The Evolving Internet Marketer

Build Traffic to Your Blog with Blog Directory Submissions

Building relevant traffic for our blog is often the biggest challenge we face. One great way to generate links and traffic is to register your blog with popular blog directories.

WebsiteMagazine.com recently published a list of 30 popular blog directories. I’ve taken this list and turned it into a blog submission tracking spreadsheet that you can download and use to track your efforts in submitting your blog to the relevant blog directories on the list.

30 Popular Blog Directories

Use this list to generate additional traffic for your blog by

• Visiting each of these directories and
• Registering and claiming your blog.

Then use this document to track your efforts and any login information and other notes related to your submission. Keep in mind that not all directories are appropriate for all blogs. Some serve special niches which may not be appropriate for the focus of your blog. Also, check within your own industry to see if there are industry specific directories where you’ll want to pursue a listing for your blog.  

Many blog platforms provide the capability to “ping” or notify popular blog catalogues when you create new posts but a more hands-on effort on your part will ensure that you create a more targeted, focused listing that will pay off in more targeted, focused traffic to your blog.

How Not to Get & Keep Followers on Twitter

There are lots of Twitter users out there who think they’ve hit the get-rich-quick pipeline to instant riches when they find Twitter. A lot of these are people who tweet like this guy…

• finishing up his new ‘coaching series’ which he’ll be selling to you in a later tweet. 
• using a new product which you can try for FREE! Of course, when you buy it, he’ll get his affiliate commission and the opportunity to sell you more, more, more…
• asking you to sign up for his motivational tips newsletter because he’d rather hammer you to buy his stuff through multiple channels, not just Twitter. 

This kind of user sees Twitter as his personal 24/7 twinfomercial where’s it all him all the time. Does that sound like a twitter stream that you want to spend much time immersed in? So why does @allMLMallthetime think we do?

How to Attract Twitter Followers

He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand the rules of engagement in the social sphere. It’s not hard and there’s really only one…

Thou shalt give in order that thou shalt receive.

The way you attract Twitter followers over the long term, who keep reading, retweeting and replying to your tweets is to provide real value that interests and benefits them over time. After all, Twitter, like every other social network is a “what’s in it for me” medium. So by showing your ‘tweeps’ that what’s in it for them is solid advice, links to lots of good stuff (not yours), connections with your other value-adding followers and yes, the right amount of self/product/service promotion (no more than 10-20%) you’ll find that you’ve developed a trust-based relationship with them.

Why? Because by relentlessly and somewhat selflessly providing them value you’ve demonstrated a concern for their prosperity, not just your own. 

Oh, and don’t we all like to do business with people we trust, with people who ‘care’ about us. 

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Build Site Traffic by Blogging

One of the best ways to build traffic to your web site continues to be with a consistently published, compelling blog. I was forced to lay off blogging for over a month due to circumstances I couldn’t control. The upshot, my site’s traffic tanked. After a couple of weeks back in the blogging saddle my traffic, over the previous, non-blogging period, increased by almost 1600%. Yeah, I know what your thinking, “he went from 1 to 4 readers, big deal.” Ha ha.

Blogging Builds Website Traffic – The Proof is in the Google Analytics Pudding

Okay, enough about me, the following chart illustrates the effect blogging is having in building website traffic for a client who I recently worked with to setup a Wordpress blog. She’s still working to find the right editorial mix and she’s not blogging enough but the proof is irrefutable that when she blogs, her traffic soars. You’ll notice that her traffic numbers aren’t huge but then again her site sat virtually stagnant for a number of years with little or no search engine optimization.

Is a 510% Increase in Website Traffic Significant? Doh!

The chart above compares the current month with the previous month just to more graphically illustrate the spike that posting to her blog had on daily traffic versus a ‘regular’, non-posting day. In general she saw a 380% increase in site visits on the days she blogged and a 359% increase in page views. When you subtract her blog posting days from the equation, the numbers are even more dramatic with her site traffic showing an increase in visits of 560% and 510% in page views!

Adding Social Media to the Mix

Our next step is to increase her overall social media marketing effectiveness by integrating her social networking presence on sites like LinkedIn and Twitter with the content she produces on these sites. By bringing her Twitter feed into her blog, for example, and feeding her blog content through her LinkedIn profile her traffic will increase that much more.

The Ripple Effect of Social Media

The beauty of an integrated social media marketing approach is that you can create these outgoing content ripples that expand well beyond your content’s original entry point.

The truth is that this site doesn’t have a lot of traffic … yet. But, it has about 3 times the amount it did before the site’s owner began blogging. As we integrate the website’s content with that generated throughout her social network and increase the frequency of publication, her traffic will increase at an exponential rate. The ripple effect will kick in and the same amount of effort will result in an ever-widening scope of distribution; and influence.

Lessons Learned

The web, like nature, abhors a vacuum. In the case of a website that vacuum translates to stale content and static websites. The easiest way to correct this is to establish and regularly contribute to a blog. And, while your at it, start posting to Twitter and claim your space on LinkedIn, MySpace, Naymz and other relevant social networking sites.

Need help? Call or email me. That’s what I do. 303.882.8252. tom.gray @ gemsolv.com.

What’s Your Experience?

Leave a comment about your success, or lack thereof, in the blogosphere or social media space. Don’t just stand there. Join the conversation!

Andy Wibbel’s 3 Buttons to Marketing Bliss

Andy’s writing a new book and underlying this is a framework for global domination he’s developed called Instant Global Impact Framework. I hope this doesn’t include jack-booted armies of Wibbelites occupying our major cities and controlling newkular armageddon!

Like most bright ideas Andy presents his in a simple context consisting of 3 Buttons: Search –> Subscribe –> Buy. Revolutionary? Not really but it provides an easy-to-grasp conceptual framework within which we can consider and configure a more effective marketing effort for our selves, products and services either on or offline. 

Check out his post at http://andywibbels.com/2008/11/the-three-buttons/. It’s the first in a series.

Sizing Up the Blogosphere or “How Big is It?

I originally reported the following data on the growth of the blogosphere as part of a post I was writing about a year and 1/2 ago. As sometimes happens, it got stuck in draft world and I never completed it. A couple of items recently came to my attention that motivated me to revisit this…

The first was the report I cited yesterday from businessandblogging.com that spoke of the million small business blogs out there and the tremendous, cost effective, marketing opportunities blogs provided for small business (referencing a New York Times article on the topic.

The second was my curiosity about how big the blogosphere has become. I zipped over to Technorati to take a peek at the number of blogs they’re tracking:

Currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.

…

The World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.

Compare this to the data below from April 2006 when Technorati reported tracking over 35 million blogs with 75,000 new blogs created each day. So just in the last 20 months we’ve seen an 321% in the number of blogs tracked and 233% in daily postings.

(They say baseball is awash in steroids. I think that the blogosphere is juicing big time! How soon before Congress calls hearings to investigate the real story?

The blogosphere, social media, podcasting, vidcasting,/YouTube … all interconnected channels for business of all size to get the message out. In this wired and wireless, information-flying-all-over-the-place, low cost and no cost of production world it’s inexcusable not to be using any or all of the above to promote your message!

My Original Post

By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November established new contours for the blogosphere: 8 million American adults say they have created blogs; blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users; 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online; and 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs. Still, 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is.

Blogging continues to move into the mainstream as a.) more folks blog and b.) more folks read blogs. According to a phone survey of over 7,000 people conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project…

• About 57 million Americans are reading blogs, up from around 39 million in 2004.
• 12 million Americans write blogs up from 8 million in 2004. As an aside, Technorati reports that they are tracking over 35 million blogs and that over 19 million blogs continue to be posted to 3 months after creation. Further they state that 75,000 new blogs are created every day and the blogosphere continues to double every 6 months (from State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth)
• 84% of bloggers are under 49 and 54% are under 30. They tend to be avid consumers and heavy internet users.
• Bloggers are passionate about what they write. Only 7% state that their principal goal is to make money from their blogs. Most blog to document & share their personal experiences while a substantial percentage use their blogs as a teaching tool…

Access Pew’s Reports on Blogging…

Blog! (or else!)

I often advise my clients – or anyone considering starting a blog – that they need to blog consistently and regularly if they hope to attract and retain an audience. After all, how quickly would you stop checking your driveway or front porch every morning if your newspaper only showed up sporadically. That’s why I had to chuckle when I saw this in my morning newspaper (yeah, I read the comics first; they’re the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine – aka, news – do down):

So how often should you blog? The top bloggers may post dozens of times a day. For a business blog, the rule of thumb I recommend is to post at least 3 times weekly.

Grow Your Blog Readership the Mack Collier Way

Mack Collier posted a great primer on growing your blog readership with 8 easy steps. I’ve listed his steps below as a handy reference with my comments following each step. His article goes into additional detail so don’t forget to read the whole thing. Published at MarketingProfs.com, Eight Easy Ways to Grow Your Blog, is good stuff.

Mack Says…

1. Post regularly

3 times a week to start and spread them out. I’m guilty of posting multiple times on one day and none on others. I’ll spread out from now on. It’s attractive to both readers and search engines alike.

2. Develop a comment policy

Encourage comments and make sure they get posted quickly – just beware of the spam monsters ready to kick the crap out of your blog if you let them in…

3. Reply to comments

Hadn’t thought of this one until somebody else mentioned it but yeah, show ‘em you’re listening and you care about what they have to say even if you don’t agree with it. It’s true, people like and respond better to others who express an interest in them.

4. Showcase readers who make special contributions

Giving your commenting superstars the VIP treatment encourages them and others to keep the love flowing.

5. Build your blogroll with your readers’ interests in mind

You build your value by being not only a resource but a portal to other, relevant and valuable resources.

6. Offer unique content aimed at your blog’s target audience

Like the old groaner goes, “Why was the farmer so special? Because he was outstanding (out standing) in his field!”

7. Make your blog’s feed available for RSS subscribers

Hey, how many of us would read the newspaper if it wasn’t delivered to our front door?

8. Offer email subscriptions to your blog’s content

Like step 7, don’t make them come to you–cuz most won’t)–go to them.

Mack’s advice is grounded in applied common sense so listen, learn, implement and watch your blog grow.

Want more of Mack Collier – start with his own post on his Marketing Profs article and go to town…

The Importance of Focus to Internet Success

You’ve heard the saying, “A jack of all trades but master of none.” Success on the internet, and off, is largely dependent on how tightly focused you are; focus well and you’ll prosper, focus poorly and you’ll likely go out of business.

The days where you can be all things to all people has gone the way of the dodo. Consider the success of the following companies as an illustration of the rewards waiting those who focus best:

Google – focuses on search – they own that space and have won it with focus.

Amazon – focuses on books — yeah, they sell other stuff too but their focus on being the book seller to the world is what got them where they are.

Apple – focuses on ‘cool’ — they build cool products that appeal to cool people. They could never out geek Microsoft but they’re winning the war on their ‘cool’ factor.

Starbucks – focuses on coffee — and the multiple permutations thereof that they’ve been able to dream up.

Wal-Mart – focuses on price — the largest selection at the lowest price. They’ve rolled over all of their competition except those who’ve chosen to compete with them with focus. They’ve focused on a niche and provide service and expertise in that niche that a behemoth like Wal-Mart can’t begin to touch. You ever see any five and dime or family department stores anymore? No; they lost focus and were runover by Wal-Mart and its big box brethren.

The most successful clients I work with have the tightest focus. They intimately understand the niche they occupy and work with dedication to own it.

A recently launched website profiled in the local newspaper, www.myplanafter50.com, is focusing exclusively on baby boomers. They’re going after the fastest growing segment of internet users with some of the deepest pockets anywhere by presenting themselves as the go-to resource for life decisions after 50. With focus, they stand a good chance to succeed.

One of my oldest clients, Eric Chester, has established himself as the leading authority on intergenerational work force issues by focusing on Gen Y’s (he’s even coined his own term for these youngest of employees, Generation Why; referring to their tendency to not accept direction dociley but always ask ‘why?‘.

Eric made the transition from another ‘me-too’ high school motivational speaker to in-demand corporate keynoter and consultant by realizing that the same struggles he faced in motivating his young audiences were being faced by work place employers every day and with substantially less success than he was enjoying.

Focus, you’ll be happy that you did and a lot more prosperous to boot.

Optimizing for Your Customer Not Google

A friend of my recently blogged about using News Alerts to feed your customers content they can use and establish your expertise while you’re at it. A nice little one, two punch I’d say.

The biggest diamond I found in his post was this comment…

No matter what business you are in, if you want to know more about “optimizing” your web site, pay attention to what Jerry Rouleau is doing. He does it by optimizing what he provides his customers.

Yeah, let’s quit talking about optimizing our websites and put the focus where it absolutely needs to be — on our customers.

Kind of Relevant Note: I unsubscribed today to one of the many internet marketing ‘rags’ I follow simply because all I ever got were thinly disguised infomercials that ended with a link to buy whatever their particular blog post or ezine was pitching. Hey, throw me a bone of content once in a while. Give me something to chew on while you’re patting me down for my wallet. Don’t just show me a picture of the bone and promise me “…and there’s a great big steak attached to it too!”

What’s the Best Way to Increase Traffic to Your Blog?

Comment on other people’s blogs. Comment at their blog and reference their post using trackbacks on your own blog. (What’s a trackback? Well, according to Wikipedia a track back is a…)

I couldn’t figure out where a recent (enormous) spike in my site’s traffic came from until I looked at my Referrers log. There it was, a ton of referrals from a site I’d made casual mention of in another post. In fact this site wasn’t even the subject of the post but was referenced in support of my main point.

As it happens, the site picked up the trackback and listed my post by title under their “Links to this Post” section. The fact that this site gets many times the traffic of mine coupled with a relatively compelling subject line continues to have a positive residual effect on my site’s traffic.

In other words, not only did I get a spike that day but I continue to get smaller, ‘echo’ spikes, as a result of my original post. And guess what, some of that traffic is sticking…

So look around and see who’s relevant in your space and start exploring how you might expand the dialogue in a way that benefits them as well as you. That’s the spirit of blogging after all.

Guidelines for Effective Blog Commenting

• Be sincere and have something relevant to say. Don’t just comment to create traffic. Comment to further the dialogue. Otherwise you’re just so much comment spam.
• Be specific. If you’re commenting on a fellow bloggers post at their site then write to the topic of the original post don’t just use it as a springboard to launch into your own stuff. If you’re using a trackback to reference their post in yours, make sure that their post is relevant and appropriate to yours. Don’t just throw it in there in the hopes of generating traffic back to your site. This is akin to the keyword stuffing that made keyword tags irrelevant in web development.
• Be polite. Don’t be a jerk – you can disagree with people without resorting to rudeness or invective and your chances of getting noted and responded to increase exponentially as well.

Quick Tutorial on Using Trackbacks

Remember, I’m not an expert, I just play one on the internet so the real gurus may have a better explanation but what I do to create a trackback is simple, I…

…click on the post’s title to make sure that its URL (the permanent link to that specific post) is the one listed in my browser’s address bar (otherwise you may create a link not to a specific post but to the main index page of the blog). Then I…

…copy and paste the URL from the address bar into my blog. Voilà, instant trackback created. Then generally…

…this sends a ‘ping’ (notification) back to the originating blog notifying them that I’ve referenced their post on my site. And some sites, like the one I trackedback, publish these links and the posts they originated in … it’s a big, beautiful circle of blogging life!