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Every bloggers dream is to get an article on the front page of huge bookmarking sites and reap the rewards of having your servers crash due to the massive amount of visitors you’ll receive. Since it is quite hard to game social bookmarking sites due to their fancy schmancy algorithms and community participation, it’s not an event that can be forced. There are, of course, a few ways to nudge the masses to your favor - with a certain style and subject of writing, you can hugely improve your chances of reaching that front page and building some buzz and backlinks for your blog.

GET INSPIRED
The easiest way to get ideas for a post topic is to simply look at the front page of the bookmarking site you want to get popular on. Digg around a bit in the categories until you’ve Reddit all (puntastic!). If one of the top articles is about a bizarre animal, do some research about another peculiar being and write about that. I did this once for another blog and got a hefty number of views (and a nice sum of money as well). Don’t be afraid to steal borrow ideas.

PICK A FORMAT
Social media users don’t want long, drawn-out articles. They want something digestible and easy on the eyes. Fill your writing with loads of pictures, bullet points, humor, and numbered lists. Great examples of viral content can be found at Cracked’s “Top #” lists.

WRITE
The self-explanatory part. Just follow your format and your topic and you’ll (hopefully) soon have a ready viral article!

PUBLISH
Put your post up on your blog and wait. It’s best not to submit your post yourself unless you’re an extreme power user and you’re SURE you won’t get penalized from the bookmarking sites. Self-submission gets your stumbles devalued at Stumbleupon and makes Digg-ers hate you. Twitter your new post and hint that you’re trying to make it viral. Contact other webmasters in your niche and tell them to check it out. This should get the ball rolling.

THE CATCH
You can’t force social media popularity. After all, it’s SOCIAL - and there is no “I” in soci-

Uh. Well, there is. Regardless, gaming these sites =/= easy. There’s only so much you can do before throwing your content to the masses and hoping that someone sees how good it us.