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 nothing’s happening. The conversation usually sounds something like this (below being an actual transcript):

BloggerSavvy: “Have you added in-demand, valuable content to your blog?”

New Blog Owner: “I did that a while back, but nobody visited the site.”

BloggerSavvy: “Have you added anything recently, content?”

New Blog Owner: “Well, no, not really, there’s not enough traffic and I don’t want to waste my time.”

BloggerSavvy:  “What things are you doing to draw traffic to your blog?”

New Blog Owner: “What do you mean? This is the Internet, won’t Google provide the traffic?”

BloggerSavvy: “Oh, I see, okay, what sites and online communities are you participating in, what activities are you doing to attract the attention of readers?”

New Blog Owner: “The blog is on the Internet, so shouldn’t I get some traffic because of that? There are millions of people all over the world on the Internet.”

BloggerSavvy: <Pausing…>

New Blog Owner: “I don’t really know what you mean or what I should do, can’t you do something? What now?”

As I’m sure we can appreciate, it seems that much of the issue is related not only to understanding the concept of a dynamic web site (blog), but also in appreciating that the off line, tangible world (where we make friends, connections, etc.) is mirrored in the online world! – The Internet. With this in mind, let’s think about that conversation…

In-demand, valuable content. That’s important, it provides original information that is demanded by readers. In other words, copying content from somewhere else (even with permission) is simply not going to garner any traffic or blog popularity. After all, if the blog uses duplicated content, what incentive is there to visit? Most readers would prefer (and will)  visit the source.

Post new content consistently. Business demands are very great on our time (myself included).  However, it’s important to always post regularly, the more often the better (as long as the content is of good quality – posting tons of low quality content will simply motivate readers to leave). When your blog is not busy, you should still post content! The thought process that it’s not worthwhile to post (since there are not many readers) is, in my opinion, a defeatist perspective. If I don’t post there are no readers – They will leave! If I’m low on readers, that’s when I must post regular content – It gives new readers some meat and potatoes… If the table is bare, it’s not very inviting – is it?

Be active in promoting your blog. You’ve got to get out there and participate, shake the trees, be active – Just like Baloo (Don’t know what that means? See the video below).

It’s a matter of gaining the experience of knowing were to participate, where to look for traffic, readers, connections – As Baloo puts it “the bare necessities”. Or… more to the point how to search. Just because your blog is accessible to Internet  subscribers, does not impart a degree of excessive traffic. This still begs the question, what now? What can new blog owners do to improve their visibility and increase readership.

To get noticed, you’ll have to make some noise. For all those new blog owners, here are some of the things I’ve done that have worked for me.

• Create a signature for your email and include and invitation to your URL. This will automatically be appended to every email you send out. eMail applications like Thunderbird, Evolution, Outlook Express, etc. all have the ability to do this.
• Join forums that appeal to your niche. When you answer questions (or ask them), most forums have the ability to include your tag line and/or signature. Again, include and invitation and a link to your URL. Do not spam forums (you’ll get banned). Instead, legitimately participate in them.
• Allow some of your content to be used on other sites only if the content links directly back to your blog.
• Participate in communities such as twitter, digg, etc. and those which appeal to your niche subject,  ensuring your profile in each of the communities you join all contain a URL to your blog.
• Comment on other blogs (do not spam – comment legitimately) with valuable content, insight, links, opinions, etc. – While making sure you include the URL of your blog in the appropriate area of the comment form you are completing.
• Always do your best to respond to readers who comment on your blog. Invite their opinions.
• Ensure your blog has the facility to allow commentors to be notified when someone responds to their comment – This invites return visits and further discussion.
• Offer to be a guest blogger on other blogs and invite your readers to be a guest on your blog.
• Make sure your blog has a “search” feature. Nothing could be more annoying than having to flip though page after page to try and find something. Make your blog user friendly.
• eMail readers and thank them for visiting.
• Get your best content seeded (included) in social bookmarking services like Stumbleupon and Delicious.

The above suggestions should help give new blog owners a good push in promoting their blog readership and traffic. Remember, don’t expect instant results, rather focus on community participation and providing quality content. If you do, your readership will grow all by itself.

What works for you that I’ve not mentioned? Have a success story you’d like to share? Feel free to add your comments below!

In my opinion, the lack of understanding the importance of social media is one of the biggest contributing factors to the lack in targeted web traffic, of any volume. All too often it seems, a web site or blog is launched and there’s almost not effective growth plan or activities that capitalize on the benefits of social media.  To be quite blunt, I’m not aware of any other low-cost effective blog promotional venues that has the capability and reach of social media.

For those not familiar, by social media venues, I’m referring to avenues such as Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Friendster, Facebook, and the like. Sites and services that are able to connect large communities of people in any given niche. Remembering of course that the better you can cater to a focused niche, the more pre-qualified your traffic is going to be.

With regards to social media marketing (or the lack thereof), I think each of us falls into one of four categories:

1. Fully aware and know how: Individuals who are fully aware of the value of social media and use it consistently to build their blog.
2. Aware and don’t know how: Individuals who are aware, but do not know how to effectively take advantage of it.
3. Unaware and don’t know how: Individuals who are unaware and do not understand how it works.
4. Don’t care and not interested: Individuals that simply avoid social media or don’t realize the value of it.

For those not familiar with social media or it’s impact, the following video illustrates the forces that shape it:

Regardless of which category of social media usage any of us fall into, it’s important at times, to be reminded of two primary inherent benefits social media offers bloggers. For those of us not familiar, the following may be an eye-opener!

Social media has a direct impact on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). How? It’s quite simple, social media builds (increasingly) the number of links back to our blogs. The more links back, the better the ranking. You might be thinking “Wait! I participate in paid link exchanges that can improve my ranking” . To be blunt, paid link exchanges that claim to improve SEO (in my opinion) are a worthless exercise and waste of financial resources. I’ve worked with numerous sites that have garnered no real benefits. In fact Matt Cutts of Google has often commented on this very issue: “Text links and PageRank” and “SEO Mistakes: link exchange emails“.

In my opinion, the most important issue with regards to social media based link building is that the links are not paid, they are permanent and of course obtained in a natural manner. By natural I’m referring to another site or blog linking to your blog as there is a genuine relationship or discourse between the two blogs. Such links are in essence a vote of trust and confidence in the value of your content. As such the more genuine links (or votes of trust) you garner from social media, the higher the authority of your blog.

I know from experience, the birth of a new blog with no traffic or social media buzz, has a difficult time to garner traffic and back links. One of the most effective ways to build them is to participate in the social media sphere! Join twitter, digg, technorati, linkedin, stumble, and so on… develop contacts, communicate, share. These are the activities that are going to help you grow your blog traffic and help you appeal to your target niche. From experience, here is one trick DO NOT ONLY POST LINKS TO YOUR CONTENT. Doing so is obvious to others in your social sphere; that you are only interested in self promotion.

Think of it this way. If you’re at a dinner party and the conversation from your side of the table always revolves around you, wouldn’t that make other guests think you’re self centered? Key issue: You’ve got to give if you want to get. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. That’s how it works. If you want others to help you, then you’ll need to freely help them. Therefore, when you’re twittering, stumbling or digging though the web, make sure you twitter, stumble and digg the content of blogs or sites you enjoy; other than your own.

Initial primary traffic encourages secondary traffic. What does this mean? Think of it this way, the more you socialize, the more contacts you make. They tell their friends, who tell their friends, and so on… Remember, social media is not about making money, it’s about making friends. Every blog, web site, business, group, organization, etc. needs friends, that’s what brings us the secondary traffic that can enable us to grow. Perry Belcher’s video (blunt language and all) expresses this very clearly (for those interested, Mr. Belcher’s blog can be found at perrybelcher.com):

As I’m sure you’ll appreciate from the video your house is your blog. That’s the place where you invite your social media friends too. That’s where you focus on your content and on listening to your readers. If your social media mission is to make money and get traffic, that’s just not going to work. Think about it this way, if you go to a party, is your “mission” to have fun or to garner followers?

The crux of the issue is that most blogs (and the businesses associated with them) seek to grow, becoming more profitable. Social Media can collect a core group of supporters (along with their peers) who can effectively recommend your blog to others. As such, it’s often these others who help grow your sales (as they were referred) and who in turn refer others through their social media networks.

Finally for those who don’t care and are not interested in Social media, what you don’t know can’t hurt you, right? Wrong… as the video below will clearly explain:

In conclusion, the more social media friends you have, the faster word of mouth will spread (with regards to your blog). Social media networking is an extremely effective manner with which to invite people to your blog. Your traffic will grow in leaps and bounds when there are a group of readers ready to answer your call to action. Readers that you found via Social Media.

What are some of your thoughts, commentary? Do you agree or disagree with some of the ideas above? How do you approach the issue of social media and blogging? Feel free to include your comments below.

As I’m sure we can appreciate, humourous as the video may be, the end result is not the fault of the developer (or so we might initially think), rather the input of the clients. It’s one thing to provide valuable input (and we should), it’s quite another to assume command as if we are a graphic design or web development professional. Let’s elaborate on some of the issues in this video the majority of which have been mirrored in actual projects I’ve worked on:

• Over analyzing.
• Too many cooks in the kitchen.
• Unrealistic time line expectations.
• Changing the parameters mid-stream.
• Adding parameters that are not related to the targeted message.
• Too much information.
• Use of copyrighted or trademarked material.
• Obtaining the advice of people without knowledge and/or outside the target niche.
• Assumptions without supportive facts.
• Assuming personal ideas are paramount and effective.
• Providing conflicting information or directives.
• Impractical expectations.
• Assuming we’re in the drivers seat.
• Use of unresearched an unrealistic ideas.

Over analyzing, resulting in a loss of focus. When we are creating (or changing)  a logo for our business, keep it’s message to the point, clear, neat and understandable. Not all ideas are good, a professional, effective graphic designer will be up front and tell us if an idea is horrible – and why. We need to (really) listen to the professionals we’ve retained. Remember, from an experience perspective they work in the graphic and online industry day in and day out, we don’t.

Who’s in charge? Ensure that one team member in our group is in charge, and the liaison with our designer. Prior to flooding a designer with all our ideas, let’s weed them out amongst our team members. Remember the old adage, “garbage in, garbage out“. To many ideas are confusing and again facilitates the loss of focus. If there are too many cooks in our kitchen, we need to remove some of them.

An effective developer or designer can give us a realistic time line to project conclusion. Expecting a Valentines Day period launch, for example, should be considered four to six months earlier for most projects. The point here is that it’s up to us to ensure we provide enough time to allow our web contractors to complete a project on target.

Once a project is in development, it is not a good approach to change the parameters. This increases costs, lengthens development time and further confuses and loses the focus of our original message. Additionally, the inclusion of new, extra materials, ideas, etc. not only delay the completion of our project, they also further muddy the focus of the intended message. This would be a time to pause and consider that our “additions” should be part of a separate project.

It’s a good idea to provide our developers, designers, copywriters, etc. with as much relevant and pertinent information as we can. However, ensure that we do not overwhelm them with superfluous information. We should feed information that retains the focus of our project message.

No, we cannot use copyrighted or trademarked information, etc. unless there is written authorization from the legal owners to do so.

When inviting input from third parties, ensure that we’re asking the right people. Namely, the very people who are our intended niche and whom our message is targeted towards.

The old adage “When you assume, you make…” is applicable here. Remember, and idea we think might be good is exactly that… “might be”. Find out, do our research, gather the facts. Listen to the individuals we have retained to service our needs.  They can very quickly provide us with feedback, in great part because they have broader exposure. Remember, just because we like something does not mean it’s going to be effective, also, it does not mean that our target market is going to like it as well.

When we provide conflicting directives and information, that should be a clear sign that we’ve lost focus of the message and it’s objective. Stop, stand back, organize and then return. Remember, an effective contractor is one who works with us, not for us.

Remember, common sense and practicality are effective approaches. Expecting impractical fixes or changes, things that work opposite to their intended or standard fashions, etc. are often impractical, silly, add extra cost and frustration to us and our target market and provide no other function than to move focus to bear upon these inconvenient “things”. Again, we really should listen to the advice of the professionals we’ve retained.

Key point, when we retain the services of  a graphic designer, web developer, copywriter, etc., we are not the boss. They are. Our job is to provide them with the tools they need. It is their job to lead the project and bring it to successful fruition! They are the experts in their fields and should not be fettered. We rely on their expertise – That’s why we hired them, as such, we should not be trying to do their job (by constantly telling them what to do and/or how to do it). Instead we should be providing feedback based upon our own research.

Granted, we’ve discussed a fair bit of what we can do to ensure our focus remains effective and targeted, but as depicted in the video above, I noticed several failings of the developer among them are the following four:

1. He never indicated or further clarified conflicting information.
2. The designer didn’t seem to communicate that the initial message was becoming lost in the graphic flotsam being added.
3. Frustration seemed to be increasing for the designer and he should have approached the client to discuss and avoid the issues that were creating frustration (he should have said something).
4. Above all, the designer should have alerted the client that their ideas are obscuring their initial focused, targeted message and that it is putting the final success of the project in jeopardy.

Conclusion? Prior to even considering a project, we should already have documented our plan and fully researched it. We should have an action plan in place (much like writing a business plan) and be able to effectively communicate and answer the questions from the professional we retain. On a personal note, the best client I ever had was one who had a web site plan developed . She gave it to me to read (and it read almost like a business plan). It listed all the information and answers to questions. It was well organized, very focused. It was designed in a way that clearly outline the objective, goals and needs, while providing the freedom for me to complete the site in a professional manner, as I needed (so as to meet the objectives).

What’s your take on this? Agree? Disagree? What would you add, remove or suggest? Feel free to comment your input below.

The #1 strategy to garnering more traffic to your blog is:

“Write good quality, in-demand content“. (Remember you are writing too people, not at them).

And of course some of the activities I successfully use are:

• Use social networking tools such as: StumbleUpon. Run an advertising campaign via StumbleUpon. Use twitter. Ensure you provide tweets of value and customize your twitter page to match the branding of your blog. Never complain needlessly on twitter (do you want to spend your day with a whining sour-puss?) Invite people to follow you on twitter.  You may find my earlier post “Common Blog Traffic Sources?” to be of interest – Hint… Google is NOT my biggest traffic source .
• Include information about your blog in the signature of every email you send (including the URL).
• Use subscription systems on your blog. Plugins such as Comment Approved Notifier and Subscribe2 can help you accomplish this. More useful plugins can be found in the post “25 Most Beneficial Wordpress Plugins“.
• Enhance your update services. When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the site update services you configured. Here is a robust list of 145 Update Services for Blogs.
• Use your blog information and URL in forum signatures.
• Comment on other blogs. However, don’t comment just for the sake of obtaining a link, doing so is often very obvious, instead, provide valuable feedback, thoughts and ideas.
• eMail readers and thank them for visiting.
• Post new, quality content regularly. Doing so keeps readers interested and momentum going. Additionally, ensure you provide valuable links to external resources as well as those within your blog.
• Trust your readers. Often it is very annoying (and a bit of a turn off) to wait for comment approval every single time, when they participate (comment) on your blog. Instead, it may be better to “lift the embargo” for those who have provided valuable comments before. If a comment from those individuals is inappropriate, you can always edit or remove it later.
• Use lists on your blog. Lists are attractive as they are scannable,  easy to use and link to; and easy to add to later.

I’ve been following a fair bit of the happenings in the blogsphere (and for me some of them are new). Of note is the changing landscape where word of mouth seems to be successful whereas viral marketing appears to be waning.

Most importantly, we’d like to know what some of the new strategies are, that you use or recommend. How do you approach them? What do you do or recommend? What’s your perspective in new blog promotion strategies? Comment below. Also, for a bit of link love, comments added to this post will have the no-follow tag removed as I move them into the post with your credit. So… don’t be shy.

Side note: Since we’re touching on that photo. Are you a keen observer? Do you have a sharp eye? If so, what is unusual about that photo? And… Why is in unusual? Just jot your answer in the comments below!

Suffice it to say, after a bit of banter we discussed some of the key issues around effective word of mouth marketing. I’m saying “effective” because it appears to me that many of us (at some point or another) don’t take the time to fully evaluate or investigate our “foundation” activities, that support word of mouth. I must say, the phone call ended up sounding more like a radio interview, as I was somewhat surprised with Mr. Zibreg’s obvious insight and professionalism in this arena.

I think many of us appreciate that a basic blog is essentially a  one to one or one to many communication venue. While blogs have the added benefits of facilitating the ability for readers to participate interactively to a certain degree (which I note many blog owners seem not to do), I  think that word of mouth is and will remain a dominant force in blog, product, service, etc. marketing. In fact, given the current trends in online marketing, it seems to me that this may prove to be “The” primary marketing engine.

Mr. Zibreg phrased it best:

“With word of mouth it’s more effective because your contact or client is able to say ‘I was there!‘ Nothing is more powerful than that. To put it another way someone is obtaining a service, product, and so on, in great part simply because they personally know the individual spreading the word. That personal connection is just as powerful. That new client will then transfer the message to the next client and so on. In a sense word of mouth is a personalized and very real ‘people powered‘ machine, where it’s individuals vouch for a product or service, personally and publically placing their trust is the message”.

But what does this mean to us as blog owners? Of what value is this when we are using blogs to further the exposure of our products and services?

In order for word of mouth to be successful, you must have a really good product, service, blog content, etc.  If high quality is not paramount (or even on your radar), you’ll experience an issue where word of mouth will work against you. Here’s a word of mouth  example if your blog does not provide high quality content:

Bob: “Hello Joe, you should visit the latest post from BloggerSavvy, it’s really good and helped me improve my blog traffic”

Joe: “That’s what you said last time and the post was terrible”

The old saying “Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me” seems rather apt. Quality is #1 – If that is not one of your blog’s mantras, then it may not reach the goals you anticipated. Joe’s response above is critical in that Bob’s credibility has “been shot”, it’s no longer effective. Not because of Bob’s opinion, rather because the blog owner has permitted poor quality content to undermine the credibility of positive word of mouth.

On the other hand a real life scenario (a client reminded me about) occurred when a client referred my web hosting services. The case in point was my obtaining a dedicated server hosting client who never visited my blog, did not know me, never visited my web site and to whom I never advertised. They purchases services purely on the personal assurances of my other client. Because this other client always experienced high quality.

As Mr. Zibreg mentioned in our chat:

“…when someone asks for a referral, they want to hear a clear YES! from the referrer, not an okay…”

In conclusion, quality and credibility must be your #1 focus.  Support the credibility of your word of mouth by ensuring you provide quality in any blogging that you do.

That’s what will get you the resounding YES!

1. It’s cheaper than many other “large” traffic advertising services. (5¢ USD per click as of the writing of this post).
2. There’s better long term traffic growth as those who are genuinely interested in your content can save your links (thumbs up), which their friends can also see, add to their links, visit your blog, and so on… (Commonly referred to as “organic“).
3. Your clicks will not be in a pop-up/under, banner, etc. Visitors are taken directly to your site!
4. You do not need to create an advertisement, all you need is a published blog post (or web page).

Realistically, you can probably launch with a cheaper budget ($5.00 USD  per day for 100 visitors per day). If you ran that for a week, it would cost about $35 USD and garner you 700 visitors. Prior to setting up your advertising campaign, there are some key points we need to keep in mind.

Review the StumbleUpon Advertiser Resources. Pay special attention to the “Features” section of the advertiser resource as it may answer many of your questions.

The first thing you’ll need to do is sign up for a StumbleUpon advertiser account via the “Create a Campaign Now” button. (This is a different password to your regular StumbleUpon account – If you have one).

After following the sign-up process, you’ll reach a screen similar to the one below:

Using the  above screen shot example, you can select the appropriate interest groups you want to target. The numbers in brackets show how many thousands of members have subscribed. So for example, “Music (716)” means 716,000 people have subscribed to the music interest group.

After making your selections, you will reach another screen similar to the one depicted below:

At this point you are able to select your daily budget (which could be more or less than $5 USD). Personally I’d suggest you spend only a little money. Doing so allows you to evaluate the performance and provide tweaks, prior to investing further money.

StumbleUpon Advertising Support approves campaigns, as such your campaign will not appear until it has been approved.

To make your first StumbleUpon ad more effective, it’s important to ensure the page is of interest to your chosen StumbleUpon interest group (while providing valuable content). Remember, the key trick in this exercise,  is to use the ad to garner initial StumbleUpon traffic voting (thumbs up), so as to build regular traffic from other StumbleUpon users when your ad campaign is not live.

Another aspect to consider is using a valuable, popular post as your campaigns landing page. Remember, like search engines, not everyone is going to visit your blog using the home page. Instead, look at your current traffic statistics, which will help you determine which of your posts are the most popular and most in demand from readers. Use that post as your landing page – Remember, it popular in the most part because readers have found value it it. As such, create the best impression by placing your best post “up front and centre”.

Keep in mind that you also want to encourage your new readers to return and enjoy new content. In an earlier post I discussed how to find readers for your blog, wherein I suggested some interactive tools you can use to engage your readers as well as the importance of “focus” and community involvement.

Now it’s your turn!

Determine your budget (keep it affordable), sign up and don’t forget to use your best post.

Comment below with your experiences. What did you do? How did it work out, successful? Not successful? What other services do you use?

Remember, if your packaging (blog design) looks unorganized, ugly, “busy”, disorganized, etc. then that’s the message your sending to potential users. In other words your design is telling visitors a fair bit about your blog, before they even read the content. If the blog looks terrible or is not functional, you’ll probably lose that visitor. A blog with horrible typography (fonts), positioning or navigation is a clear message to readers saying “I don’t have attention to detail, I don’t care about quality, I am not professional“. After all, would you go to a wedding with dirty worn-out jeans and a soccer tee-shirt? Of course not!

Having said this, let’s pause for a moment and consider that design is not just about the graphics on your blog but more importantly, design is about planning and functionality. And in my opinion, graphics take a back seat to the functionality of your design. If the blog is poorly planned and has poor functionality, no manner of quality graphics is going to improve it. (If I cannot easily access what I need from the blog, then why would I return to visit again?).

To fix or change such issues, we’ll need to take a hard critical look at our blogs. We need to pay special attention to any sidebar widgets, our navigation and where elements are placed on our blogs.

Look at your blog (do it right now) and ask yourself:

1. Do I really need all these buttons and widgets in my sidebar?
2. Which things can I move out of my sidebar and place in my blog’s footer, header or navigation?
3. What home page (or sidebar) elements can I move to a separate blog page?
4. Which plugins can I find that will combine the jobs of two or more existing ones?
5. Does my sidebar really need all these links? (Am I really receiving as much beneficial traffic from them as anticipated?)
6. What things in my blog layout (including sidebar elements, widgets, etc.) is distracting my readers?
7. Do my “link exchange” links really do anything for me?
8. Is my navigation simple and intuitive?

While many of us will feel a bit of trepidation about removing or moving something from our blog design (I always do), there are some simple factors we can take into account – and make the hard choices. Much in the same way we need to prune our plants to make them grow nicely (and it’s hard to do), we need to do the same with out blogs.

One aspect that needs particular attention is linking and link exchanges. The Link Exchange web site explains some of the Bad Link Exchange Practices and SEO Mistakes that we all can make at times.

Another helpful online tool from Bad Neighborhood provides a text link tool to help you eliminate questionable links. Why is this an important thing to consider? From their site:

“…Text links are an important factor in today’s search engine optimization, and exchanging links with other websites is a good way to get them. However, doing a link exchange with a website that is penalized can have some detrimental results…”

In other words, if you’re linking to “bad” sites, your SEO may be penalized. Why am I mentioning linking and link exchanges? Because a list of links just adds clutter and in my experience… Most people don’t use them as they don’t provide any added value! If you want to link to a site, or exchange links, it’s more effective to write a blog post (or page) that also highlights some of the benefits of the link. A list of links does not do that, as such is not very useful.

Widgets and buttons? I found out from my other blog that many of them are not worthwhile and simply clutter your blog up with visual noise. Remember what your focus is (the niche your blog caters to) and keep this focus in mind. Evaluate your traffic statistics, if a widget is not serving you the traffic you expected and provides no “real” value to readers – then remove the widget! Also, if a button is not related to your blog, why post it on the blog?

For example placing buttons that show your blog’s traffic statistics to readers makes no sense. Why? They are there to read about your products, services, etc. not about how many people visited you. As such, that would simply be another piece of clutter. Another example, if I’m a photographer who has uploaded my work to Flickr, a Flickr widget might make sense, but not a “Who has visited my blog” widget (again, readers are interested in your photography work, they are not interested in what strangers are doing).

One resource you may find helpful is Smashing Magazine’s post: 7 Ingredients of Good Corporate Design. It provides some valuable insight into design, typography and branding among other aspects. When you’re reading this, one question you should keep in mind is how you could redesign your blog for the future.

One final issue of cleaning up our design I’d like to address is sound. That’s right, you’re blog could be turning people away because of noise. Some examples of “sound clutter” on blogs:

• Noises or beeps every time someone clicks a link. After a while it get’s annoying and effectively can become a deterrent for many people.
• Videos automatically starting to play. This can be an issue if there are more than one video streams on a post, let the reader click to play when they are ready.
• Music automatically playing when a page or post is visited. Keep in mind that we don’t all have the same musical tastes. Also, this can become a deterrent when people visit your site, they may be researching your services or products but will leave when the music starts playing, as they do not want co-workers or management to assume they are playing with the computer on company time.
• Talking avatars in our blog’s sidebar – And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say those talking avatars make a blog look cheap, unprofessional and provide no real concrete value, they are, in my opinion, tacky.

In conclusion, if I could some the above into one phrase, perhaps it would go something like this:

“Prune your blog’s design. Remove features that have not provided expected results. Keep your graphics clean and simple“.

To help you with this excersise, look at what some of the successful blogs are doing, this will provide you with ideas and visual examples of how to accomplish the “clean up” tasks above. Blow is a list of blogs that I think have good design, in varying degrees:

TechCrunch

ReadWriteWeb

techdirt

Gizmodo

So… before moving on to the other posts in this series, let’s get our design cleaned up!

What would you suggest? What have I missed? What’s your input? Share your comments below and help everyone out (don’t forget to include a link to your blog!)

It seems that launching a blog for some new and inexperienced blog owners is a huge exercise (and for some a steeper learning curve than for others). I’ve often observed clients who have launched their blogs, fail to garner traffic, further excitement and buzz, or for that matter, reach any of their goals and blogging aspirations. After a time they become discouraged as they feel let down by their blog.

One of the biggest barriers I’ve observed (among others) is that often people just don’t do anything, mainly because some don’t quite know what to do (or how) and others just need more motivation.

Some launch their blog and expect the Internet horde to rush over and visit. To be blunt, the days of “Build it and they will come”, are long over. A blog is akin to your business tools, if you don’t use it, it will become rusty. Defining some of the barriers to improving a blog is well and good, but what can we do about it?

As many of you know, I’ve recently recovered from a disaster, which prevented me from posting for a few days. As such, this has provided me further motivation to provide more valuable content; content that I’m sure you’ll all find valuable.

This post is the beginning of a series exploring hands on activities we can complete, after which you’ll have improved your blog. We’ll be completing activities such as linking, using social media, cleaning up our blog design, developing and examining our SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), creating sticky posts, improving SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and much more!

Personally, I urge you to please do three things:

1. Diligently participate in each activity.
2. Provide feedback in your comments as it’s helpful to everyone.  Learning not only about successes but also suggestions and alternatives.
3. Provide ideas or suggestions if you think I’ve missed something.

1) Create an Action Plan

Much in the same way we create business plans, we should also do the same for successful blog launches. Among the more obvious, some things you’ll need to pay extra attention to are:

Domain name. Is it easy to remember. Does it describe the blog?

Measurable goals. Does your plan include tangible goals that you can measure and evaluate? Does it include contingencies.

Budgeting. Have you evaluated and included all foreseeable expenses? What about a financial buffer – What happens when an unexpected expense occurs?

2) Use Reliable Hosting

Make sure your blog is hosted on a server that you have control over. I can’t stress this point enough. Why is this important? Not only does this effect us directly (if visitors cannot access the site properly) one related aspect it seems is an SEO effect. In March of 2005 Google was issued a patent (Information retrieval based on historical data ) of interesting note is the nameservers (DNS) handling the server on which your blog is hosted. One statement of Google’s treatment of nameserver information is:

“…the age, or other information, regarding a name server associated with a domain may be used to predict the legitimacy of the domain. A “good” name server may have a mix of different domains from different registrars and have a history of hosting those domains, while a “bad” name server might host mainly pornography or doorway domains, domains with commercial words (a common indicator of spam), or primarily bulk domains from a single registrar, or might be brand new. The newness of a name server might not automatically be a negative factor in determining the legitimacy of the associated domain, but in combination with other factors, such as ones described herein, it could be…”

If you control your server, you are able to ensure that your nameserver is not “bad”. In a shared hosting environment you will not be able to ensure this (and other aspects) don’t come back to bite you in the future. While a dedicated server is the best option, it’s not always within each budget. At the very least, I’d suggest using a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

I should also note here, register a domain name that you will use for your blog. Ensure you include the following points in the choice of domain name:

• Make it easy to remember. That way people are more likely to visit you as they don’t have to try to find you.
• Keep it short. Excessively long domain names are such a pain to try and remember, then type into the address bar of a browser. (Who is going to remember a very long name).
• Make it easy to spell (and difficult to spell incorrectly). Easy to spell, equals simple access to your blog.
• Try to ensure it describes your blog, business, product or you (the primary blogger) in some way. This helps with SEO and also gives people some clue as to your blog’s purpose.
• Don’t use hyphens or numbers in the domain name. Is that “2″, “to”, “too”, “two” or “tu”? Is that “4″, “for”, “fore” or “four”? A lot of people forget to type in the hyphen if there is one, I always do and end up at some other site. (I think you get the point).
• If possible, try to obtain a .com name. (.com refers to commercial, .net refers to a network, .org refers to organizations and so on)

3) Include Informative Pages (Such as “About Us”, “Contact”, etc.)

Ensure you have a well written “About Us” page. As ProBlogger points out about such pages “…There’s nothing more of a turn off for a blog that doesn’t go to the effort of making sure all it’s menu items lead to useful information…”. In general, make sure you answer the following questions where applicable:

• How to contact you.
• Who you and/or your blog are.
• What you do and how you do it.
• What are the benefits to readers.
• How readers can join in and contribute.

4) Obtain the Blog Software Platform and Applications

In my opinion, the best platform currently available is Wordpress and you can download Wordpress the files (for installation to your server) from their site. You will also want to ensure that you’ve obtained the most helpful and productive plugins, which are featured in another post called: 25 Most Beneficial Wordpress Plugins.

Additionally, try to budget for a small computer (it can easily be an older second hand PC) and use that exclusively for working on your blog. The next question may revolve around which applications to install on your blogging PC? If so, my post about the Top 15 Software Applications for Windows Bloggers might just be the resource to get you going productively.

Side Note: If you are looking for a robust list of applications my post Top 100 of the Best (Useful) OpenSource Applications (found on my other blog) will give you a VERY good round-up.

5) Create Initial Content

Before launching your blog ensure you have between 5 to 10 posts of great content which you can post. This gives visitors to your new blog something to read and determine if your blog is worthwhile to revisit. It also give search engines a bit of meat and potatoes with which to crawl and index your blog. And of course, provides initial content that you can promote to social sites.

Make sure the content is of high quality. Reposted articles or content (with permission) is just not going to cut it. Why? Well… Why should I read copied (reposted) content on your blog when I can go to the original writer’s blog (or site) to read it?

6) Promote Your Blog Via Social Sites

Ensure to promote (also refered to as “seed” or “seeding”) your best quality content on social sites. Doing so will greatly help in building traffic to your blog. One key is to ensure you are using the best tags (when posting to social sites).

Firefox has a plugin called Kgen, helps you see which keywords are strong each post (or page). Then it becomes a simple matter to use them to help determine relevant tags for social sites.

Of course you’ll want to select the appropriate social sites that have more traffic and less spam. The following are the ones I have used:

Digg has huge traffic and a variety of readers. It used to be technically heavy, but that no longer appears to be the case. However, technical and design subjects and gadgets still have a huge following at Digg. If I’m looking for solutions or blog topics to discuss and bloggers to link to, I may look here.

Reddit has a lower traffic flow and a wide range of subjects, but appears to be mainly political.

StumbleUpon, again has medium traffic and an even more diverse range of interests. You can find some pretty strange things on StumbleUpon.

Delicious has high traffic and appears to have a large technical and design following (like Digg). Again, like Digg, if I’m looking for solutions or blog topics to discuss and blogs to link to, I might look here.

Furl is a lower traffic site, but it’s good because it has a wide range of subjects and visitors. It won’t give me a lot of traffic, but it does not hurt to use Furl in your “mix”.

Newsvine appears primarily polictial in disposition, also providing news related subject. Lower volume.

Sphinn is a lower traffic site appearing to focus on marketing and SEO related subject. Again, it does include other subject matter and appers to have a wide range of visitors.

The bottom of this post has other social networking icons you can use to promote your blog, take a look at them as you may find others of interest.

Also, you may find the post How to Find Readers for Your Blog, will help with some other aspects of building readership.

I should note that there are some other social sites you may want to explore, among them are:

MySpace

Facebook

Twitter (You can follow me on twitter @BloggerSavvy)

7) Submit Your Blog to Directories

Increasing the number of inbound links improves the indexing of your blog (and other SEO related values). Additionally, this increases search engine crawling to your blog.

Three directories that you can use to establish links from trusted sites are:

1. DMOZ Open Directory Project provides free directory listing that is edited by human operators.
2. Aviva Directory is a paid listing service.
3. Yahoo DIrectory is a paid listing. However, they do have a free Yahoo Search Submission.

I’m not suggesting that your path to a successful launch should include the above directories, I’m instead suggesting that they may help. Remember, if your blog has great content and is properly promoted, it will be successful regardless of which directories you list in.

Other directories, search submissions and Feed (RSS) resources that may be of help if you ensure your blog is listed in ones best suited for your subject matter, include:

• FeedBees
• Best Directory
• Blogotion
• ReadBurner
• Blogged
• Best of the Web Blogs
• Bloggernity
• Bloggapedia

Obviously a bit of searching on Google will provide even more results, but these (above) will at least get you going.

8) Provide Valuable Outbound Links

This actually is a way of encouraging traffic to your blog. I think we are all aware of the value inbound links place on building traffic, so much so, that I suspect many of use negate the effects including useful outbound links to resources. Blog readers (and search engines) like outbound links to tools, information and other resources that are related to the content you are writing. Not to mention the blog your site is linking to, would probably be thankful – Remember this is the “Web”, links are good. Outbound links are a way of offering your readers more valuable content.

In the same frame of thought (sort of)… if possible include free tool on your blog. Try including free trials, free software, etc. Quality is important here! DO NOT offer tacky, useless freebies as they will make your blog look unprofessional. Only offer QUALITY freebies, or none at all.

9) Share Your Comments on Other Blogs and Sites

One particularly good strategy to help boost a successful blog launch is to provide valuable input (comments) on other blogs that are related to or support your blog content in some fashion. Comments are one way of standing out and getting noticed. But let’s step back for a moment…

From time to time a get waves of email messages from blog owners introducing themselves and suggesting (in one manner or another) post collaboration, cross-linking, etc. My honest opinion is that this rarely works. Most of these “things” are accomplished via twittering, instant messaging (IM) , video chats, etc. In my opinion tweeting, IM, etc. are more effective ways of connecting with those in your niche and those who can support it. For email introductions to be more effective, you’d be better prepared if your blog is well established and well known.

10) Communicate and Develop Relationships

I have always found it amusing when people launch their web site or blog and fail to realize that the way they conduct business and client relations online is the same as offline. It seems that so many of us expect that the rules have changed and we’re trying to discover them all over again. STOP! Nothing much has changed. We still need to develop relationships with PEOPLE, just like we do in the physical world. Build relationships with other bloggers in your niche (and blogs that support it).

How do we introduce ourselves? The fastest way I have found is asking for advice or help or providing them with some valuable insight. Make sure you are familiar with their blogs! In other words this is called “Networking”, sound familiar? I thought so. <Smiling here>

11) Be “Lock and Load” Ready

When you notice a sudden surge in traffic levels to your blog, that is the time to post high quality, in demand, well written content. Always have a “draft” ready and waiting to take advantage of such opportunities. I’ve found from experience that you generally have three days or less to take advantage of such a windfall. When one of your posts attract attention (even go viral) that’s when all eyes are on you. That’s when other’s in your community are also giving you their attention. If you provide even more (quality, in demand) content, that provides more motivation for them to visit your blog again and even perhaps link to it.

12) Advertise in Signatures

Never forget the little things, over time they have a big impact. You can further support your blog by ensuring your email, forum post, etc. all include a linkl to your blog. Additionally, include a line or two telling the reader what the blog is about, or how they can benefit by visiting your blog.

13) Be a Gracious Guest

Do you provide high quality content? Is there another blog that you particularly desire traffic from? Then, put your writing skills to good work, be a guest blogger. Submit your (free) quality post to the blog for consideration after you have developed a good relationship or when the blog is asking for article/post submissions. Ensure your professional bio is well written and has a link back to your post. Bio’s are commonly included at the bottom of your post, but I’ve seen some blogs position them above posts.

One caveat… DO NOT submit the same post to other blogs. Each submission must be unique. If you’re considering guest blogging, you’ll gain more insight by reading ProBlogger’s: How to be a Good Guest Blogger.

14) Obtain Effective Feedback

Before actually launching your blog (for that matter even while the blog is live) ask the people around you (other web developers, web designers, bloggers, copywriters, etc.) for feedback. Offer them a sneak peak asking them to provide constructive critisism and pinpoint areas you could improve before launching. Doing so will garner you respect and help build relationships before your blog has even launched.

When you ask people for help, even your blog readers, you’re imparting a sense of ownership to them, in turn that encourages them to help when you need it (and you will). As such they are more likely to refer your blog to others they thing may find it useful or enjoyable, and more likely to provide backlinks to your blog.

All of the above will provide you with a strong, successful launch if you take the time and put in the hard work to complete. Typically a blog launch takes me anywhere from one month to six months depending on the size and scope of the project.

The rewards are well worth the effort – Always!

1) Ask for Comments.

I can’t make the statement any simpler. I’ll say it again, if you want something, ask for it. In my opinion, the best place to ask is right at the end of you post. If your visitor has read this far (if the content is good quality, they will), you’re more likely to garner a response. Most importantly, indicate that you respect their opinions, make sure you respond. This is commonly referred to as a “Call to Action“. Once you’re blog post is finished, empower your readers to add to or improve the content. Empower them to ask questions. Also, enable them to easily follow up by using the Subscribe To Comments Wordpress plugin. This plugin allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

2) Remove the Barriers.

Nothing is more annoying then spending extra time writing a quality comment, and then finding out you have to register! Most people will not do that (in my opinion). Remove features such as forced registration, login first, etc. As a blog owner you have the ability to moderate messages before they appear live on your site. There are also anti comment-spam plugins (such as Akismet). The point is to make commenting easy.

3) Add some Controversy.

This is dependent on the content you’re writing, as such, it’s not always easy to do. In a sense it’s akin to link baiting – That is providing some sort of motivational thought to illicit a reaction. In this case you may have comments contrary to your post and other comments agreeable to it, the point being that there are comments.

4) Respond to Comments.

Providing a quality response, when necessary is a good way to encourage comments. Additionally, one tool you can use may be a Wordpress plugin like Show Top Commentors which you can use to display your top commentors in the sidebar (display a link to their web site or blog etc). Blog about a comment. That’s one method I have used on this blog and on others. It promotes discussion and… more comments.

5) Provide Recognition.

Visitors who comment on your blog, enjoy recognition (like the “Show Top Commentors” plugin I mentioned above). If you want more visitors to comment, you’ll need to show them what’s in it for them. Show the benefits. I’ve even seen some blogs run  a contest wherein the best comment wins a prize. You can reward commentors in other ways by emailing to thank them, sending them a free ePublication, etc.

6) Participate in the Community.

A good way of garnering comments is to make them! Both on your blog and on others. Keep in mind that when commenting on other blogs, simple comments don’t garner nearly as much traffic and comments on your blog as quality, thoughtful comments do.

As I’m sure you realize, these activities are not difficult to complete. One thing I’d like to point out, if your blog is relatively new, don’t expect an excessive burst of comment growth – Remember, you need to grow blog traffic first. But, keep in mind to have these tools and ideas in place before you grow your blog traffic.

Did I miss anything? What do you do to encourage comments? Are there better plugins than the ones I listed? We’d all be interested in learning what you have to say in the comments below.

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, services, content, etc. You should work towards being the leader in your niche (whatever that is). Additionally, you’re the one that should seek out talent you require to that end.

Public Relations. You are the one that should be monitoring what visitors, blog followers, clients, etc. are saying about your blog and business. You should be responding to them and illicit discussion, creating “spins” and attention to your blog and the business or community it represents.

Marketing. Your job is to ensure you’ve targeted the appropriate venues to stream your information to (the blog, products, services, etc.) You are doing this to build traffic, that is one of your primary functions.

Sales. Your role is to find or create new business leads. As such, you need to establish an effective network in order to move forward, expanding it as new contacts are added to your database.

As I’m sure you can appreciate, most people who launch and maintain a blog, provide the functions at each level above. For many of us, that is where some of the questions begin. Which tool is best for which function?

The illustration below illustrates this issue:

As I’m sure you could appreciate, there are hundreds of social media tools available. In the above diagram, I’ve only selected a few of them. So… Let’s recap:

Managers/Blog owners can use tools like Pownce (closed on Dec. 15, 2008), Plurk, Twitter, etc so as to increase awareness of their information (as well as their visibility) within online communities. You are using a blog, right?

Side note: You can follow me on twitter here: @BloggerSavvy

Marketing gurus however, can best capitalize on tools like Stumbleupon, Digg, Flickr, Reddit, Furl, Delicious, Youtube, Newsvine, Mixx, etc. to get the “word out” where communities can access it and visit the appropriate content on your blog. Such tools provide a superior venue for increasing your blog traffic and at a cheaper cost, than traditional solutions.

The sales people need to maximize their contacts and find others contacts. Tools like LinkedIn, hi5, Bebo, MySpace, Orkut, Facebook, Freindster, etc. are best able to facilitate this. You can build your contacts much faster then via traditional methods.

Of course the PR people need to keep their fingers on the pulse. They need to be aware of what is being said and need to respond (which I’ll note in a moment). Some good tools to help monitor what’s being said about you in the blogsphere are Technorati, Backtype, GetSatisfaction, Twitscoop, etc. As I just mentioned, PR people need to respond to some of the things they find. Commonly, tools like Dig, Reddit, Flickr, GetSatisfaction, etc. provide the facility for effective responses to individuals and the community as a whole.

In conclusion, one point I’ve also tried to impress is to ensure you’re using the right tool to get the right response and right traffic. After all traffic just for the sake of traffic is a futile exercise. For example, I’d rather have visitors to this blog that are genuinely interested in the contents, than to have a ton of disinterested traffic that does nothing other than use my bandwidth up (costing me more money).

What tools do you use that I’ve not mentioned? What are your thoughts? Feel free to let us know in your comments! Any new startups we all should know about? – Announce them below.

Firstly, successful blog owners have a positive attitude, they try to be constructive, cooperative and well informed. They work with the community, not for the community. They understand that the benefits a blog can offer are bestowed by the community, as they are earned. Again, it’s about good attitude. If you’re going to burst on the blog scene all wild eyed, posting reams of comments on every forum or blog in sight – regardless of the subject matter, all tough and authoritative, posting low quality content on your own blog whilst sucking honey out of a bees arse… You’re not going to get far. You need to find the golden middle way.

Don’t get me wrong, in my younger blog endeavours I did do much of what’s listed below, so I’m posting the following to help. Have a comment or suggestion? Add it below.

1) Use the default design template (theme) that came with your blog package.

There’s nothing better than advertising your blog as not important enough to spend time obtaining an esthetically pleasing and inviting interface; with simple to use (and intuitive) navigation.

Remember, readers like looking at crappy designs and they love to spend time treasure hunting for your content.

It’s nice to know that your blog looks the same as all the other soulless blogs.

2) Never ever respond to comments.

Remember that this is your blog. You don’t have time to respond to visitors, your time is valuable, so they will have to wait for someone else to provide an answer. Remember, you’re providing free information and tools so visitors will just have to wait for a convenient time. They don’t mind that you’re not really interested in providing valuable input.

3) Never comment on other blogs, forums or web sites.

Don’t waste your time helping other blogs with your valuable input, after all, your blog that is the priority. Quite frankly, if you have anything of value to say, people should read about it only on your blog. Don’t worry that less exposure makes you harder to find.

4) Post new content whenever the need arises.

That’s right, you’re very busy, you’re a mover and shaker. Post content whenever you get around to it, that way your readers will have to keep checking if new content is posted.

Visitors will always wait for quality content, it’s free and they have nothing better to do. Besides they appreciate that your blog does not address current issues.

5) Repost content you find elsewhere.

Readers like reposted content, that way they don’t have to go to the original web site to find it. Readers enjoy seeing the same Creative Content licensed articles shared over and over again on different sites – Why should you be any different.

If you want to be particularly saucy and daring, try copying copyrighted material. Readers love to find it as it gives them a reason to notify the original author. So what if the author takes legal action – You can blog about it and your readers have something to talk about.

Reposted content clearly shows that you are focused on current subjects but lack the genuine skills to develop original, valuable content.

6) You are the master of your subject.

You know your products, services or subject matter intimately. You don’t need to field information from someone else. Similarly, you should never spend time reading other blogs as that is not worthwhile. Your content is better than any one else and your traffic will prove as much (once your blog gets busy).

You don’t mind that failing to read content can in the long run demonstrate how uninformed you are.

7) Don’t waste time developing quality content.

The content on your blog is free, don’t waste extra time making it worthwhile to read, helpful or informative. Everyone else is talking about the same information, so what’s the point of focusing on quality? These day’s readers want just a line or two of explanation and a few links, they don’t have time to sit and read.  Keeping posts short and curt can show people how low your blog priority is.

8) Smother them with ads and calls to action.

Readers love splogs (spam blogs). They enjoy three lines of content and 500 lines of irrelevant and unrelated advertising. They will return time and again to see if anything has changed. Of course they will enjoy clicking all the ads that have no relation to the information they are looking for.

9) Always lead your readers on.

Make all sorts up promises to your readers. Always tell them what you think they want to hear and read. That way they will be sure to return, time and again. Professionalism and integrity are negatively impacted by empty promises.

10) Never listen to professional advice.

When a professional web developer, designer, blogger, etc. gives you advice, never listen to it. After all, you’ve read all there is to read about the subject. You even attended seminars where the opposite was suggested. You asked someone else and they agreed with you.

Professionals… meh! What do they know about my business? (They just know about web stuff). This clearly demonstrates to readers that you are foolish. Particularly when a blog feature is considered useless or “bloat” or not the best web solution for your industry.

11) Use the cheapest web hosting package you can find.

Nothing is more fun that trying to access a blog and receiving error messages in your web browser. Visitors will keep trying until the problem finally gets fixed.

No harm is done, after all the content is free, so visitors will wait for the site to become available again. You can actually save money by using cheap hosting. For that matter, you can save more money than you may have earned had your blog been available to potential clients. This clearly shows users that your business is cheap and unreliable.

12) Never, I repeat, NEVER participate in social networks.

You read that social networks like StumbleUpon, twitter, etc. are big time wasters. You’re a professional and are wise to that. Social networks don’t provide enough traffic as they are only for hip, savvy web users. Therefore, you don’t mind your blog being less visible.

Google page rank is where the action is, if I could just spend a little more money on advertising, to get a higher ranking.

In my opinion, not participating and enjoying the benefits of social media is probably the biggest factor limiting blog growth! (Or for that matter any type of site). I get the impression that many people don’t realize that the Internet is just as social as the brick and mortar world. In fact, Internet based social media enables blog owners to interact with a larger visitor (and potential client) base than physically possible.

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 traffic to that page, and the referrers. If you click on the image, you will see the larger (readable) version:

The above shows three months of traffic to a page that was submitted to Digg and Reddit (on Feb. 28, 2008); whilst being saved to StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us. You’ll note that not very much happens until March 11 when I noticed in my regular web stats (AWStats) shows a larger amount of StumbleUpon traffic and then friends of those members started actively sharing the link to the post on April 19 (as it eventually filtered through to members who had larger StumbleUpon “followers”.

In retrospect, here’s the actual StumbleUpon only traffic for the same period:

Keep in mind that this is StumbleUpon traffic for all posts (not just the one that was originally submitted to Digg and Reddit). Needless to say, we could debate the statistics for hours and delve into more finite and custom report creation and filters – But that was not the excercise of this post.

What can we learn?

1. Think long term – Always. That will ensure steady growth.
2. Sites like Digg are a great tool for introducing your blog and it’s posts to a wide audience (casting the net).
3. Social media sites, such as StumbleUpon do a better job at attracting interested readers. (The fishing net has holes of the right size, so the fish you don’t want to catch swim through).
4. You can’t argue whether StumbleUpon is better than Digg or visa versa, because they do different jobs.
5. Each post on your blog is of interest to the specific niche for which it was written! This means that a post about newsletters (for example), will appeal to a different audience that your other post about web hosting. To clarify, visitors interested in learning what you have to say about one subject will not necessarily be interested in another post (on another subject). USe plugins to show “similar posts” to readers.
6. The home page of your blog IS NOT necessarily the primary entry page. (It’s not on my Linux blog; where the home page ranks in sixth place for popularity and entrance to the blog).

Conclusion?

Digg works with StumbleUpon, as I mentioned above, a good tactic is to use Digg as your introductory “Shout Box” and StumbleUpon as your growth “Engine”.

For those of us who use Wordpress, it’s a feature you can configure in the writing settings of your blogs administrative area. Simply log in and go to “Settings” – “Writing” and look near the bottom. You will see the following:

“When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services. For more about this, see Update Services on the Codex. Separate multiple service URLs with line breaks.”

Many readers subscribe to such services and will see that you have new content posted. By default, Wordpress only notifies rpc.pingomatic.com. The list below contains another 145. Make sure you back up your wordpress files and database BEFORE adding this to the “Update Services” of your blog.

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc/

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

Please let me know if there are any others! – Cheers.

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” sites) sites would rank high. I was surprised in both cases. I personally found it interesting to note that you get a good statistical perspective on a day-to-day basis, but you’ll get a more accurate view if you stand back and look at the big picture over a longer time period. Here are the results below:

As you can see above, Social Media sites took the lead (just a tich ahead of Google). I also found it significant that inbound traffic from other blogs had a clear lead over inbound traffic from “traditional” (static) web sites. Equally surprising was how I saw that Google outperformed inbound search engine traffic by a massive lead.

The specific driving force within the Social Media (36.41% traffic), without question was StumbleUpon, which championed a massive lead of social media based traffic at 85.56%. Just look at the Social Media results breakdown below:

One thing I found interesting to note is some users of StumbleUpon shared some of the post links they saw in Reddit and Digg. So… while some posts that went viral, Digg and Reddit produced traffic spikes, they were only significant for a short time period. Instead, social media sites  (primarily StumbleUpon) saved those “traffic spiked” posts and subsequently that blog enjoyed long term, year round traffic.

What did I learn from our discussion and an examination of the blog statistics? Among several things, below are some of the points that were more predominant.

• There’s a lot of discussion about to benefits or lack thereof, with regards to using sites that can provide instant massive traffic volume (such as Digg). While sites such as Digg may provide short term spikes (for the average blog). Visitors to sites such can and will share your post link with others. As such, don’t discount the power of sites such as Digg. Short term effect, but a long term social effect.
• Google still loves me. Humour aside, SEO or the lack thereof can have a large effect on traffic form search engines – I think we know that. More to the point however, I noticed that the posts that are heavily shared on social sites have a much higher page rank than those which don’t, appearing higher in search results. It seems to me therefore, to continue providing quality content that is of value to the “community”.
• Continue to participate in blogging and other dynamic platforms. Convert the remainder of my old-fashioned static site to dynamic packages (blogging, CMS, etc.)  Why? When you post a blog, it pings site update services (such as pingomatic). Static (“traditional”) sites don’t do that. Each time a post is published RSS readers obtain the updates, automatically. These are things that help drive repeat visits (subscribers). Many of which might be adding your posts to various social sites.

While I’m fairly sure many blog sites may follow the general pattern I’ve seen with my traffic sources. I don’t think they will all follow the pattern established in the social media site rankings. This is mainly an issue of blog character, readership, blogsphere area and so forth. Not all blogs are in the same neighbourhood and have the same types of readers. For example a blog that focuses on internet marketing, I would assume might have more traffic from Sphinn, for example.

All too often, I find business owners (and site owners) oblivious to the power that dynamic sites can bring them, and how they are better able to make use of social media sites. In other cases, business owners simply don’t believe what they are being told as they appear not to have a good grasp of how the Internet really works and how their potential market really uses it.  My previous post “Why Every Business Can Benefit Form a Blog” for example, shows that a UK survey indicates “…66% of businesses believe that blogs are becoming more influential as an information source…” While this number is UK based, I assume it may be similar in other geographic regions and , more importantly, will to grow!

It will be interesting to see how the trends change over time. Perhaps one of the upcomming issues that search engines will need to address even further than they are now, is the inherent appeal of sites (such as blogs) that are better equipped to address the needs of site visitors. What new tools will be available to blogs desiring visibility in a growing webscape? As the video in my prior post (link at the top) suggested, we’ll need to rethink ourselves.

One obvious approach is to ignore requests from your blog readers. That’s a 100% solution to saving time and improving productivity. However, in my opinion it’s not an effective approach for several reasons. Notwithstanding this approach will almost certainly damage the reputation of you and your blog. It would also reduce traffic as there’d be no valuable communication with your community. And to be blunt, that’s just plain stupid. If you’re not going to listen and communicate with your community, why even have a blog?

For blogs that are more established (having greater readership) one good way to respond to requests is to turn the request into a blog post. Blog about it! Doing so encourages your community to communicate and explore the ideas of the post. In turn this benefits the reader (who initiated the request) with valuable answers garnered from a multitude of perspectives and experience levels. This also benefits your blog in that the community in essence develops good content through discussion.

From an administrative aspect, another approach is to develop an FAQ page or adding content on your “Contact” page that explains what type of requests you field and which you don’t. This provides two immediate benefits. It reduces your time in responding to requests with a diplomatic “no” answer and it helps readers save time by only posting requests you do handle.

I’ve maintained better productivity using a “Request Response Template” for higher traffic blogs. This means I don’t have to craft a response from scratch. Almost all responses have more or less the same content with regards to salutations, introductions, conclusions, basic information, contact information, etc.  Depending on the blog, you can include links within that template which directs readers to appropriate information. Include your current status – Are you available to consult or not? Make sure you simply explain that you cannot always answer every request for personal assistance.

Keep in mind that canned responses are VERY OBVIOUS, as such it’s a good idea (a must!) to include relevant comments that are helpful. In many cases a link or two to your blog posts (that are relevant to the request) will be helpful and appreciated. Don’t misunderstand me, I strongly feel that all communication should address individuals on a personal level, that makes it a fine line between working with requests you do handle and those you do not.

Above all, be honest and up front, if the request for personal assistance is something you do not handle – Say so. This avoids reader frustration.

One method that I have found particularly helpful (and has turned readers into clients) is to invite those local to you for a face to face meeting. For example, I provide public seminars to local business people (about web site, marketing, promotion, hosting, etc.), if their request is related in some fashion to an upcoming seminar, I personally invite them to the seminar. If it’s not, I still invite them as it will afford me a few minutes to talk to them after the seminar.

One issue I think crucial (at least it is for my client), as a matter of fact it’s the crux of his phone call to me is that he did not want to provide paid consulting services for free. In this case, my response would not be built on top of my Request Response Template, rather it would be a personally crafted, targeted response. The following points should be covered for these types of issues:

• The reader’s request cannot be handle in a simple expedient manner.
• You need to spend significant time to deal with the personal assistance request as some research, planning or solution development, etc. is required.
• This is the type of consulting service that existing clients pay you for, and list some of the examples of your paid services.
• MAKE SURE you spend a bit of time clearly outlining the solid benefits your reader garners by paying for your services.
• Provide options if the reader is not in a position to render your full services.

While the volume of potential consulting jobs obtained from such requests is directly related to the traffic volume for your blog, I’d advise low volume blogs to be prepared for them, you never know when such opportunities might come your way.

In conclusion, if you get an excessive amount of requests that you simply cannot respond to, my perspective is that it’s a clear signal from the community, indicating what content they are interested it. Clearly note on your blog that you cannot possibly field personal assistance requests. and… Blog specifically about the requests with valuable information!

• Enhanced blog visitor experience.
• Increased traffic and blog promotion.
• Improved security and blog performance.
• Simplified blog management and productivity.
• Better visitor communication.
• More effective search engine optimization.
• Greater integration with popular Internet communities and services.

In my post “Why Every Business Can Benefit From a Blog“, I discussed some of the tangible benefits inherent to businesses and people who maintain a blog. How blogs can improve your business growth. These plugins further enhance the effectiveness and usability of your blog.

All these plugins work with Wordpress 2.6.3. Without further ado, below is my top 25, most beneficial plugins list (in alphabetical order).

1) Admin Management Xtended

Extends admin functionality by introducing: toggling post/page visibility inline, changing page order with drag and drop, inline category management, inline tag management, changing publication date inline, changing post slug inline, toggling comment status open/closed, hide draft posts, change media order, change media description inline, toggling link visibility, changing link categories.

Why I like it:

I can manage page/post visibility, order and more all from one single page – Easy and fast! It improves productivity.

Where to get it:

For Wordpress 2.5+ only. http://www.schloebe.de/wordpress/admin-management-xtended-plugin/#english

2) Akismet

It checks each comment visitors type on your blog against the Akismet web service. If any of them appear to be spam, they are automatically marked as spam and automatically deleted after one month.

Why I like it:v

Automated spam removal and blocking. I don’t spend time filtering out spam. It keeps blog comments spam free, which improves visitor experience and reduce blog administration.

Where to get it:

It’s automatically included in the source files for Wordpress. You just need to get a WordPress.com API key for it to work.

3) All in One SEO Pack

It automatically improves each post or page SEO by improving Titles, Descriptions, Keywords and Duplicate Content issues on a per post basis.

Why I like it:

You can leave it running on automatic, or more importantly tweak the SEO aspects of each page or post individually as you create and publish content. Also, you can return latter and make tweaks to improve SEO performance for each page. It helps build more targeted search engine traffic.

Where to get it:

http://semperfiwebdesign.com/portfolio/wordpress/wordpress-plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

4) Avatars

Makes it simple to include local Avatars. WordPress (from version 2.5) includes native support for global avatars. But, what about adding local (private) avatars for your users? Maybe your users don’t want a global avatar or are not able to set a gravatar up.

Why I like it:

It makes setting up user Avatars a snap. Avatars are a good way to not only add a bit of artistic flair to a blog, but more importantly to make it easier to spot comments from a specific individual (as his or her avatar will always be the same).

Where to get it:v

http://www.sterling-adventures.co.uk/blog/2008/03/01/avatars-plugin/

5) Better Comments Manager

Better Comments manager allows you to view your comments post wise, it also allows you to reply to your comments from within admin panel without you having to visit the site to respond to comments.

Why I like it:

Simple comment management and response from one page. Again, it improves productivity in that I can communicate with visitors (responding to comments and questions) from one page.

Where to get it:

http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/better-comments-manager-wordpress-plugin-release.html

6) Better Howdy

Removes the “Howdy” and restructure the “Howdy” line in the administrative interface.

Why I like it:

We don’t say “Howdy” where I live, that’s lame. Also It provides better links and information (logged in user) on the Howdy line.

Where to get it:v

http://sivel.net/2008/10/better-howdy/

7) cforms

It’s a very flexible tool to deploy contact (and other) forms across your blog. It supports captcha, Spam protection, tracking and more. It was be a bit tricky for me to get working properly.

Why I like it:

It made the building of my contact page very easy as I needed a captcha feature to filter out spam messages emailed to me. It save me time.

Where to get it:

http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin

8) Chunk Urls for WordPress

Shortens URLs in comments so that they won’t break your site design.

Why I like it:

Keeps things neat and professional looking. Shortens URLs automatically. An readers don’t see excessively long URLs in comments.

Where to get it:

http://www.village-idiot.org/archives/2006/06/29/wp-chunk/

9) Comment Approved Notifier

Sends an email to your commenter when you approve their comment.

Why I like it:

It allows me to communicate with readers. They see their comment was approved and are invited to return. Also, it’s automatic! That way, a reader can return and add more if they wish, or follow up on responses.

Where to get it:

http://www.yakupgovler.com/?p=291

10) Dashboard Editor

Allows you to edit the dashboard in the administrative interface.

Why I like it:
Keeps the dashboard clean, only showing what I really need to see.

Where to get it:

http://anthologyoi.com/plugins

11) FD Feedburner Plugin

Redirects to feeds to Feedburner.

Why I like it:

I can change the location of my feed without losing subscribers. Browser friendly and keeps count of my subscribers.

Where to get it:

http://flagrantdisregard.com/feedburner/

12) Google XML Sitemaps

Generates a sitemap which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo. Each time you add a page or post, it regenerates the sitemap and then pings (notifies) the search engines to tell them you have updated content.

Why I like it:

It’s automated and I can also tweak the post priorities, change frequencies, etc. I can even exclude specific posts or pages from the sitemap. it’s a nice tool to let Google know the blog is “alive”.

Where to get it:

http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

13) MySpace Crossposter

It enables automatic crossposting from your blog to Myspace.

Why I like it:

It’s automatic, I don’t have to keep manually logging into Myspace to add blog my posts. It’s a good to to help build blog traffic.

Where to get it:

http://noumenon.roderickrussell.com/wordpress-to-myspace-auto-crossposting

14) Register Plus

Enhances your blog’s Registration Page. You can add a custom Logo, password field, invitation codes, disclaimers, captcha validation, email validation, user moderation, profile fields and more.

Why I like it:

In addition to branding the registration/login to be consistent with the blog theme, it also avoids duplicate email registration. A big plus is that it also helps build blog traffic via the use of invitations, etc.

Where to get it:

WordPress 2.5+ only. http://skullbit.com/wordpress-plugin/register-plus/

15) Simple Tags

Extends the tagging in your blog.  Includes autocompletion, suggested tags, tag cloud widgets, related posts, mass edit tags, etc.

Why I like it:

When posting, I don’t have to manually type all the tags, just click the pertinent ones. If a tag does not exist, I can add it on the fly. It drives the tag cloud automatically – Simple to use! It’s another nice way to help promote to search engines. Viewing the tag cloud gives visitors an idea of the busiest topics on your blog.

Where to get it:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-tags

16) Sociable

Automatically add links on your posts, pages and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites.

Why I like it:

It does not slow your site down like some other related plugins do. I tested several of them and some of the better ones were very slow as they always connected to another web site first. This plugin is fast (local) and inobtrusive. It’s a great way to help get more exposure on some of the social sites, to let people know you have content they may be interested in. It can also be disabled on specific posts if need.

Where to get it:

http://yoast.com/wordpress/sociable/

17) Subscribe2

Notifies an email list of subscribed visitors when new entries are posted. Visitors can subscribe or unsubscribe to be notified at any time.

Why I like it:

It helps busy visitors with time management. Why visit a blog to see if there’s new content when you can be notified? Granted, another option is to use RSS, but I’ve found that email (like newsletters) is a great way to keep in touch and let visitors know what’s happening, and not everyone uses RSS. It’s also a traffic builder.

Where to get it:

http://subscribe2.wordpress.com/

18) Twitme

Automatically tweets your new posts on the twitter.

Why I like it:

Again, it’s an automatic cross poster, but more importantly, helps you keep in touch with your community and build traffic by letting twitter users know there is content of value for them.

Where to get it:

http://www.phpvrouwen.nl/twitme

19) WP-DBManager

Manages your Wordpress database. Allows you to optimize the database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

Why I like it:

It improves my blog’s security by automatically emailing me a backup of my database every day. I don’t even have to do anything, just set it up and it runs. That’s a nice feature. If something happens, I can simply go to me email and restore the most recent database. You and your visitors don’t lose a lot of valuable content.

Where to get it:

http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/#wp-dbmanager

20) WP-PostRatings

Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.

Why I like it:

It allows visitors to rate content, which helps you to see what is most in demand. As such, you’re better able to provide the content that visitors want. In a way, it’s another traffic building tool.

Where to get it:

http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/#wp-postratings

21) WP-PostRatings Widget

Works in conjunction with WP-PostRatings above. Displays the most rated and/or highest rated posts and/or pages on your sidebar.

Why I like it:

It helps visitors queue into the most highly rated content. It helps them find the hotest content right away.

Where to get it:

Remember to install and activate WP-PostRatings first. http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/#wp-postratings

22) WP-Sticky

Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog.

Why I like it:

I can display announcement and sticky posts only when viewing categories or not. I can display an announcement banner or display the date instead of the announcement banner (on announcement posts).

Where to get it:

http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/#wp-sticky

23) WP Super Cache

It’s a very fast caching module to help improve blog performance. Why have the server create your pages every time there’s a visitor? This plugin will cache previously created pages, to speed up surfing through your blog.

Why I like it:

I can turn it on or off as needed (even partially on). I can specify how long to keep cached content for. I can even prepare the blog for an expected spike in traffic by enabling the lock down feature. When this is enabled, new comments on a post will not refresh the cached static files. The lockdown feature is only useful if you are expecting a major Digg or Slashdot level of traffic to one of your posts or pages.

Where to get it:

http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/

24) Wordbook

Allows you to cross post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall. Your Facebook “Boxes” tab will show your most recent blog posts.

Why I like it:

It’s automated and helps build traffic while letting Facebook visitors know when valuable content has been posted.

Where to get it:

http://www.tsaiberspace.net/blog/2007/07/29/wordbook/

25) Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Returns a list of the related entries under each blog post,  (based on a unique algorithm) using titles, post bodies, tags and categories; with RSS feed support.

Why I like it:

It easily helps visitors find other content that may be of interest to them, and it’s also works automatically.

Where to get it:

http://mitcho.com/code/yarpp/

Again, these are the 25 I’ve found to be most beneficial not just to this blog, but others as well. Of course there are tons of other Wordpress plugins that benefit us. Have a suggestion? Use a good plugin that I’ve not listed? Please, include the links in your comments below.

Update:

I’ve tested another plugin and it’s working great. It’s called What Would Seth Godin Do.

Why I like it:

It displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another to return visitors; and I can place it at the top of posts and pages. I also like it because it automatic. (I like automated tools). Needless to say, it’s a good tool to promote features on a site, inform visitors, make announcements and lots of other benefits.

Where to get it:

http://richardkmiller.com/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do

Quite frankly, some solutions might be a better fit for your organization or personnel; such as Video streaming sites, wikis, forums, “traditional” static (hard coded) sites, etc. And (as a side note) all of these can be integrated into a blog. Irrespective, you may have your heart set on blogging, and have decided that a blog is the best tool for your needs.

What are the best traits of successful bloggers? What qualities do you need, or need to ensure your blog writer has? One of the most common issues I’ve heard from my clients and the public at large is the discouraged feelings some of them develop after launching a blog and it shows in their low traffic. They seem to focus on garnering traffic, when they should focus on the blog, it’s contents and how to make the blog stand out in the crowd. It reminds me a bit of the wise business budgeting adage “Look after the top line and the bottom line will take care of itself”. I think all to often that some bloggers are focusing on the bottom line instead.

But what traits will serve blog writers best? What skills, experiences, etc.? Below are fifteen of my opinions that I always consider when someone asks for advice. I’m certainly not suggesting that you or whoever writes your content should be strong in all 15 traits, rather I’m suggesting that these are the best facets to consider in yourself or your blog writer.

So… here are the top 15 qualities I consider:

1. Be a Good Reader. That’s right! Reading! Why? In my opinion a good listener is able to provide superior content. He or she reads what others write, becomes informed, increases awareness and is able to ascertain which content may be in demand in your online communities. Personally, I find myself reading more than I expected – I actually read way more than I could ever hope to write!
2. Enjoy Writing Articles. I’m sure you’d agree that’s a gimme. I think it goes without saying that you should enjoy writing – OFTEN. That you could best capitalize on developing your own righting character and style. (Side Note: While blogging for the most part is primarily text driven, I’ve seen an increasing trend toward video blogging, and have worked on several video streaming sites to facilitate such solutions – So… if you’re a better speaker, consider video blogging or podcasting).
3. Be Disciplined. Let’s face it, blogging is an ongoing activity you participate in to help reach your goals. You have to be able to remain motivated to regularly post new content to your blog – Doing so consistently.
4. Communicate Well. Have the ability to get your understanding across. Remember that communication is NOT the exchange of information, instead it IS the exchange of understanding. At the very least, you should have the communicative skills to impart valuable, in-demand information, in a logical and understandable manner.
5. Remain Genuine. Being honest in your blogging endeavours. Remember, blogging is a public, community driven environment. Lots of people are looking at you, therefore you should conduct yourself in a professional manner and treat those around you with respect.
6. Remain Organized. I can personally attest to this from the experiences in launching my Ubuntu Linux Help blog. When my first post went viral, I was not prepared for the responses. I received lot’s of comments and email messages. I followed up on sites that were linking to me as well as monitoring RSS feeds. And most importantly writing follow up posts. There were also technical issues, such as automated blog and database backup management and code tweaking, etc.
7. Make Time. I’ve been just as guilty when I catch myself saying “When I have time”. That’s the wrong way to think! I should make the time I need – Use a schedule and follow it. Remember, you’ll have to ensure that you respond to post comments, read post on other blogs, do research, communicate with the people around you, etc. Most of the advice I’ve read seems to indicate new blogs should post content every day. While I do agree with that, I’ve had to consider my schedule and make room to post on a consistent basis.
8. Be Focused. From time to time I have followed blogs that successfully maintain a consistent writing style and topic focus, only to suddenly change. Doing so can come across as a bit “dizzy” and slapstick. Remember, you’re communicating with your readers, losing focus or changing reader expectations can in the long run, reduce readership. If you have a great “thread” that really needs exploring, has unlimited potential and is not within the intended focus of your current blog; consider the possibility of launching it as another separate blog.
9. Maintain Technical Skills. While I’d not say this is a must, it does rank high. If you don’t have the technical (server) skills, work with someone who does. For example, how do you automate backups? What do you do if your browser starts displaying “Error 500″ type messages when visiting your blog? What about redesigning your blog theme? How to move your database or re-import a database backup? What about server security? Updates and patches? And so on…
10. Relaxed. Don’t be overly sensitive when you read something you may not agree with. Visitors will provide criticism, both constructive and negative. Other blogs may also create blog posts about you or your blog. Take both the positive and negative in stride. If you get too caught up emotionally, then blogging might not be the best venue for you and your piece of mind.
11. Enjoy Hard Work. That’s right! Hard work can be enjoyable. It’s just like playing sports or pursuing a serious hobby. You’ve got to enjoy the work. I know from experience that many sites I work with do not instantly garner the owners the results they want. Some of them have to work very hard indeed to reach their goals. A blog is an investment not a display object.
12. Encourages a Learning Atmosphere. You’ll be happier (and more successful) if you enjoy learning new things. While you may be an expert in your blog’s subject, In my opinion, bloggers can learn even more by communicating with visitors and other blog owners. The operative word is “sharing”, and in doing so, you can learn a bit more about your own subject (doing a bit of networking along the way).
13. A Creative Thinker. Some of the most successful bloggers are able to think creatively (out of the box). Regardless if your blog is a technical blog or an abstract blog, the ability to think in an innovative manner will serve you well. Think about it this way… There may be thousands of blogs that discuss similar subjects; as your blog. What do you do to stand out from the crowd. What spark can you provide that makes your readers feel the “Wow” effect?
14. Enjoy a Gregarious Nature. Blogging put’s you in view of the general public; you’re under the spotlight and everyone is watching the performance. As such, people will form opinions and may even discuss them online. Every thing you present or write in your blog, becomes public record. If you goof, it’s next to impossible to remove that. If you’re somewhat more outgoing and enjoy people, you’ll probably be better able to capitalize on the inherent benefits (and drawbacks) of constant observation and analysis.
15. Entrepreneurial Spirit. Are you a go-getter? Is your time management good? Are you a self-starter? Maintaining the motivation and initiative to keep plugging away to launch and continue the growth of your blog, is arguably one of the best traits to this end. It’s one thing to ensure you have all the tools and automation solutions in place and in use, it’s another matter entirely to motivate yourself and consistently provide new content and community connections – even when you don’t feel like it.

While I’m sure many may agree that there are several more that could be added to the list, these are just some, that are in my opinion, the most beneficial. So much so, that when reviewing my list, I felt compelled to add a bonus 16th point:

You’re a Messenger. The whole point of blogging is not to aimlessly provide unrelated, disjointed content. Rather it’s to communicate specific, targeted, focused information. I’ve often talked to people who were excited to launch a blog as it was trendy and “the fun thing to do”, but invariably failed to provide any worthwhile communication, and message. If you or your blog writer are not “messengers”, perhaps some of the other traits above may help.

For those of you who personally know me, in addition to my technical (Network Engineering) background, I’ve also a strong background in training and curriculum development. That’s where I draw upon much of my thoughts when placing pen to paper (so to speak).

Do you think I missed something important? Do you have something to add? Thought, Comments? Say so below. Thanks.

Given the lure of increasing traffic to your web site and the inherent increase in revenue that traffic can bring, it’s no wonder how this seems the priority focus when attempting to increase traffic (and revenue leads). SEO is but one aspect that can benefit any business, there are incredible tools to this effect, one of the most beneficial is to use a blog.

Side note: Don’t know what a blog is? Then, you might be interested in my earlier post “What is Blogging? What’s a Blog“. That post also has a short video showing how a blog performs.

In another earlier post on this blog (Quality Content is Not “the” Key to a Blog Success), I suggested focusing on the intangible elements to help further increase traffic. It may logically follow therefore, that one of the biggest benefits blogging can provide business owners is the opportunity to develop a personal rapport with blog visitors. Like any business relationship, purchasers like to get to know their suppliers or providers a bit before investing in products and services. People are more likely to spend if the garner an inside peek – it’s a personal exchange. It builds confidence and trust among other things. Think about it for a moment… A web site, in essence is like a multi-page brochure. While that’s good to describe services or products, it does relatively little in terms of interaction, rapport building, social networking, and so forth. There’s really no Call to Action as each visit shows the same old content. Blogs on the other hand, encourage interactivity, communication and repeat visits as content is added on a regular basis.

A web site is one way communication. A blog is two way (actually it’s multiway communication). The blog owner (that’s the business) can talk to the visitor, who can respond AND visitors can communicate with each other as well.

For business owners, that content can include product or service updates, notifications, announcements, videos, personal introductions, podcasting, contests, guest writers, and the list goes on. Think of the scenario this way:

A potential client enters your business, you give them a brochure, they say nothing and leave. They may or may not return. That’s a web site.

No let’s look at the same scenario, from a blogging framework:

A potential client enters your business, you provide them the specific content they require. If they need content you don’t have, it’s a snap to add. The client communicates with you, and you respond. Both of you respond to another client, who replies. That sounds much more like the way things are supposed to be. Dynamic, interactive.

Over the years, I’ve seen time and again how blogs are able to better garner the traffic business owners are looking for. Why? That’s what they were designed for over the years – to be a social platform that allows people or businesses to communicate and build their connections. It’s one thing to read a book (or web site), but much more beneficial to communicate with the authors and visa versa.

To use an example, about a year ago one of my clients launched a web site and a blog a few weeks apart. To this day the blog is obtaining almost double the traffic of the web site. Statistically that seems to be supported in my opinion, when observing all of my clients sites and blogs. All of the blogs are at the top of the list traffic wise, with the sites trailing behind.

Obviously, due to privacy, I cannot divulge specific statistics of clients, I did take a look for some stats, to see if some of these observations are mirrored elsewhere. I found some pretty interesting results. Expansion+ (an Internet Marketing PR site) reported on a Business Blogging Survey. Did you know that “…Almost 89 percent of U.S. respondents and nearly 83 percent of U.K. respondents believe blogs are an important digital communication…”?

Also from their site:

“Ultimately, what this survey revealed was a need for communication professionals in both countries to step up to the plate and start integrating blogging practices into their strategic approach,” said Jacki Vause, managing director of Peppercom’s London office”.

While the survey they were discussing was specifically about “Business Blogging Survey Reveals Corporate Attitude to Social Media” and was intended to “…compare and contrast blogging communication practices in the U.S. and the U.K. and identify best practices…”, I couldn’t help but note some of the prevalent points.

I also looked at another site, which was more targeted to the subject of this blog post. Neville Hobson’s post “Blogs drive business opportunities: UK survey” where some of the key findings he noted included:

• 50% of companies undertake some form of blogging, either having a blog, or encouraging employees to comment on blogs.
• 80% of blog users visit blogs within work hours. Most blog users visit blogs at lunchtime (31%), or first thing in the morning (29%).
• 66% of businesses believe that blogs are becoming more influential as an information source.

Visit the link to his post (above) to see all his other noted findings (as they’re a good indicator of how business owners seem to deal with blogging).

Statistics aside, blogging is a great way for any business to increase traffic. It’s an interesting point to note, that when I conduct training seminars, a fair number of people seemed to have visited both my blogs, already garnering some feel for my business and my professional background – And it makes communication much more effective when I meet with them!

For business owners (actually for anyone) considering launching a blog, I’ve mentioned in other posts, but it’s apt here – Make sure you focus your blog towards a specific niche and target audience (within that niche). Obviously conent from my other blog (a Linux blog) would not work in this blog as it’s not of interest. Therefore, by using a blog, you’re able to provide an added benefit by targeting very specific audiences and therefore garnereing traffic that in many mays could be considered as “qualified leads“, since they may already be looking for what you’ve got.

What do these blog visitors want? I also found (via Google) the results of a German study about corporate blogging. For those who do not speak German, some of the key findings were:

• 95 % of respondents found it important that the blog they read be updated regularly.
• 91% of blog readers expect a fast, relevant/appropriate reply to their questions and comments.
• 90% of readers thought it was important to indicate a difference between commercial and private content.
• 58% of readers, read them to find news and information they can’t find elsewhere.
• 57% of respondents were interested in the personal opinions of the authors.
• 54% of blog visitors formulate their opinions about products and companies from blogs.
• 51% of readers visit product and/or corporate sites as a results of reading blogs.
• 43% of visitors were interested in the blog discussions.

Those are some eye opening numbers, that show how important blogs are to business owners. For example, would you like visitors to find out more about your business, it’s products and services elsewhere or from your blog directly? – A blog that can help them formulate an opinion about your business and it’s offerings.

I should note that one point not addressed in the site I reviewed was ROI. All business owners should be aware that the cost of operating a blog is drastically less that a traditional web site. You don’t have to spend the time to learn web coding or invest in designers and developers to update your site content. Using Wordpress, it quite easy after the engine is installed. It’s very much like typing your content in an online editor and then clicking publish – Easy!

In conclusion, given the above, it appears that blogging provides the following key benefits to business owners.

• Targeted audience.
• improved PR (public relations).
• Enhanced pre-sales.
• Increased traffic due to social interaction.
• Community building.
• Cost effective ROI.
• Improved brand awareness.

In my opinion, businesses that want to compete for attention and traffic in today’s online arena could best leverage the value of their investment by using a blog.

After all, do you want to be communicating with interested people and building your business or would you rather be standing on the corner handing brochures out. In my opinion, the choice is a no-brainer. ;)

• Automated subscription management (subscribe/unsubscribe).
• Statistics/Click through rate.
• Ability to send in both text and html (at the same time).
• No installation of software on their PC.
• Automated server transmission of email.
• Automated server management of bounced email addresses.

And the list goes on…

Suffice to say, it did make me think about some of the aspects I’ve experienced in emailed newsletter subscriptions, good and bad. In many cases I’ve observed individuals launch a newsletter – full of excitement! Only, later to find that they did not garner their anticipated results. Inevitably, after review, it became evident that the root causes of an unsuccessful newsletter system was in poor planing.

In every public seminar I present, I almost always touch on the importance of solid planning (and sticking to the plan!). It does not matter how small or large the project is, it always needs a plan. Which brings to mind the old adage…

“If you want some exercise walk around, if you want to get somewhere, plan your route!“

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting this particular client has poor planning skills (quite the opposite in fact!), rather it led me to posting about my experiences and how I’d suggest people could build an effective, successful online newsletter system; one that best promotes their business, interest, web site, blog, etc. Hopefully some of the points will help you.

Note: While I am a Certified Network Engineer (MCSE, N+, MCP+I), I’ve endeavoured not to delve too much into the technical aspects. However I don’t mind fielding such questions as I do operate my own servers as well as providing web/blog development, online solutions and hosting services for other clients.

In my opinion one crux of a successful newsletter must be to ask yourself “Why do I want to launch a newsletter?” Remember that the potential subscriber of that newsletter is going to ask themselves “What’s in it for me?” – Make sure you provide enough benefits to answer their needs; and in doing so, remember the mantra:

“Benefits sell, features don’t“.

What makes your newsletter better than any other newsletter? – Do something that makes you stand out and get noticed.

When I first read their email and considered the newsletter angle, several questions jumped to the forefront:

• Why don’t they just promote their RSS feed? (They don’t have one – For those that don’t know, here is a great resource showing you what an RSS feed is: RSS Feeds in Plain English).
• Why don’t they just blog about it? (Their site is not a blog platform).
• Newsletters are not an “A <-> B” conversation, rather one-way. (Sure but newsletters remind readers to return).
• Newsletters are old-fashioned. (That may be, but they are familiar venues to many people).
• Newsletters are simply sending information already on the web site or blog, that’s not interesting is it? (It is interesting if you use the newsletter to build interest – such as announcements about what’s coming, etc. – or Information not currently on the site).
• The content may not be of interest to all the recipients, many will simply delete the email. (But that’s really a benefit! You can target specific “groups” of readers with specific “targeted” content – You’ve always got to try and look at the upside of things).

For a moment, let’s expand on some of those questions and comments.

One thing I learned from my other blog, is that I had (and still do) a lot of one-time visitors. These are visitors that find my blog via search engines (Google) or from links in other blogs, forums, etc. They visit my site and on average view 3.25 pages and then leave, never returning. On tool that could help turn them into repeat visitors is a newsletter. I’m not suggesting that every one of them will subscribe, rather a blog (or web site) containing quality content and a well written subscription “call to action“, may motivate some of them to subscribe. Much in the same way that product manufacturers work to improve brand loyalty, newsletters are one tool you can use to promote reader loyalty.

As I mentioned, newsletters have the ability to share information that is not yet on the site. They compliment the site. One way of facilitating this could be to induce interest by keeping your readers in the loop on new events, upcoming features, etc. This can be very powerful as it helps to build media buzz and interest. Just look at how the movie industry uses this… They announce an upcoming movie and let you see just a few of the really good bits as teasers, then you’re kept in suspense, interest captured until the new movie is finally available and your able to watch it.

Newsletters help you to build a community or business network, so much so, that a good newsletter should actively encourage feedback (and perhaps, pre-stage that membership for a future forum environment ). In my opinion, people like to be part of a community; and they arguably will be the most loyal visitors, who will encourage others to become regular visitors. (Nothing like a good debate or discussion elicited by your newsletter).

Obviously there are several reasons (or motivators) why we would want to launch a newsletter, once we’ve made the call however, there are several things to consider in order to bring our newsletter plans to fruition.

In my opinion, there are ten steps to successful and effective enewsletter marketing.

1) Plan your key objectives and stay within them.

What is the purpose of your newsletter? What tangible, measurable goal(s) are you building towards? As I’ve mentioned, there are several objectives your newsletter can be used to help reach, some examples being:

• Are you building a business network or community?
• Improve/Increase traffic statistics of your site or blog?
• Garnering greater public awareness?
• Elicit greater feedback and interactivity?
• Enhance media PR marketing?
• Appealing to a new niche of specific people?
• Capturing readers who do not use your feeds (RSS)?

Many of us will try to include more than one objective. I learned the hard way, always have one primary objective that you work towards. It should take precedence over some of your secondary objectives. I’ll say it again… ALWAYS focus on the prime objective.

2) Create content that is scannable.

Most individuals (including myself) quickly scan the contents of messages first. Doing so helps us to evaluate when the message should be acted upon (the importance level) and if it’s interesting enough for us to read. Think about it a moment, when you pick up a newspaper don’t you quickly scan the article to see what it’s about – and then read it if it captures your interest?

Scannable content does not just refer to the text itself, it refers to the visual (esthetic) elements as well. Elements such as bolding, icons, highlighting on backgrounds, etc. Ever used a magic marker to highlight key text when studying? ;)

3) Tell people what you enewsletter focuses on, what it’s about.

I’m sure you’ll want to keep your subscribers. Tell them up front what the newsletter is about, what topic ranges it covers and how the newsletter will benefit the reader. And stick to that commitment! Time and time again, I’ve subscribed to newsletters that promised content, features and benefits that I was interested. And time again I’ve unsubscribed because they did not deliver. This brings to mind a very salient issue:

It’s better to have a smaller number of subscribers who receive the content they expected than those who unsubscribed because you didn’t follow through with your offerings (some of whom think they got – forgive the expression – suckered into signing up with empty promises). Be genuine… that small group may help your newsletter marketing more than you realize.

4) Be consistent and regular.

If your newsletter is monthly, make sure you always deliver.
If your newsletter is quarterly, make sure you always deliver and so on…

There’s nothing worse than haphazard delivery. For those of us who have printed newspaper subscriptions, I’m sure they can attest to the annoyance when the newspaper fails to be delivered or is often delivered late.

By consistent, I’m referring to the style and content. It’s a good idea to use the same style of writing as used in your web site or blog. Why? That’s probably what people expect. There’s nothing wrong with having a guest writer contribute (that’s often a good idea), but think for a moment, if people like your site content writing style, then they’ll also like that same style in your newsletter. In some ways, this also touches on branding issues (albeit that’s a whole discussion in itself) – branding does not refer just to graphics, rather your whole packaging – including the writing style.

5) Build interest with titles.

Newspapers are the masters of capturing interest with titles and describing the content with titles. They’ve had centuries to perfect. Your title is a critical component as it will be the primary deciding factor as to whether someone will read your newsletter or not.

Using RSS feeds as an example, I subscribe to about 12 feeds from various blogs that I am seriously interested in. Each morning I review the new articles and decide which I will return to read in the evening, and which I delete. The only thing I read is the title, that’s it! If the title captures me I save it for reading, if not, I delete it right away.

Note: In addition to titles, please keep in mind that content in the top of your newsletter (above the fold) will receive more immediate interest than below the fold. Similarly, links near the top will also be clicked more often. This is also a good SEO strategy, namely to pack your best punch in your first paragraph.

One caveat to watch out for with newsletter (as opposed to RSS feeds) is the title you give your newsletter blast. It’s important to be able to “brand” and identify your newsletter right away (because readers are expecting it and need to easily find it within their email), however there also needs to be some description of the content itself. Try experimenting to achieve a balance between the two. If BloggerSavvy had a newsletter, I’d initially try an enewsletter subject line that reads something like this example:

“BloggerSavvy Newsletter – 10 sizzling marketing tips, New blog contest, How to get featured on Digg, and more…”

The above example clearly indicates who the newsletter is from and highlights some of the top content that may most capture interest.

6) Use standard, reliable tools.

Evidently a component upon which you should place a fair bit of emphasis is the engine that runs your newsletter and subscriptions. While many people use a third party subscription service, I personally don’t think that is the best way to go. Why? In my opinion:

1. It’s a privacy issue. Third-parties do not need to control my database of subscribers.
2. In the past I have had large numbers of people unsubscribing because the domain sending newsletters was not the same domain as the one that creates the newsletter.
3. In my opinion (with regards to point #2) it also looks very unprofessional when my domain is xxx.com but the domain sending the newsletter is yyy.com – it just does not come across as professional (in my opinion).
4. It’s not the best choice to operate a newsletter under the behest of a third party. What happens if they change the rules, sell their business, go out of business. (Who owns the actual database?)
5. From personal experience, I have often encountered unreliable services from such providers.
6. Using third party services often increases your costs.

What would I suggest?

Use you own newsletter service. I often suggest PHPList as a viable, reliable alternative; in great part because you can install it under your own domain and it easily integrates with the premier blogging platform, Wordpress. Some of my favourite phplist features are noted on the home page of their web site as:

• Double opt-in subscription mechanism
• Scheduling
• RSS
• User Specific Content
• Click-tracking
• Attachments
• Bounce management
• Domain Throttling
• Server Throttling

While a search on Google should provide you with dozens of systems, I’ve personally found that this package works both in terms of reliability and features. One benefit is that the system is virtually automated (including double opt-in – more about that below) and all you have to do is provide content – It will even archive your newsletters! More features of that package are here: phplist.com/details and for all the Wordpress users the plugin to integrate the system (into Wordpress) is called WP-PHPList. It’s also interesting to note that this open source package also integrates into many other platforms, including ecommerce, forums and CMS related engines.

Bottom line, while third party relayers, I’m sure do provide good service, in my opinion, I’d prefer to retain control of my own subscribers and manage them under my own domain and branding – for many of the reasons I listed above. In my opinion, this is a much more professional way to operate enewsletter transmissions.

7) Monitor and track your results.

Ensure that you use a combination of tools to monitor your activities; both from the newsletter system and the resulting server (your domain) that provides content such as images, video, audio, etc. I would suggest using the tracking tools that come with the newsletter mailing list (such as phplist) with Google Analytics and your own servers statistics. In my opinion, one of the better server based statistics package is called AWStats. Using a combination of tools (and not relaying on one tool) helps to provide a more realistic “picture” (as different tools gather and correlate data in different ways).

Paying attention to which links are clicked, will give you insight as to which pages provide the most in demand and valued content. They will also help when you’re “experimenting” with your content style and placement, etc.

As a quick practical example, knowing which content garners the greatest click through to a page will quickly tell you which pages and content could best be used to “announce” things to your readers. It will also tell you which content you may want to follow-up on or further capitalize upon (because of the heightened interest).

8) Ensure your newsletter provides double opt in subscription.

Double opt in is a subscription feature wherein the subscriber enters their subscription email address and then confirms that subscription via an email sent by the newsletter server. It’s primary purpose is to ensure that subscribers truly wish to subscribe. I think that here in Canada this (double opt in) is a requirement (but I’m not 100% sure about that).

You will want to do this as it prevents damage to your blog (or web site) occurring from users who are added to your subscribers list without permission.

I have often entered my contacts into only the subscription databases that I directly control, and always have the tools in place that allow them to unsubscribe. While technically this is a grey area, I’ve never had issues or complaints as my subscribers were always generally intelligent, forgiving individuals.

I have personally seen other newsletters fail because they purchased lists of email addresses and added them to the database, as such they ended up with a poisoned database that was overflowing with unqualified readers who did not care and were not interested in the content. In one case the domain name became blacklisted as a spam domain, which irreparably destroyed that blog’s brand and reputation.

9) Grow your benefits and quality.

There are several ways to help keep readership growing. Obviously, one way is to continue providing high quality, in demand content. Consistently give your readers something of value, something that benefits them.

You could provide them with new content in each newsletter or revisit existing content on your blog/web site (or both). Personally, I tend to use a bit of both.

Why?

1. Statistics show me which topics are hot and would benefit from a follow-up.
2. New content keeps things fresh and interesting and provides incentive to subscribe as the content does not have appear on the blog until after the subscribers have received it.

One key is to always remain consistent, don’t procrastinate. As I alluded above, it can be very annoying (and make your newsletter appear really “flaky”) if it’s operated in a haphazard manner and if the content is not targeted. Content should be targeted.

Quite often newsletter content is not so much a matter of “What would I like to include in the newsletter this time?” rather it’s (in my opinion) more of an issue of “What do my subscribers want to read about?” “What interests them?” In other words select targeted content for targeted readers, that’s effective.

This leads to the final point… #10

10) Talk to your subscribers and get feedback.

Communicating with your readers may be an eye opening experience. While we can garner a fair bit of intelligence from review statistics, we can obtain some insight through reader input.

Don’t be afraid to contact your most loyal readers, ask them how you can improve the newsletter. Ask them what they would do. I’ve often been surprised at some of the beneficial things I’ve learned.

Equally, talk to those who have unsubscribed ask them if they wouldn’t mind telling you why. Sometimes you may not like what you hear, but if you listen, really listen, you’ll often discover other areas of improvement.

Obtaining feedback helps to ensure the effectiveness of your newsletter marketing as you’ll remain in touch with your readers. You will be talking to them, not at them.

You’ll be empowering them as a community and building brand loyalty and pride in ownership, which is probably one of the most powerful aspects of effective online newsletter marketing!

Side note: I found that there were a huge number of translation services visiting my Linux blog and translating it into other languages for those who did not speak English. Incidentally, it’s prudent to note that most people visiting your blog who’s native language is not English, will still speak English as their other language. For those interested in online translation or site’s where multilingual content is posted I’d suggest the following:

• Google Translate
• Kontribute
• Humanitas International
• FreeTranslation.com

However, let’s get back to the subject at hand…

For this blog, I’ve tried to appeal to a specific (albeit huge) area. I needed to determine the most popular social media networks globally. One resource is provided by a British web design business that hosts such information here: href=”http://www.oxyweb.co.uk/blog/socialnetworkmapoftheworld.php” target=”_blank”>Social Network Map of the World

Their map is beneficial in that is displays the highest ranking social networks in each country by traffic alone.

This resource is a good tip and I’d recommend you bookmark it as it will help you determine which social media sites may work best for your area; a good quick resource to help save time in researching where best to leverage your blog exposure. I use it to garner a quick snapshot.

Note: It’s important to realize that such tools do not necessarily drive traffic to your blogs, rather they contribute. You must still ensure you build your brand, content, etc. one bit at a time. It’s the “big picture” (your master plan) that yo should always keep in the forefront and build towards.

But what if I have some time to do a bit of research? What if I’m not looking for a quick snapshot? What do I do if I’m also intersted in targeting cities via social networking? Well grasshopper… there’s a super tool which does all that (and more)!

Google’s Insight, is one tool I don’t hear near enough about (I think it’s still in beta). Google Insights for Search, as their site says, provides the ability to “…compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames…”.

Let’s look at a quick example by determining where Facebook is the most popular. The following link will provide the search inputs we used. Namely:

• Facebook
• 2008
• Online Communities and
• Locations

Here’s the search link:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=299&q=facebook&date=1%2F2008%2012m&cmpt=geo

Google Insights Search - Country

The results showed that Turkey appears first in the list for “Regional Interest for Facebook”. Realistically, I found that the map was far more useful that the lists. Clicking on a country map (Canada for example), provides a further breakdown of Facebook within Canada,

Google Insights Search - Province, State, region

and incredibly, if I click on a province within Canada (Ontario), I’ll see which cities have the most interest in facebook.

Google Insights Search - City

Needless to say, Google Insights for Search (google.com/insights/search/) can be a very powerful tool in your web site or blog promotion strategy. Combining the insights Google provides with the powerful exposure that social sites can provide is a very good traffic building tool.

In my next post, I’ll list some of the Wordpress plugins that can best help you garner exposure of your content withing the social networking word. These plugins will be sure to help you automate much of your social media promotions (and that saves you time!)

If you don’t want to miss that post, please subscribe below and you’ll automatically be notified. Easy!

I’m taking a couple months reprieve from the seminar track as I’ve a fair bit of work to catch up on. Doing so also presents me with the time to develop my seminar track for the next year “Blogging to Grow Your Business”. While developing the content (and bouncing ideas off some of my seminar regulars) on of them challenged a chapter I working on. In particular was the issue that the success of a blog (for that matter a web site too), was NOT incumbent solely on quality, in-demand content. Several others also voiced similar issues, and it occurred to me that we’re comparing apples and oranges.

Most would agree that in the most basic terms we can appreciate that search engines find quality content attractive, thereby directing more traffic to the page containing such content. That may have been a more realistic perception for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but certainly not in today’s Social Web! Your online presence very much follows the general rules within the tangible world. Think about it… When I meet a prospective client in a brick & mortar environment, I need to be just as personable and professional as I am in my online blogging and web development environment.

The value and importance of networking does not end when we include online solutions (such as blogs) to grow our businesses. It’s the networking we do that in part that helps to ensure our blogs success. You could have all the content in the world, but are you really going to grow traffic if nobody knows about it?

Is it realistic to expect your sole source of traffic to be search engines? Of course not! The days of “Build it and they will come”, are long gone.

Needless to say, there were a flurry of email messages, so much so that I thought I’d post some answers.

First, lets break the issues down to the “features” and “benefits” issue. One of my mantras has always been:

“Benefits Sell, Features Don’t“

Think about it for a moment, all blogs have content -That’s a feature!

A blog that shows you how to save money or save time (for example), and thereby reach more people – Those are Benefits!

Which brings to mind the salient question (I think) all business owners should be asking themselves:

“What benefits can a blog provide my business?”

or

“If content is simply a feature and not the primary element of blog success, what’s in it for me?”

Subsequently this leads to some of the immediate questions that arose in our discussions, questions that I strongly feel are of the most basic surface benefits and do not really grasp the deeper concepts (which I’ll raise towards the end of this post).

• Where do I get traffic (readers)?
• Where do I get inbound links?
• How do I become visible? and so on…

It’s important for any business owner contemplating a blog to remember some of the basic aspects of business (and blogging) promotion:

• Design/Branding.
• Titles/Content.
• Interaction/Personality.
• SEO/Structure.
• Promotion/Marketing.

An aesthetically pleasing blog environment is one “surface” cornerstone. You could call it your packaging or “branding”. Your branding broadcasts a lot about you and your business. Blog branding directly reflects your business. If it looks horrible, that’s the message your sending to readers.

Titles are critical. Newspapers are masters at this. Think about it, when you look at a book, magazine or newspaper, the title is probably one of the first things you read. If the title captures interest, then readers will dig deeper into your content. Titles should try to include a call to action.

Interaction has always been a successful strategy. Using a blog to educate, inform, guide, demonstrate and so forth… is much the way successful business owners promote their operations. The same holds true in the virtual environment. Interaction shows that somebody is there to serve your clients.

SEO, if search engines know where your content is, what your most important content is and how to access it, this (among other SEO facets) goes a long way to helping search engine users (remember the focus should be on the people) find your most valuable content. The easier your blog is to navigate, the more likely readers can find the content they are looking for.

Promotion and marketing have always been important. Every business that has a blog is able to join the crowd. But, how do you get noticed in a crowd? You don’t. It’s important to bring to fruition the most important aspects that make your blog stand out and get noticed. Nobody is going to give you leadership, you have to earn it.

As I suggested, these are (in my opinion) some of the most common questions, the answers of which don’t really address the deeper aspects. Aspects that show us that it’s no longer content that’s the key to success, but rather a related web of elements.

In my experience, there are four intangible elements that contribute enormously to a blogs success. And arguably may be considered some of the most important elements!

1. Luck/Karma.
2. Charisma/Leadership.
3. Confidence/Trust.
4. Professionalism/Genuine.

Luck/Karma.

I kid you not! My other blog had several posts go viral. In one case (shortly after I launched the blog) it was sheer luck that a reader posted the link on Digg and that the Digg community moved the post to the front page. That truly was luck. (Update: I’ll blog about this later, but another aspect of good luck was during the launch of this blog, I lost all my content – But Google cache and Live cache returned copies to me).

But can we control luck? Can we make it work to our advantage? I think we can. While this could easily be a separate discussion altogether, I’d still suggest that one way to illicit good luck is to communicate effectively. Tell everyone what you need, plan your goals towards your desires, be optimistic and relax, doing so will allow you to approach any setbacks with a positive attitude. In turn this will help you to turn lemons into lemonade (as your mentality will already be in a positive zone).

Charisma/Leadership.

Participate in your community. Be the mover and shaker. Earn leadership through your insight and wisdom. Don’t micro-manage, rather stand back and look at the whole picture. Connect the people around you into a community and empower their participation. Your blog can be among the best tools to this end.

Confidence/Trust.

When you blog about a topic, mean what you say and follow through. Be genuine in your relations with readers. Always be professional. If you’re writing a controversial post, do so in a positive fashion, comments written with negative or combative language, do not build confidence in you or trust in your blog. Invite guests to contribute content to your blog, doing so goes a long way to building trust and ensuring confidence.

Professionalism/Genuine.

Impart your knowledge in a positive manner. It’s not what you know, but how you express it that helps build your blog success. I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert in online business promotion, network engineering, web development/coding or even Linux blogging. But I’ve had years of training and/or experience in these areas. In particular, my linux blog has taught me that some of the most valuable content on occasion comes from my readers!

Finally, I’d like to clarify again, I’m not suggesting that the value of content has fallen by the way side. Rather that more blogs are savvy to the issue of quality content. Therefore an area that can further a blog’s success is to focus on empowering the four intangeable elements to your fullest potential. Doing so, in my opinion, is one step towards becomming bloggersavvy!