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

In an earlier post, Scott Mahler of Datex Media commented asking about the newest strategies of increasing blog traffic. While there are some new aspects, I think for many of us, it's important to first "hammer home" some of the best tips blog owners can use to help ensure traffic growth. This blog post invites your comments! What's new in blog marketing? What works for you? Let us know 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 ...

Do you monitor your web statistics regularly? Have you noticed that some of your posts have a higher bounce rate than others? Do you want to encourage your visitors to read more of your posts? If so, the following tools and suggestions will help. Before we review some of the things we can do, let's define what a "bounce rate" actually is, and see which tools can help us determine  our bounce rates. "Bounce rate" has two definitions. According to Google (analytics) it refers to the act of a visitor entering your blog (or web site) and leaving within the first five seconds. More commonly, we understand it to mean the percentage (or number) of visits to your blog, where the visitor enters and exits the same page without visiting any other pages on your blog. Evidently we want visitors to remain on our blogs. The top two tools I use to compare and find bounce rates are: AWStats. AWStats is robust and is a standard statistics gathering system on most web servers. Google Analytics. Is an online analytics service operated by Google. Both of the above tools will help you determine your bounce rates. Personally I favour Google Analytics for ease. Additionally, I'd recommend reading ...