are striking similarities. You will shortly discover that if a post is popular on one of the major sites, this regularly drives it up on the other big as well as smaller sites.

Generally it is Digg posts that become popular on StumbleUpon and Reddit but there are lots of other examples. To use this fact to your best advantage, you may want to give attention to your efforts on getting to the front page of the major players only and bet on the snowball effect to drive you to the peak on other sites.

An added benefit of the snowball effect is that if your posting is interesting and people start blogging about it, you can easily get tons of backlinks from their blogs.