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.

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.

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?

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.

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”.

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.