One of the most common things I'm asked by new blog owners is "What do I do, what now?" It seems that much of this is borne out of the old fashioned concept that a web site is akin to an online version of your brochure. Think about this for a moment... Many of us have web sites that host page after page of static content (that is, content which never changes), yet we never give a thought that there's no incentive to revisit the site after the reader has seen it. (After all that would be like watching the same television program again, and again... It gets old and boring). So it seems when many of us move to blogging type sites, it's sometimes hard to mentally leap the barrier of "static" to dynamic (dynamic meaning content that changes). Blogs are something that engages your readers, they (blogs) facilitate two way communication between you and your readers (who, for business operators, are potential clients). All to often I notice new blog owners place some content on the blog and then sit and wait for traffic. Invariably I often get a message or phone call asking what can be done as ...

It seems to me that the ever increasing demands placed on blog owners to enhance the growth of their business through the use of social media tools, has left many a bit unsure as to which tool best suit their needs. In fact, one of the most common questions I'm asked is along the lines of "Which social web site is the best for me?", followed by a plethora of names, ranging through Digg, StumbleUpon, twitter, LinkedIn and so on. One thing I'd like to clarify before continuing. Online social media promotion tools (such as the sites mentioned above) are best used as an extension of your existing, traditional marketing activities. The benefits in most cases result in: More targeted audience. Greater geographic reach. Reduction in marketing costs. Save time (in other words using time in a more productive effective manner). However, the above are only some of the most immediate that come to mind. One thing I always try to advise clients is to break down their business or blog promotion requirements to reflect the jobs (or responsibilities) at hand. Generally, there are four primary groups: Management. Your are the blog and/or business owner. Your primary goal should be to raise awareness and visibility of your products, ...

In an earlier post I showed how Digg was good for short term traffic spikes, but StumbleUpon outperformed Digg in terms of retaining and building long term traffic for the average blog owner. One reader emailed and challenged me by saying "...Digg is always the best as you get more traffic... so much traffic that your server will crash..." Again, yes that's true in the SHORT term, but you'll garner much better LONG term growth with social media sites (such as StumbleUpon). Have you ever watched fishermen? It all boils down to the type of net you throw out (I allude to this later). Side note: If your blog is hosted on a shared web server, there is a greater likelihood that your site will fail as the server may not be able to absorb the traffic load from Digg or Slashdot (and your hosting provider might suspend your hosting account). You'll be happier with a dedicated server (as it's more reliable and robust), or at the very least, a VPS should perform better than shared hosting. However, let me illustrate by quickly grabbing 3 months of statistics for a specific post (off my Linux based blog). The image below shows the total ...

I had an interesting discussion about blog and web site traffic sources with a colleague of mine over the weekend. He was looking at the changing landscape of web traffic, especially how his blogs were outperforming his "traditional" web sites. He alluded to an earlier post of mine "Why Blogs May Be Better Than Traditional Sites", and suggested that the changing face of how data is accessed, shared, exchanged, mashed up, etc. should also be reflected in the web statistics of blog owners. He suggested (among other things) that traditional linking, wherein you ask a site owner to exchange links is an antiquated method that simply does not hold true in today's changing webscape. I disagreed until he suggested I take a look at the number of social web sites that are driving traffic to any one of my blogs. I chose my Linux (Ubuntu) based blog, selecting the statistics for a full year (July 17, 2007 to July 17, 2008 - Since it I didn't start promoting it until July) and was rather surprised by a couple things. I assumed that Google would still be the prime traffic source. I also assumed that all the links from other (non-blog, "traditional" ...