For those of us who own social networking websites (blogs, social bookmarking, etc.) it is important to figure out how to properly market yourself. Most of the people who get into the business think that visitors will just appear out of no where, sort of like the "if you build it, they will come" idea.
Unfortunately, nothing in this business works that way. You either have to have a great product (content, stock or otherwise), or you have to be really good at spreading the word through advertising channels. Sometimes the first isn't even enough, so it's important to be strong in both practices.
Tools for Promotional Marketing
There are several available methods for getting the word out about your genius creation. You could go with traditional advertising avenues, such as Google Adwords, which will strategically place your ads based on context for not a lot of money.
You could also use a traffic exchange program, such as Blog Mad or Blog Explosion, which will give you a good ratio (typically 1:1) of visits to someone else's blog in exchange for visits to your own. The idea is basically that you will use their auto-surf engine to visit other blogs, and other people will do the same and visit your blog. It's a great way of boosting actual hits to your blog but ad programs such as Google Adsense hate that sort of thing, so be careful.
Another great method is merely exchanging links with another blogger in your niche. This is one of the best methods for getting great back links as well as good traffic flow to your website. Just trade links with your fellow blogger, and you'll be helping each other out! Make sure to trade with bloggers who not only have similar content but also appropriate content.
What I never hear mentioned as a tool for marketing is actually going out into the real world and actually talking with people face to face about your blog. This is arguably the best way to market yourself. People gain trust much quicker with a face-to-face meeting than one over the internet. A fantastic way of meeting people with similar interests is to go to the Social Networking Conference! As you'll read on their website, their entire focus is "on the business management and marketing of a Social Networking and Online Personals website." If you're really serious about promoting yourself and your blog, I urge you to get out there and talk about it with people one-on-one, which brings me to my next topic.
Promotion by Foot
Yeah, get out there! Go walk down the street and talk to people about your business. If you can't go to the Social Networking Conference, do the next best thing and go to your local mall to talk about your product. I guarantee you if you hand out 100 business cards, 50 of them will get thrown in the trash as soon as you walk away and 25 will get thrown out later but the 25 left over are most likely going to be going to your website. And this time it's different; this time they've seen your face and it has created a personal curiosity that just browsing to your blog could never create. In a sense, they become your fan. Cool, huh?
Be creative! Get your friends together and walk down the street holding a big picket sign with your website on it, big as life! Hire someone to stand on a street corner for a week with that sign. Pay them more to dance while doing so.
Conclusion
Most people fail to realize that owning a social networking site is very similar to owning a brick and mortar business. It's all about pleasing your customers. So write excellent content and then give them a chance to see it! Make sure you pay attention to first impressions though! Go to the Social Networking Conference, but if you can't do that, get out there and talk to people (hey, why not? it's free!).
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Monday, November 20, 2006
Getting Free Traffic to Your Blog
Getting free traffic to your blog is what stands in the way of you getting real money for your work. One huge thing that the 'Get Rich Blogging' guides don't really go into is the actual promotion. They seem to go into a brief summary but it's a very crucial part of making your blog a success. I'll jump right into my own methods for getting traffic to any website.
Digg-ing For Traffic
If you haven't used bookmarking sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Netscape and Spurl, etc., you should definitely start. Not only are they great for creating back links (incoming URLs) but they could potentially bring you a ton of traffic. Some websites are lucky enough to experience what is called "The Digg Effect," which basically renders them unusable due to such a high volume of traffic. When something new and cool pops up on a social bookmarking site, users swarm it and in doing so, put a huge load on the web server. In some cases, the web server will even crash. Some people believe the very wording of your posts to these sites will determine how many people ultimately view the link. Typically, the way these sites work is to give a vote either up or down for a particular link and this will determine the popularity of the story. So you want to appeal to people as much as possible!
Forums
Another great way of generating traffic is to place your link in your forum signatures. Not only does this automatically generate back links, but it will also give your blog URL a much bigger chance of being seen and clicked on by other people.
The trick here is to blog in forums that relate to the topic that you're blogging about. This will increase the likelihood of someone clicking on the link by a bunch.
NOTE: The more back links (links from other websites to your own) that you have, the higher your rank will go on search engines for keywords they find in your blog when they index it. So for me, the more links I get from similar websites, the higher my rank will go for keywords like "Getting Rich."
Link Exchange Sites
Before I go into link exchanges, I'd like to make special mention of websites like myLot.com because I didn't want to dedicate a whole section to it. This is one site where you can go to generate a little cash while posting your link into relevant articles. You can even make posts regarding your blog and how well it's doing and this will generate not only traffic but also revenue from the website, as they pay you to discuss things. It's a really fantastic idea.
Link exchange websites like BlogMad, BlogFlare and BlogExplosion are a wonderful resource. They operate on a 1:1 ratio system. You look at someone else's blog, and you get a credit for someone else to look at your blog. They have their own special ways of providing the service, but they're neat because you can look at 100 other blogs and get a guaranteed 100 people to your own.
The side benefit is that people will find your blog easier because they'll most likely be browsing by category. Speaking of which, there's also a little thing called StumbleUpon which is a browser plugin that a LOT of people use to just find random websites. I get a good amount of traffic this way as well.
Exchanging Links
If you find a website that has a topic similar to your own, it's probably a really good idea to ask the owner if they'd like to put their link on your blog in exchange for your link on theirs.
This increases your ranking on websites like Technorati (blog search engine) and Blogshares (fantasy blog share market), which will thus churn out more traffic for you. It's a beautiful thing.
Search Engine Submission
This is a no brainer, but some people still overlook it. Submitting your blog to as many search engines as possible all at once is a fantastic idea. SubmitExpress is a great tool for doing just that. You don't even get spammed; they just ask for a back link in return.
After submitting your blog to a search engine, your blog will probably get index within a couple of weeks by each service and you will be getting new hits to your blog all over the place from people just using your website's keywords.
Word of Mouth
Finally, word of mouth is most likely the best way to spread the word about anything. This term isn't limited to just audible sound though. It also refers to chatting about it, emailing about it and commenting about it. Any way possible you can spread the word, do so! If you employ these techniques diligently for three weeks, then the rest will be a piece of cake. Just do your best to get your website chuck full of back links and into the search engines!
Conclusion
It's a shame to see that so many blogs are still just floating out there in cyberspace, not shining any real flares for the rest of the world to see. The above methods are those that I have employed to make this blog successful as well as the rest of my blogs, collectively. If you use them all diligently, you should have no problem getting free traffic to your blog!
Digg-ing For Traffic
If you haven't used bookmarking sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Netscape and Spurl, etc., you should definitely start. Not only are they great for creating back links (incoming URLs) but they could potentially bring you a ton of traffic. Some websites are lucky enough to experience what is called "The Digg Effect," which basically renders them unusable due to such a high volume of traffic. When something new and cool pops up on a social bookmarking site, users swarm it and in doing so, put a huge load on the web server. In some cases, the web server will even crash. Some people believe the very wording of your posts to these sites will determine how many people ultimately view the link. Typically, the way these sites work is to give a vote either up or down for a particular link and this will determine the popularity of the story. So you want to appeal to people as much as possible!
Forums
Another great way of generating traffic is to place your link in your forum signatures. Not only does this automatically generate back links, but it will also give your blog URL a much bigger chance of being seen and clicked on by other people.
The trick here is to blog in forums that relate to the topic that you're blogging about. This will increase the likelihood of someone clicking on the link by a bunch.
NOTE: The more back links (links from other websites to your own) that you have, the higher your rank will go on search engines for keywords they find in your blog when they index it. So for me, the more links I get from similar websites, the higher my rank will go for keywords like "Getting Rich."
Link Exchange Sites
Before I go into link exchanges, I'd like to make special mention of websites like myLot.com because I didn't want to dedicate a whole section to it. This is one site where you can go to generate a little cash while posting your link into relevant articles. You can even make posts regarding your blog and how well it's doing and this will generate not only traffic but also revenue from the website, as they pay you to discuss things. It's a really fantastic idea.
Link exchange websites like BlogMad, BlogFlare and BlogExplosion are a wonderful resource. They operate on a 1:1 ratio system. You look at someone else's blog, and you get a credit for someone else to look at your blog. They have their own special ways of providing the service, but they're neat because you can look at 100 other blogs and get a guaranteed 100 people to your own.
The side benefit is that people will find your blog easier because they'll most likely be browsing by category. Speaking of which, there's also a little thing called StumbleUpon which is a browser plugin that a LOT of people use to just find random websites. I get a good amount of traffic this way as well.
Exchanging Links
If you find a website that has a topic similar to your own, it's probably a really good idea to ask the owner if they'd like to put their link on your blog in exchange for your link on theirs.
This increases your ranking on websites like Technorati (blog search engine) and Blogshares (fantasy blog share market), which will thus churn out more traffic for you. It's a beautiful thing.
Search Engine Submission
This is a no brainer, but some people still overlook it. Submitting your blog to as many search engines as possible all at once is a fantastic idea. SubmitExpress is a great tool for doing just that. You don't even get spammed; they just ask for a back link in return.
After submitting your blog to a search engine, your blog will probably get index within a couple of weeks by each service and you will be getting new hits to your blog all over the place from people just using your website's keywords.
Word of Mouth
Finally, word of mouth is most likely the best way to spread the word about anything. This term isn't limited to just audible sound though. It also refers to chatting about it, emailing about it and commenting about it. Any way possible you can spread the word, do so! If you employ these techniques diligently for three weeks, then the rest will be a piece of cake. Just do your best to get your website chuck full of back links and into the search engines!
Conclusion
It's a shame to see that so many blogs are still just floating out there in cyberspace, not shining any real flares for the rest of the world to see. The above methods are those that I have employed to make this blog successful as well as the rest of my blogs, collectively. If you use them all diligently, you should have no problem getting free traffic to your blog!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
