Random thoughts: How to drive major social media traffic

An industry peer and acquaintance of mine, Glen Allsopp, recently published a blog post describing how he helped a client go from virtually zero social media visitors to well over 500,000 in just one month.

Pretty catchy title, huh?

Granted, the client in question was a news source that has the ability to crank out viral content on a daily basis, but the point is that while some outfits simply talk about social media as a tool for driving traffic and awareness, others are actually doing it in a very real way.

And while Glen did an excellent job of chronicling his success with this one client, I believe that a lot of agencies and SEO/SMO shops out there are still struggling with how to convince their clients to a) create more viral content (or any viral content for that matter) and b) how to leverage social bookmarking sites like Digg and Stumbleupon to reap the rewards of said viral content.

Posts like this are the type of ammunition that will help make the case for creating more viral content, and as for leveraging social bookmarking sites, all I can say is that you’d better start building up your existing accounts into power accounts and you’d better start making friends with the right power users that can help ensure that good viral content doesn’t go to waste.

Of course, that’s easier said than done.

A lot of people claim to have those connections, but in most cases, very few can put their money (and their results) where their mouth is.

P.S. Savy SEO folks know that arguably the most valuable part of this social media traffic is the resulting inbound links that come with it, but that, as they say, is a story for another day.