Blogging to Fame!

Forums can add that extra mileage to your blog and help you get targeted traffic, but then you would require a little patience and a good knowledge about your subject, a little more research and lots of energy. If you are equipped with these go for it.

Earning requires efforts and forums need your equivalent attention. Remember, it is one place you get what you actually deserve. It wont be as simple as- Join a forum and leave a little signature. I am not making this hide behind a veil of comfort and easily to acquire process, because it is simply not. As in real world it takes time to get reputed, it is same in the blogosphere, and traffic is the most required commodity to survive. To get that edge you have to put in the hard work it requires, and I promise you would be satisfied with the results.

Choosing the right forum to participate-

The first step needs research but it can define your blog destiny. Join forums that are popular, have more than 500 members online at a time and most obviously related to your field. Dominating your niche means being it not around it. There are forums out there that cover your niche. Here are some good ones-




You can here more at DoshDosh’s Blog.

Building your reputation and positioning yourself-

This would need a little foresight here. How much will you trust a newbie or a person who keeps on getting into troubles and asking about it. It is better to use a second account for using others help. Be professional and do not make any guesswork while answering questions. It is good to assign yourself a slogan or a direction, or an image that you want to build on. Start with an end in mind. The little signature and the link below it is going to bring you all the traffic. People participating in forums normally are searching for information and love to explore links. Remember to make their visit worthwhile.
Don’t Sell your blog but market it-

The point itself is clear. Never ask anyone to visit your blog, or project in anyway that you are there to gain traffic. Helping people with their queries will soon earn you fans and they would always look forward to your advise. That is exactly the difference between selling and marketing same as manipulating and influencing. Those out there can easily make out the difference.

Reply to every message promptly-

Replying should always be started by replying to new and fresh threads. After posing a question, everybody is eager to find an answer soon. Every answer of yours is a permanent source of traffic for you, and do not forget to answer all those personal messages you receive. Remember there is an reputation to build.

Establish that Expertise-

Keep up with latest developments that happen on daily basis in the virtual world. You need to establish your voice in every forum you participate, so participate only those you can manage. I agree it will take a little time, so start working towards it from the day you make your profile page. Try answering as many threads as possible. Give good explanations and explain in details wherever needed. Your help will tempt them to visit you and make you establish yourself.

To Summarize tips-

TIP 1: Contribute helpful information often to the forums.
TIP 2: Include links to your sites or references to helpful sites.
TIP 3: Join multiple forums to increase your referral links and page ranking.
TIP 4: Get involved in the communities within the forum and become a trusted and respected member.
TIP 5: Answer questions and help fellow forum members with their problems.

Divya

Bookmark this article:-

Technorati Tags:- Blogging Traffic, Forum Traffic

Labels: Blog Traffic

How many contests have you participated in? How many have you won? Have you created one as a blogger? I have seen many bloggers organizing contests and awarding expensive gifts, but yet not able to attract enough participants. Here is how to make it a Success.

Why to create contests?

Adding liveliness to your blog is one thing, but the inner motives of bloggers are getting more links and popularity through their Blog. The main factor on which online businesses depend is Traffic. With a right blend of usefulness and promotion you can do wonders with contests. You can get incoming links, free traffic, more subscribers and a name under your pocket. What more does a blogger wants? Contests provide a good platform for Viral Marketing. It depends upon you how to cash it.

How to chose the right Topic?

This is the most tricky part. Choosing a topic, is the first step to a Successful Contest. Any topic could be a right topic if its self propagating, and the end result is useful to its readers. Review my blog and win the contest, directly seems self promoting and adds no value to the blog of the participant. As a contest holder, tell me how many of you read paid reviews or ‘You review me, and I review you’ posts. This seems a direct way to gain popularity and increase your Technorati ranking. Rather than running a contest pay your reviewers straight away, or exchange links.

Your topic should be such that a maximum number of people can participate. It should not be irrelevant to your niche, like your favorite car when you actually are involved with Garments industry, but it can be on “How to produce World’s Best Roses” if you blog about Gardening. The Topics can Vary from Health, Life Improvement, User experience, and anything related or interesting.

Your contests can revolve around Advices, Benefits, Usability, Design and others. Anything that evokes the thought process and creativity. These would not only be helpful to the participants but also their readers. Make it Fun for your visitors.

Prizes- The major Attraction

Now this is the investment part. Prizes generally are the main reason why people would participate in your contests and help you promote it. You can also provide a benefit for the highest promoter of the contest. When deciding about the prizes look for Return on Investment. If your blog gives you a $10000 per month spending $1000 on your readers will benefit you all the more and may increase your traffic ten-folds. Organizing such contests show that you care.

Get Sponsors if you want it to be done for free. It will be an advertising opportunity for them, a link for a lifetime from your blog and getting the traffic from your blog. Getting Sponsors will also help you provide an otherwise expensive affair done easily, and with much fanfare, which is absolutely necessary for its promotion.

How to Participation Guidelines, a Deadline and Prize Announcement-

1. Decide clearly about the guidelines and what you want your participants to do.
2. A formal posting of rules should be done, with all the clauses.
3. There should be a definite deadline, something like when ‘I will achieve 500 subscribers’ is a big ‘No No’.
4. State the benefits along with the guidelines.
5. Prize Announcement should be a different section and it is not to be merged along.
6. State you Sponsors and give them a link.
7. Provide any limitations if defined for receiving gifts, for example to get gift vouchers cashed within one month of winner announcements.

Promote it highly

Any contest which does not have participants is of no use. When you organize an event like this make sure to promote it properly. Ask your sponsors to promote it at their end, and your participants should also help you in the task. The more it is promoted, the more it will fulfill its existence.

If you want an example you can visit Problogger- A Case Study. It is a perfect example on how Contests should be organized.

Happy Blogging,
Divya Uttam

Bookmark this article:-

Technorati Tags:- Blog Traffic, Blog Contest

Labels: Blog Traffic, Blogging Tip/Tricks, Viral Marketing/Referal Marketing

Do you blog for traffic?
Or do you blog for some defined goals. Have you decided on as to what is your motive behind blogging. Even if you are yet to think about it, I would still recommend you to read this article carefully, because whatever the case may be we there is one thing common all of us, we need Traffic. Traffic is the base of all online business.

As bloggers for what-so-ever reason why we belong to blogosphere they can still be divided in two categories:

1. Those who blog for their business, or improve their business online visibility. They have a motive to fulfill and a company to support. These blogs are basically meant for better communication, building relationship, providing updates or attracting prospects for their business. They are much focused on quality traffic rather than sheer volume of traffic.

2. And those who have professional or personal blogs, but no business model behind them. They are either casual bloggers or even they might be experts in their niches and enjoy blogging. These blogs might not have any specific goals behind, but being interesting many times attract many repeat visitors. Their income source mostly depends upon ad revenue generated through their blogs.

We all traffic and want traffic which is interested in our stuff. The idea popped into my mind while I was doing research about blogging strategies, that there has to be a definitive strategy for traffic. Most of the times traffic should be effortless, and I am more than assured that a strategic approach for developing traffic would always lead to a continuous focused stream of traffic.

So while you begin with your strategies for traffic it is highly advisable to monitor your traffic that by increased traffic is not effecting entrance bounce rate. Sometimes traffic stats can be too overwhelming which may not be true in real terms. Increasing traffic should rather decrease your entrance bounce rate. Just for an example, while you get huge traffic from few social network sites doesn't mean too much in terms of building reputation , than just a boost in your Alexa ranking. And many times few social networking sites appropriately provide you with a continuous stream of traffic.

Getting visitors interested in your stuff should be the priority rather then general traffic. Many times being in a niche is too good for a blog success, which not only helps in gaining volume of search engine traffic quickly but helps in getting more loyal visitors.

Evaluating traffic:

Though this has already discussed previously it is necessary to mention it here, your traffic just have defined ways of reaching your blog.

• Organic Traffic, takes time to build, though efforts are well paid back with time. It is only when search engines have approved your blog and found it sincere enough will it send you traffic on the keywords you have optimized your blog/posts for. Once you are white listed you will often get much traffic from them.

• Another source of traffic is Social Networks which require lots of constant effort. Point to be noted here is that the traffic, which you gain, is not yours. This belongs to the social media site it’s coming from. You need to work a lot for that social media site before you get any traffic from there. I keep researching on such projects and I reached the conclusion that the traffic coming from here needs efforts and many times your efforts are a lot more than overall result. Here I am not talking about repeat traffic but the overall stature of your blog remains the same and if you are not a casual blogger but a professional blogger, I would suggest we have better things to do, if you actually no ideas how to convert them into your fans. Many times people putting efforts in these media sites get banned as soon as their sites their stories touch the homepage. (In Digg and Netscape few times as an experiment, when I stopped putting stories, the traffic faded away with time. Now being a professional blogger I cannot give my 3-4 hours daily to be popular there or to submit stories from over the web, slowly gaining the momentum, so I would be able to get continuous stream of traffic.)

• Referral Traffic: Referral traffic includes link traffic from inbound links and also traffic from few social media sites like MyBlogLog, LinkedIn or even from bookmarking sites like Technorati, Del.icio.us. This type of traffic is really good for every type of blogger. It is even better in terms of repeat visits and getting more referrals, as well as building reputation of your blog. Therefore inbound links are not only profitable for SEO point of view but also referral traffic, which most of the times is focused and interested in your stuff.

• Traffic coming from your marketing efforts, which include Search Engine Marketing, Viral Marketing and successful business model. This make people rush to your blog for updates, make people link you without you, asking for links. This is very important for blogger with long term success.

Most of the traffic building tactics should be done strategically for the long term, exponentially proportionate with your efforts and should not be of one on one types in context of your efforts.

And which one is the best traffic, you can trust?

This is the most important question you need to answer while you blog and blog for results. It would be in appropriate for many of us, If I say you should not consider traffic from the sources which demand high efforts with very limited success. Many do argue and write that it’s well worth putting your energies even for small results as every visitor counts, and I did believe this till few days back. But now I believe in efforts and time given in return of traffic and quality as well. So many times I was able to get traffic and good incoming links from few social media sites which in return require tedious job of being involved and active participation. But was that solving the main motive of my blogging. For me it was not.
Anything, which is not providing long-term solutions for traffic, and where you are not able to leverage your efforts, shouldn’t be considered as traffic source.

Precisely if you optimize your blog for search engines, with time, and some good efforts will help you build your traffic from search engines and this will be a permanent as well as regular, as long as you don’t do something to disturb your results.
And similarly a successful linkbating or viral marketing project would be able to provide you a great stream of laser focused traffic, without you putting your efforts on regular basis. Now this is what we can say successful blogging. And blogging should be a enjoyable affair than just quest for building traffic, but a source of Eternal FAME.

I just got this interesting read from Yuva's blog on "ROI of a Blog".

So what you think your traffic say?

Till next time,

Happy Blogging,

Divya

Bookmark this article:-

Technorati Tags:- Blogging Strategies, Blog Traffic, Blog ROI

Labels: Blog Traffic, Blogging Fame, Web Analytics

Blogging which measurable is Blogging more profitable. Assessing your blog helps you increase unique traffic and repeat visits. We have so many sites coming up with free Web Analytics which had made it is easier to assess your Blog’s performance, and enhance its reach. We have already discussed about Google Analytics and FeedBurner, two free services that can form a part of your daily routine check. There are a few assessments that can be done with common logic and others with the help of services.

1. How fast does your Blog load?

Not only for blog but for any website the first impression to make depends on how fast it loads. While if your blog is quick enough, it may happen that nobody notices the time gap or find anything extra special but if its vice versa it may put a negative impact on the visitor. In this era when everybody has high speed internet connections or broadband, visitors have become all the more restless. “Give me more, and make is fast” is the present anthem. Your website or blog has dynamic content, JavaScript page tags, nested cascading style sheets and background-loading Web 2.0 pop-outs and flyovers. If your website takes an additional, unnecessary second to load, you may be chasing visitors away.

A faster loading page not only improves User-experience, but also the Usability factor. Many new developments have taken place in this field and this core issue is the base of AJAX. For further details you may like to go through Optimizing Page Load Time. So how fast is your blog? Are you monitoring it?

2. What’s your traffic count?

A point to be pondered about is the reach of your content to your expected audience. The numbers provided be the Web Analytic sites might not be accurate, as it depends upon cache files, proxy servers and cookie deletion. It may also differ slightly from each other if you are using more than two services. Even then you should keep a track of these approx. number of visitors, are they on increase, which post or which action of yours(like getting on the Digg frontpage) brought in more traffic.

The more people visit your site, the more it increases your popularity and brand awareness. This forms the first step in Web Analytics. It would guide you through the peek times your incoming traffic so that you can update just before that. Note the graph of your high and low traffic and you yourself would realize what to do of the information.

3. What is their motive to visit your blog and the length of their visit?

When people visit your site their search isn’t over. They want to find the search terms they are searching for and want to gain from the information you have provided them on the topic. They got to your site because Google or any other search engine thought that your content is relevant or simply followed a link. People who are visiting your site using which keyword search will help you optimize your blog accordingly. Length of their stay and no. of pages viewed will help you monitor whether they were appeased by your content or not.

4. How did they get there?

Direct, Organic and Referral are the only three free ways through which a visitor can stumble upon your blog. Rest of traffic will come through paid banners and ads. We are always in a hope that people would click their way to our blog. You need to know what is your source of traffic? Where is it people find your blog and pay a visit? If this information is there with you, you can increase free visitors by knowing keywords they search for and optimizing for them or increase the number of referral sources. Direct visitors are repeat visitors, once the new ones like their information they would start turning up without any help.

5. What are your Hot Spots?

How do you earn from your blog? Are you earning through adsense or by affiliate marketing? Where is it that visitors click at more? What are the hot zones of your blog or site? Are they clicking what you want them to click? Answer these questions and you would get what I am talking about. When you decide the hot places you can place your ads accordingly. You might think that people click on links useful to them or contained within an article. Once you are aware of the information they are searching for you can offer similar products or can place the adsense in between the content which is matching to your formatting. You’ll get what you need after this.

6. Where did they go?

Some blogs may have great traffic but also a high entrance bounce rate. Visitors who instantly click back button are of no use. Follow your visitors around your blog, see which was the second page they visited, the third and so on… While shopping online people generally follow the same trend. Compare products and their pricing, and finally making a purchase. Improve the user experience while surfing, make it easier and faster, you may earn a good-will for life.

7. What are your most effective Articles?

You would need to figure out which articles are doing the best and why, then follow your own trend, in a more optimized way. You need to know which content people are most hungry for and make it easier for them to find it. Place most discussed article section or Interesting Read on the front page. When you provide information about why your blog is popular and the best read articles you are gaining trust and keep on providing more, people will come back to you.

8. Look out for Broken or dead Links.

The worst thing that can happen to a visitor is to land up on a page-not-found, a broken or a dead link. That automatically would be the end of their visit. Nobody has time to refresh pages or find their way through. Remove dead and broken links or fix them.

9. Did you get a Feed Back for your post in terms of links or comments and repeat visits?

Are your visitors interacting with you? Are they giving you feedback of what they like and what they don’t? You should encourage them to do so. Ask for comments. Make your blog interactive and fun. Organize contests and quizzes. It will not only improve your blog but also make it more sought after. This will also get you incoming links and increasing referral traffic. New visitors are welcomed but repeat visitors are treasured. Is easy to cater an already pleased audience than to start fresh. Give them reasons for repeat visits.

10. Are you Blogging to Fame?

Blogs that contain buzz tend to grow famous and get increased number of subscribers. We have already discussed this in What’s the Buzz in your Blog? Call them and keep them is your motto.

Get a bigger, better, faster, stronger blog. Keep on tracking and improving results.

Happy Blogging to Fame,
Divya Uttam


Bookmark this article:-

Technorati Tags:- Web Usability,Web Analytics,Blog Traffic

Labels: Blog Traffic, Web Analytics, Web Usability

Stop pulling your hair now. A must adopt media that brings Traffic and also does SEO for your blog Google's way, WIN IT.

Any kind of publicity is good publicity and can bring you large amount of Traffic. Whether you get a link from A-list Blogger, getting your story on the top of Digg Charts, or from Search engines, for your site all possible resources are needed and well appreciated.

After doing the last post about Social Media, I was surfing through few other ones of Darren Rowse and Amit Agarwal.

In Darren's words from his post- "in most cases the Digg traffic comes and goes quickly and doesn’t usually hang around for dialogue - whereas referrals from other sites is more likely to ‘convert’ either as a longer term viewer, RSS subscriber, newsletter member or comment leaver"
Darren did also actually mention- "Of course Digg traffic isn’t completely useless - in fact if you harness it you can grow a blog over time. It comes in such high numbers that even if only a very small group stick around it can be worthwhile.It also brings a round of secondary links - which can be good for SEO and lastly it doesn’t hurt the old ego and can give a rush of motivation to a blogger. The key with Digg traffic however is to work on converting readers into loyal ones. "

The points raised by Amit in his post while comparing Traffic from the site of A-List Blogger and Digg are, (1)After traffic floods your post they'll at the most increase the count by one and leave. (2)The Digg crowd will never leave comments on your site but they'll do so on the actual Digg page. In most case, the comments (or curses) from Diggers will make you feel depressed unless you write about Kevin Rose, Diggination or 10 Reasons Why Vista Sucks. (3)The majority of Digg crowd will visit your site for one-tenth of a second. (4)You might notice higher page impressions during Digg days but the CTR and effective CPM will reduce so the net result would stay the same. (5)Getting on Digg is unlikely to boost your page rank or search engine rankings - infact, there are cases when the Digg pages rank higher than the actual page it is linking to.

These may be confusing to a reader who may take with him all the negative points about Social Media, when it can benefit him in the direction he wants his blog to rise.

Why Social Media Networks are important-

Search Engines index you only after a certain amount of time. Any News is old News. You need to get to people as soon as possible and get maximum exposure to the story, so that people come to know about it and link it. Will you depend on Search Engines for that? People spend lots of effort, time and money to Search Engines Optimize their sites but when they say they do not like Social Media Sites, I cannot do anything but pity them. If you are not in Social Media you are seriously leaving a goldmine of traffic. A little effort and time devoted on these sites can bring you results never imagined, and its free.

When inbound links are the passing criteria for Search Engine Optimization, everybody runs for Links. Link exchange is the only way a few bloggers are left with and you will find 100s of blogs in their blogroll. Asking for links not only sounds scary to me but is also of little use, and is discounted by Google. Everybody says get incoming links, but from where is still a secret. All you need is giving right exposure to your content.

Search Engines send you traffic on keywords used in your article but not its Tags. On the User end when you search for information about any site lets say Google itself, the results that the search would lead is the site itself and 1000s of its indexed pages. On the other hand if you are using Digg or Technorati you will get latest stories written about Google. If you are interested in a particular company lets say Ford, and want to know about want to know about what people are saying about it, where should you be headed to? By mentioning all this I am no where suggesting the supremacy of social media sites over search engine traffic. For a blogger its best to use both for theirs pros.

Normally, business blogs are an SEO tool for static sites, and even if not links, mass exposure and getting yourself noticed by the experts of the field. Here is where Social Media Sites come into play. Its all about relationships.

Myths Regarding Traffic from Social Media Sites-

1). The traffic from sites like Digg is often termed as inconsistent and not much fruitful.

2). It is focused only on one article and is mostly non-convertible.

3). Visitors from else where are more prone to linking to you and subscribing to your RSS feeds.

4). Only the articles from influential Sites/Blogs or Spam reach front page.

5). Only your friends Digg your article and vote for you.

6). The job is done after submitting the article or the story and it will be promoted on its own.

7). It is just targeted to one article.

Now the Truths

1). Its very true that you need an influential circle to make your story appear on the home page, but all the Diggs and votes you get once you reach there totally depends on the quality of your article and its content. That is why you’ll see 300 votes or Diggs for one, in thousands for another and not even 150 for another. The only people who are interested in your article will digg or vote for you, and do not forget that there is a bury button along with every story as well. People do not hesitate to use it if your story is not relevant or of poor content.

2). The traffic you get from these sites is easily convertible. Once you have them to visit your site and provide them quality content, they’ll either bookmark you, digg your story, subscribe your RSS feed or leave a comment, and would never forget you if you proved to be offering a useful insight.

3). Everybody is hungry for more if they find the first bite delicious. They came to you for your first story, but nobody leaves the opportunity to browse through other chunks of information you are providing.

4). Again depending on the quality of your blog this traffic will link you through their blogs or write an article just on the point of view you put forward. The greatest part is these are incoming links, organically created and very helpful from Search Engines perspective.

5). These sites are best for building relations with other bloggers, and increase your contacts.

Its not traffic for a day. There would sure be a rush of traffic on the day your story reaches the front page, but it wont stop there. Supposing you have a daily traffic of a 100 visitors, and one final lucky day you get to the top of Digg, your blog will see a rush of 8000 visitors. Amongst these lets say a minimal 5% are converted, and 50% of the following become your regular visitors. Not bad, I guess. As it is this is not a one day effect, it continues, though not as vigorously. If you make sure that atleast you get one story at the top fortnightly, you will see a dramatic increase in your traffic, incoming links and your feed subscribers.

Exposing your content through the Social media sites will increase your brand awareness and more the people know you, more is your fan following.

Isn’t social media adding more sense to the word WEB, is this the reason we say WEB2.o.

Till then,
Happy Blogging,
Divya Uttam.

Bookmark this article:-

Technorati Tags:- Social Media , Blog Traffic

Labels: Blog Traffic