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If you haven’t heard of Diigo yet, it’s high time you took a look and made use of what they have to offer. They define themselves as a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community. I believe their promise is backed up by the features they offer: bookmarking, annotations, clippings and the possibility to share everything you come across with others.

To get the feel of Diigo you can either join and discover everything on your own, or with a little reading Phil Butler and some video watching the video and then join. Either way, in the end you’ll agree you came across a great community.

Diigo is not your average social network. Given its strong focus on effective research, most users are there to keep tracks of the domains they’re keen on. Unless you are able to create tons exquisite content on quite a few hot tags of Diigo, just bookmarking your own articles won’t get you very far. So what other ways are there to use Diigo as a traffic generator?

1. Pay attention to your profile – we tend to take this step for granted, but many of us still start wondering around a new community we’ve joined before adding all details to our profile. I know it happened to me a few times. Why would you miss the chance of having someone visit your site just because you were too mesmerized by the cool stuff you came across to actually add it? And how would you expect other people with similar passions to find you if you haven’t stated yours?

2. Be an active user – You can’t be the go-to person for all topics. But as you surely have your own areas of interest you research for your blog or site anyway, you can use Diigo to structure your findings. By actively contributing you’ll be featured on the front page of the community, you’ll get your tags in the hot league and that will translate into more visitors to your profile.

4. Find your friends – If you’re not already on other social networks, you’ll have to try the old fashioned way of searching through email contacts. But if you are part of other networks, use the site communities to find your buddies. If there is no community for the network you’re an active user of, build it yourself. Chances are all those keeping an eye on all things social will become part of Diigo sooner or later and helping them find you will be mutually beneficial.

3. Build new relationships based on common interests – Diigo makes this part really easy: you can either join groups and there is one for any field you’d dream of or if you want to target an narrower niche, you can always join tag communities.

5. Engage peers in meaningful conversations – Take the time to know who’s interested in what and share content based on their research topics or their hobbies. They will always appreciate your being thoughtful enough to point them in the right direction. It will also help prove your expertise and get you recommended to others sharing your keens. And what’s more important, being regarded as the expert in a certain field will definitely shed a different light on the content you produce.

6. Avoid the temptations of selfishness – If you are serious about being an active contributor and if you genuinely care to help others, your group of friends or peers will eventually get very excited whenever you have something new to share. Don’t take advantage of your position to only promote yourself as it can lead you directly into the arms of rejection and subsequently oblivion. And if isn’t enough to drive away those close to you, it will surely prevent new relationships from ever happening.

Traffic should never be the only goal of your joining a certain community. Comparing notes, getting relevant feedback or ideas, being part of a group effort, these can be equally rewarding. Targeted traffic is however what you get in return for your contribution to the community. That said, your best tools to get the most out of Diigo are respect for others, helpfulness, attention to details and constant learning.

This was a guest post by Alina Popescu. Alina is one of our customers and, as you see, a very talented writer. Do you have something you think THC’s readers might be interested in? Feel free to send us your articles and, if we find them appropriate, you too can become a featured author.