Thanks for asking Christi.
Submiting articles and social media marketing are 2 different things.
1. Submitting Articles
You write a new article. Then you approach other websites and ask them to publish your article with a link back to your website.
i. You can approach other blogs in your industry to publish your article
ii. You can approach a newsletter publisher and ask him to run your article
iii. You can visit websites like ezinearticles.com and submit your article over there
EzineArticles.com is by far the best general article submission website. There are hundreds of other article directories out there but only 3-4 are good. Others are junk.
You can look into submiting your article to offline magazines, newsletters and trade journals too.
2 Social Media Marketing
This is promoting your website via sites like digg.com. Every site has its own strategy that you should use. I would recommend against using sites like socialmarker.
There are some common factors though: on all networks and social sites, the more friends you have, the more popular your posts and articles will get.
So focus on making more friends on those websites. Select one website for a month. Make friends. Vote for their websites. So that they'll reciprocate and vote for yours.
Then next month, move onto another social marketing website.
(I personally outsource most of the social marketing for my websites because it is too time intensive.)
Here are some articles that may help you:
SU:
http://www.mikebogo.com/ultimate-stu...n-resource.php
Digg:
http://www.earnersblog.com/digg-power-user/
Twitter:
http://www.lostartofblogging.com/twitter-guide
Besides them, also check out how you can create pages on squidoo.com and hubpages.com to promote your website.