If you've been looking for ways to build traffic and linkage to your site, while at the same time exposing your content to new readers, a post over at the Search Engine Journal might be of interest to you.  Loren Baker talks about using social-networking service StumbleUpon to spread the word, build links, and get a view extra hits… all at the same time.

The way it works is pretty simple.  Users submit sites, stories, and URLs to the service.  Other users can find those sites during searches or from recommendations from other StumbleUpon users.  In a Digg-like fashion, users then give the sites or stories a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.  As a submission gets more thumbs-up, more people see it.

Baker talks about submitting some of the stories from Search Engine Journal to the service and watching as he receives a steady stream of a few hundred (or few thousand) referrals.  He makes a good point about the benefit of StumbleUpon compared to Digg:  a front page Diggination can bring your server to crashing halt as tens of thousands of users flood to your site.  The traffic from StumbleUpon, in contrast, is more drawn out and usually within the limits of most servers these days.

He also suggests submitting articles that link to content on your site.  Besides giving your supporters a nice boost in traffic, more visitors actually end up visiting your site through links than if you only submit your story directly.  As Baker says in his post, it's a win-win situation for everyone.  The sites linking to you gain some popularity (and thus "trustedness") and that, in turn, makes those links to your site more valuable.

Quite an interesting approach to putting social-networking to use for your site, don't you think?