Yesterday, I touched on Mixx one of my favorite social networks. Today I want to touch on all the networks I’ve been using for social traffic, and what they have brought me, why I like each one, and why I use each one.

Mixx

I love Mixx. As I stated before it has a warm bubbly feeling to it, and the community is helpful and very active. It doesn’t feel like other networks because it has constant updates and tweaking and is every improving. Mixx was one of the first social networks, I really got into.

It has a wonderful category section where you can select up to 8 categories and sub categories to put your article in. The voting works like very other network, you can vote an article up or down. A green arrow means up and a red one means down. They have a system like digg shouts where you can email your friends articles you’ve submitted.

To use the network you just signup for a profile, and you’re off to the races! You can submit URL’s rate others contents and start to build a friend base.

I currently have 80+ friends on Mixx and a few more followers (people that are friends with me but I am not a reciprocal friend). I reciprocal added people at the beginning, but lately I have just been adding people who fit into my niche or submit quality content to increase my profiles authority.

You can find my Mixx profile here.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon (SU) has the potential to bring you thousands, upon tens of thousands of unique visitors from one submission if the submission is good enough. It brings you traffic from submissions to your site, where your content is submitted into a category by a user, and potentially tagged and reviewed.

This is my sites largest source of social network traffic, and honestly, the traffic is half decent. It is somewhat targeted and the network has a random nature many enjoy.

Basically you install the toolbar, and start “stumbling” around. This brings you to random sites that fit into your interests categories. The traffic usually stops reads the article and keeps stumbling, but doesn’t stick around for much more.

When you stumble onto a site you can give it a thumbs up to say that you like it or a thumb down to signal you don’t. You can also review sites, and have the ability to network with other members.

I currently have, 65+ mutual friends on SU. I got most of these friends from them adding me to friends and reciprocating, but I did add around 100 friends a month ago as an experiment to see about reciprocal adding. Of those 100 friends I added, only about 12 added me back. Overall, for SU, it’s better to reciprocal add friends. Those that I reciprocal added are the one who stumble my stuff most of the time, while the ones I “shotgun” added (add lots of friends and hope for a small percentage to add me back), don’t usually even glance at my content.

You can find my StumbleUpon profile here.

Digg

I personally don’t love Digg. Although I don’t shy away from using it, I use it much less than I use Mixx or SU. To me Digg feels like a hospital, it is cold and “unwelcoming”. To me it feels like a hospital, everything is orderly, but you don’t really want to be there.

Basically how Digg works, is you submit content, and then it can be dugg or buried by users. When it is dugg, it gets closer and closer to the upcoming section, and even possibly a front page story. Burying entails voting the article down because of spammy or non quality content. This community is mainly user regulated, in terms of what passes as quality content.

Digg, although it has its shortcomings can be a HUGE traffic source. If your story hits front page, expect to see a ton of new visitors to your site. The problem is these visitors only checked you out because of the front page, and as a result may not be all that targeted.

I currently have 22 mutual friends on Digg and have been expanding my reach lately in a slow methodical sort of way (selecting targeted users to be my friends), while when I find got onto Digg I tried to “shotgun” friends.

You can see my Digg profile here.

Sphinn

I got into Sphinn at the very begging of my blogging journey and it brought me absolutely no traffic. As a result, because I was inexperienced and slightly naive, I discarded it, and never looked back. Just recently, I have been getting into the Sphinn vibe. The content submitted is great, and the network can bring you highly targeted traffic, if your story goes hot.

It basically works like the other networks. You can sphinn (positive) or desphinn (negative) articles. The one thing to be noted, is it that unlike places like Digg, an article doesn’t need a TON of sphinns to make front page.

This network can feel a bit exclusive to the new users, but it is a great source for quality articles.

I currently have 5 mutual friends on Sphinn, and am following a few more than that, hopefully that will increase in near future. In terms of how I am getting friends is I am adding those that Sphinn my content, because that means they like it and will probably like the types of content I submit in the future.

You can find my Sphinn profile here.

Wrap-up

Although I am not a “power-user” on any of the networks I use, I do get a bit of traffic from each. I currently stay away from any more networks because I feel that you have to invest time into networks to get a return, and I just don’t have the time for any more networks. If you use any of these networks, please add me, I’ll be happy to add you back!