Which social network is best for increasing traffic to your site? This article will attempt to answer this question by providing some basic information and comparisons.

When it comes to increasing traffic to you site, look to our "traffic lights". Hint: Green is good, yellow is OK, red is not good.

Social media sites continue to grow at an extraordinary pace, making the task of choosing the right route to expand social media marketing increasingly complex. Wikipedia lists over 175 social networks. Following are some of the most popular:

A microblogging site that enables users to send ‘tweets’ of 140 characters or less.The potential can be large, but promotion through Twitter is an art form: Promote your site too heavily and turn off followers, yet don't promote enough and receive little attention. Use keyword search monitoring through a program such as Hootsuite, TwitJump or Radian6 to track what people are saying about you and your competitors.

A social networking site where users can add friends, send messsages and build their own profile.Traffic is decent and on the rise thanks to share buttons and counters, but don't expect massive numbers of unique visitors to go to your site. Great for engaging people who want to share their opinions, and participate in giveaways and contests. Our first contest will be promoted on Facebook. For SEO, it is not worth the time expenditure.

An image and video hosting website where community members can share and comment on media.Even if you get tens of thousands of visits to a photo hyperlinked with your URL, click-through rates are among the lowest around. Flickr is great for SEO, as it is heavily indexed in search engines, passing links and page ranks.  It also helps images rank higher in Google Images and in building inbound links. We have photos on Flickr for this very reason (and also for hotlinking).

A social networking site for business professionUnlikely to drive any significant traffic to your site. Great for SEO, however. Your company name can have a very high page rank: Almost guaranteed on the first page of search results. Effective for demonstrating your professional prowess. We encourage you to maintain complete profiles to strengthen your reputation.

A video sharing website where users can share and upload new videos.One of the most powerful tools on the Web, YouTube is a tried-and-true way to gain exposure. Very good for building links back to your site because videos rank high. However, to get traffic back to your site, you must add a hyperlink in each video description. Whether you seek to entertain, inform, or both, video is a powerful channel for demonstrating your social media savvy.

Check out the official "Butterlies" (the award winning YouTube feature film about how YouTube got started) trailer:

A social news site where users can discover and share contentThe grandfather of traffic spikes so become active in the community or find someone who is. Opportunities are huge with Digg. If your story becomes popular, this is likely the best site in terms of getting linked to by bloggers. Make sure your content doesn't read like an ad, or your site might be banned for being overly commercial.

A social news community where members discover and share web pages.Enables a diverse range of people to discover your content and share links via the su.pr link shortener on Twitter. Tagging helps, but you don't want the same people repeatedly giving you a thumbs-up. Very good if your story makes it to the top page for its tag. StumbledUpon's large user base enables many people to find and link to your stories.

A social news community where users post links to the site’s home page.If Reddit loves you, then traffic is right up there with Digg and StumbleUpon. Be careful: Push too hard for votes from your friends and risk being banned, but don't push at all and you'll wind up with nothing. Make the front page and many reputable sites will pick up your story, generating valuable back links and extending trust to your site.

A social bookmarking site used for sharing and storing book marked pages.Not as big as it used to be, but informative, massive reference pieces bookmarked for later use can net you a few thousand recurring monthly visitors. Pretty much everything about the site helps with SEO: When your page is bookmarked, it's a direct link back to your site. The big category tag pages are full of trust, which will pass directly to your URL.

Note from Raster Master: Delicious employs the use of [rel=”nofollow”] on all their links. Therefore, you may feel that it is effectively worthless for SEO. YouTube is the same way. However, many bloggers use Delicious to find good content to then write about, and link to, thus helping with SEO (similar to Digg). YouTube matches are immediately indexed in Google (especially after Google acquired them). My primary caution (yellow light) to anyone interested in social media marketing is that they don’t start with the technology, rather start with the people you’re trying to reach. Then move to determining your objectives and strategy, and only then to the technology that fits. This article may tempt someone to dive into a tool an/or technology that doesn’t work for them just because it has a green light.

:: Source: [OMNITURE, San Diego, CA, USA]
:: Innovation: Using social media marketing to drive traffic to your website.
:: Available: Now.
:: Cost: $Varies in accordance with the time invested.