Effective Social Book Marking for Poker Webmasters

As webmasters of poker portals we are always trying to find new ways to bring in traffic to our portals.  Methods in the past have included SEO, article submissions, link exchanges, buying advertising, offline marketing, and email campaigns.  With the rise in popularity of social bookmarking sites we have seen many webmasters attempt to capture new visitors by submitting their own content.  It is no surprise that many have failed… and for one main reason.  The stuff they are submitting is not something the current web savvy poker player might want to read.

So what do today’s poker playing social media users like to read?  In my opinion, I don’t think anyone likes to read room reviews, bonus lists, or anything of that dull nature.  If they did wanted to read that, they would head over to Google, do a search, and find a website to read.  The social media user likes to read content that they would normally not seek out.  An article about a poker pro, a news article related to poker, or anything that you have always wondered about online poker would be good content for social bookmarking.   When I am creating content I think of the audience.  Is it for Digg?  If so it better be computer of video game related, otherwise it will sink fast.

When aiming at social media users you have to really think, “If I was just an average person who likes poker, what would I like to read?”  Come up with something good and you can bet it will receive a ton of hits.

I wouldn’t worry  about making a fortune off of this traffic.  I like to try to get the traffic to subscribe to an RSS feed or e-mail newsletter.  The initial impact of these visitors can be quite low and discouraging.  Over time if you put together a good social media campaign you should be able to increase your RSS count or email list to a solid figure or critical mass.   Think about what your ad spots would be worth if you had 1000 RSS subscribers? 

Another crucial element to think about is the difference between RSS subscribers and newsletter subscribers.  Newsletter subscribers just opt in one time, then you mail them stuff until they decide they are no longer interested. Newsletter subscribes could lose interest quickly and wait a few months to unsubscribe (out of laziness).  RSS readers are only counted as a subscriber if they read the feed.  So if your chiclet is showing 500 subscribers you may actually have more, but only 500 actually read the feed the last time you published something.  Just something to think about.  I have rambled on long enough.