As far as the Internet is concerned, one thing is certain: in order to have success with a small business, it is necessary to remain flexible with the ability to adapt as technology progresses. Websites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and many others make it possible to receive a lot of web traffic , so why not take advantage of it?

First of all, it is important to understand what social media websites are all about. Let’s start with Digg. The concept is simple: you sign up and “digg” (a digg basically represents a vote) stories that are on the website. The stories that receive the most votes end up being featured on the frontpage. The result is a 5-figure number of unique visitors, extremely valuable backlinks, as well as a personal “victory” in terms of story ranking on the page. In fact, many webmasters include placement on the Digg frontpage at least once as one of their main goals. Things work pretty much the same way concept-wise as far as StumbleUpon is concerned: good stories receive some well-deserved exposure.

Let’s put a different type of social media website under the microscope, such as a Facebook and MySpace. As far as these two websites are concerned, it’s all about interaction. You sign up for a profile and share absolutely everything,: from thoughts and photos to links. As a webmaster, why not make sure that your website is the one that links to as many of the profiles as possible? Once a story goes viral on Myspace and/or Facebook, there’s little you can do to stop the wave of traffic that ends up being generated.

Twitter deserves a category of its own, since it basically represents a microblogging platform where people sign up and share mini blog posts (144 characters at most) with family members, friends, business partners or even the entire Web. Why not try your best to make your website worth “tweeting” about? When done well, some amazing exposure can be expected.

What these 3 categories of social media websites have in common interaction, which is what social media is all about. Static websites are a thing of the past as far as many people are concerned. Reading an article about something is no longer good enough; people want to rate it, comment, share it with others or make fun of it. In other words, they want a chance to be an integral part of the cultural conversation that is the Internet. Google is no longer the Web’s only “traffic bank,” which is why, now more than ever, it’s extremely important to adapt and take advantage of all of the amazing new social media opportunities as a webmaster.
Numbers Don’t Lie

For those who rely upon data that is backed up by numbers, the top 100 websites according to Alexa include all of the previously mentioned social media websites. Facebook has over 200 million members and Myspace is very close behind. Twitter is gaining more popularity with each day that passes and, just like with Digg and StumbleUpon, there’s a lot of traffic on the table for webmasters. This is especially true with Digg and StumbleUpon, since their business model is all about rewarding stories that generate the most audience interest.

Let’s analyze a possible scenario. One person tells 50 people about your website, who in turn let 50 other people know about it. Then those people also spread the word to 50 folks each. The result would be 125,000 people finding out about your website, which could position you to receive great benefit as a small online business owner. The numbers really speak for themselves. It’s easy to understand what social media exposure can do for your website and it’s an opportunity that really should be leveraged to the greatest extent possible.

Are You Ready for Huge Traffic Spikes?
Traffic from social media websites can comes in huge bursts if website marketing is done well. A traffic spike from social media websites can cause your website’s resource needs to skyrocket to the point of taking down the server. In fact, this huge traffic spike and the resulting resource spike is sometimes called the “Digg” or “Slashdot” effect.

If you know that your website can, in fact, handle the huge volume of traffic that may come from social media sites, kudos to you. If you are unsure, then maybe you need some tips on how to properly handle and harness social media traffic. Let’s start by referring to hosting issues and then move on to web application issues.
When it comes to social media traffic spikes, hosting issues can make or break your online business. Nobody wants to land on an inaccessible website page just because the web host was not technically able to handle your sudden spike in web traffic.

Instead, you need the web site to be well responsive throughout the spike and you certainly don’t want to see any of the traffic go to waste. Think of it as having a traditional brick and mortar store and staging a huge sale. You want to have the staff and resources to handle the inevitable onslaught of customers in place in order to reap the most rewards for your business as possible. This holds true for online businesses as well, no matter what service, product or type of information the website may be offering.

One of the first things you need to do when investigating if your website can handle surges in traffic is to really take a good hard look at your web host. There are a seemingly unending number of hosting companies available at everyone’s disposal. All of them offer different plans, however, when all of the plans are scrutinized, it is relatively clear that they’re all actually extremely similar as to the scope of what they offer.

All of the web hosting plans offered have a set amount of storage, as well as a set amount of bandwidth. Sometimes, the limits offered are what could be considered astronomically high. However, unfortunately, there is much more to web hosting than simply storage and bandwidth.

“CPU cycles” is something that very few hosts talk about. A social media spike will often not reach your bandwidth or storage limits but will hit against an unwritten CPU cycle limit. How can you tell how your host handles these CPU cycle limits? The easiest way is to ask them.

In addition to discussing CPU cycles with your web host, it is also a good idea to thoroughly check out their online knowledge base or Terms of Service. agreement. The better hosting companies usually spell things out for you and understand that social media traffic spikes are good for all involved in online business.

You may find that your website is already pressing against the traffic limits of typical shared website hosting. If this is the case, preparing for social media traffic may mean moving your website to a virtual private server or even a dedicated server. While this may seem like a big leap, there are many advantages to making the change. Frequently, the move from shared hosting is made to a virtual private server first. A VPS is a good middle ground because you get many of the benefits of a dedicated server without the exhorbitant expenses. This allows you to have more control over how you can get the most out of your website and any social media traffic that happens along the way. There are many ways in which to tweak your own server and get the most out of our website during a traffic spike.

Dedicated servers offer the same benefits when it comes to social media traffic and can help you handle spikes on not just one site, but many of them. There are some real advantages to considering dedicated servers, especially if you will be receiving social media traffic on a regular basis. Unlike with shared web hosting, virtual private or dedicated servers allow for some measures that may be taken in order to maximize ability to handle social media traffic. First off, you can tweak your web server (for example Apache or IIS) for maximum resource usage efficiency.

You can also install a cache mechanism for your scripting language to better handle requests and give output. WordPress is a CMS which may be problematic when it comes to hosting if you don’t adjust it. Be sure to install and activate the “WP Cache” plugin if indeed, you are using WordPress. It may even be possible to separate your Web server from your database server so that a maximum number of requests may be handled, for better control.
Aside from hosting related issues, there are also Web app issues to consider. Gone are the days when most web sites were nothing more than static HTML pages. Nowadays, many Web pages are created using Web apps that dynamically create pages using PHP or other web languages. Some of the more popular Web applications are WordPress, Joomla, vBulletin, Mambo, Concrete 5 and Movable Type. They all use web resources and when a traffic spike occurs, they will need even more resources or can have a tendency to crash the server.

Social Media Traffic Guidelines
One is tempted to believe that being prepared for social media traffic is extremely complicated. However, it’s all really a matter of following a few common sense guidelines. A little bit of optimization can go a very long way. It is a good idea to try to stay away from anythings that could place a huge burden on the server. For example, useless WordPress plugins should be avoided. Keep with only the most necessary technical applications and ‘just say no,’ to everyhing else. It is in this way that your website will be in the best position to handle whatever social media that you are fortunate enough to have attracted.
It is always a good idea to stay in good communication with your hosting provider. Ensuring that your website is adequately able to handle a good amount of social media traffic is not something that you can handle alone, so be sure to allow the people who are there to offer support do their jobs. Always let the hosting firm know exactly what application you plan on hosting and ask for their input. Explain that you are interested in generating a lot of social media exposure and that, as a result, you will be expecting sudden bursts of traffic.

If you want top notch hosting, be prepared to pay accordingly. Consider how much is the traffic you will be receiving is worth to you. If you’ll be receiving social media traffic worth over $5,000 per month, for example, wouldn’t it make sense to go with a dedicated server? Would you rather invest 10% of your revenue in quality hosting or stick with a mediocre plan and possibly see an income drop of 50% as a result of slow website loads server crashes during huge spikes of traffic?
Small business owners know that it takes money to make money. You also get what you pay for. These are sayings that, while cliched, have been valid for a long time. Therefore, it is best to stick with what has been proven to work, and you will be able to experience the best result from social media traffic spikes at your website, in order to help expand your online business.

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