At the SMX Social Media conference in New York City, panelists discussed the murky topic of social media sites, and how to draw traffic from them to your site. A well-crafted story can bring approval and loads of profitable traffic from social media destinations like Digg, Reddit, or Delicious. Rebecca Kelley of SEOMoz wanted attendees to think links, in a big way.

It's all about traffic, and even the temporary after-glow of a server-melting influx of visitors will help in the long run. Rebecca believes traffic from that rush, though temporary, should help boost long-term traffic afterwards.

Getting the attention of the social media audience means being clued in to what is current. Rebecca suggested looking at Digg, Google Trends, and industry peers as potentially solid resources. Delving into authoritative, related blogs could be a gold mine of ideas too.

Brent Csutoras suggested the ever-popular idea of lists as an avenue to attract the social media crowd. They don't always have to be a top ten, and they don't always have to be positive lists, either.

Lists should be numbered, with simple, strong, focused points for each item. The viewer should benefit from the titles of the list just as much as the descriptions.

The how-to article has proven popular too. It shouldn't be a massive, lengthy block of text, and in a time where images, audio, and video can be placed online easily, people expect more out of a how-to than an endless stream of words.

Cameron Olthuis of Factive Media reiterated the importance of categorizing one's linkbait; tagging accurately helps here, too.

When reaching out to the social media crowd with a submission, it's important to target it to a receptive crowd. The offbeat approach can work, as Cameron referenced the online game he helped make, Search Engine Smackdown, where the player could pummel search geeks like Google's or Yahoo's co-founders.

The referee will look familiar to SMX Social Media attendees, as it is none other than conference organizer and panel moderator Danny Sullivan.

WebProNews Video anchor Kara Ratliff contributed to this report.