Social media sites are great; they can drive traffic to your site, helping you gain wider exposure, and build your backlinks.

But Digg, del.icio.us, and the rest, pull from the whole word wide web. That means your page, post or picture has to get A LOT of bookmarks to make it to the front page and get a rewarding traffic surge.

That’s where niche social media news sites come in. These bookmark sites are topic-specific, so not only are you only up against your competition in the niche, the users who click through to your site are your target customer!

Less Can Be More

The audience for the niche social media news site is more select, so you need fewer bookmarks to make a big impression. On some of the niche sites, you’ll find links to articles, posts and pages that are front page news with only 10 or 11 tags, like on Tip’d, a financial news social media site.

Check out this quick comparison; Sphinn, an Internet marketing niche social media news site, has a greatest hit tag count at 556, while a top Digg post has 1,665 diggs. That means you need only a third of the bookmarks to be a bigshot on Sphinn!

Targeted Traffic

The best thing about niche social media news sites is that the traffic you get from your sphinn-ed or tip’d content is your target audience. Everyone who’s checking out your submitted articles or posts is interested in what you’re saying or selling. The more you engage your target audience, the better chance you have at conversions!

So Where Do I Sign Up?

Now that you know about niche social media sites, here’s a list of a few to check out:

1. Sphinn – Internet marketing – http://sphinn.com
2. Small Business Brief – Small business – http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com
3. Dealsplus – Deals and sales – http://dealspl.us
4. ThisNext – Products – http://www.thisnext.com
5. N4G – Gaming – http://n4g.com
6. AutoSpies – Automobiles – http://www.autospies.com
7. Design Bump – Design – http://designbump.com
8. Tip’d – Finance – http://tipd.com
9. Pfbuzz – Personal Finance – http://pfbuzz.com
10. Kirtsy – Women’s news – http://www.kirtsy.com