Over the last few months I’ve signed up with a number of social networking sites in hopes of increasing visibility to my blog, as well as to create and increase the number of subscribers and repeat visitors. At the same time, I’ve spent a great deal of time reading posts from more experienced bloggers to learn ways I can improve my blog, finding my own niche and building a reputation where other bloggers will find my topics not only of interest, but will want to link to my site.

With so many social networking sites available online, some requiring frequent login’s and browsing member sites to receive “points”, I began wondering today if any of you find yourselves getting a bit dizzy with it all, as I sometimes do. Some social networking sites have brought better results for me than others, but I’m not too sure I’m ready to rid myself of those that don’t seem to bring much traffic since it’s only been a few months. I’m also not one to yet obsess about my ranks and stats at this point, but I do occasionally take a peek at my Feedburner subscription numbers, as they are increasing steadily and for that I’m very thankful.

I understand that developing a true following takes some time, and right now my main focus is writing content that people will want to read and comment on, and maybe just maybe they will decide to use one or more of any number of links I have to showcase a topic I’ve written, bringing more awareness of my writings. I’m very curious to know what social networking sites YOU have found to be of most help to increase your visibility, traffic and readership numbers? Who are YOUR favorites?

My personal favorite social networking sites are:

Stumble Upon-
Stumble Upon is probably my first choice of favorites, and I use it frequently to give others a Thumbs Up while browsing the web.

Digg-
I enjoy Digg, and from comments I find on other blogs, it seems to be a big favorite for many others as well.

Blog Catalog-
Overall, Blog Catalog has brought me the most traffic up to this point, and I thoroughly enjoy searching through the various groups and discussions going on there, and do my best to comment on a variety of topics discussed.

Blogs Record-
Blogs Record is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. You can add your blog links to a variety of categories, participate on the forum discussions, and create some nice connections there.

BlogLog-
Initially I did well with BlogLog, getting quite a bit of traffic on a daily basis, but that seems to have gone down some lately. Hopefully my stats there will improve as I continue to adding better content and visibility.

Sphinn-
I’m brand new to Sphinn, just today actually, so this one is a “we’ll see how it goes” network for me at this point.

I also belong to Del.icio.us but I haven’t quite been able to figure it out yet. Technorati, BumpZee, Reddit, Fuel My Blog, SpicyPage, Blog Explosion, are also on the list of those I visit quite frequently even though I haven’t completely figured out how they work.

What social networking sites are your favorites? Why?

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