We all know the best nut kernals of information are those shared among professionals who are also friends. Recently, a colleague and I were discussing easy, no-cost ways we'd recommend to clients new to blogging to attract more people to their blogs. After all, if a blog falls in the forest, and there's no-one there to read it, does it make an impression? I think not. So here they are, rough and unfiltered, my unadulterated, not written for public consumption, personal notes. Now, at a public domain name near you.
Basic Guidance
For guidance type information, I like Jessica Swanson. She writes for solo-e.com. Her series on blogging is very utilitarian. 50 types of blog topics. How to generate more traffic. That kind of stuff. http://www.shoestringmarketingkit.com takes you to her freebie. Her articles are on solo-e.
Blog Indexing
I spent about 6-8 hours on this last Sunday, manually uploading two URLs. Yeow. But I have seen an increase in blog traffic, and picked up some followers. Now, I opted for the free versions so I could decide which service I like best, but here are the ones (below) I think are useful to clients.
Finding the RSS Feed
It’s the little orange box on your browser toolbar. Just go to the blog as a user instead of a writer and click that orange box. It will give the rss feed for that blog. Cut & paste.
Blog Directories and Catalogs
These guys are like a clearinghouse, and they blast to other blog directories and catalogs. Increased exposure all over. First is Technorati. All you have to do is submit the blog’s RSS feed on their form. It’s considered the ‘biggest’ one.
Other blog catalogs and directories. I researched these. The ones I did were “entry level,” aka “free.” I was pretty happy with the results. My top two: OnToplist.com – includes article marketing and *ways to get in touch with other bloggers and promote your blog*; Blogged.com – blog directory and ‘news’ feed of blogs listed. *can follow other bloggers and promote your blog*
http://www.freelinksfriday.com. Don’t recall why this is in my notes, but it is. Handwritten. I’m pretty thorough, so it must have had relevance on some level.
Self-syndication Online
Self-syndication with social media – all my personal outlets, plus the one/s for my business – and a sharing policy. I share others’ things a lot. When they notice, they share mine.
Blog commentary on others’ blogs. For double duty, I put an asterisk by the ones, above, which include a means to search for other bloggers with similar niches and larger following for back-linking purposes. That’s the part I think is most useful. The “blog community” part.*
Blog carnival. Haven’t done this yet, but the person who does it best is Sarah Evans. Here’s the ‘friend’ sign-up URL for her freelance writing/pr publication. She’s golden. http://us1.forward-to-friend2.com/forward?u=f79a7fdc4b1fdc14502fd332a&id=2e947923a1&e=ec3ff05ffc
Guest blogging. I’ve been doing this lately. So far, it’s mean more exposure and visibility, but not a lot more traffic. I let the host choose the topic, and I write about it from the Professional Moneta viewpoint. I’m beginning to pay more attention to those who do have more of a blog promotion process. That’s where the extra traffic will come from. Those who know to make a ‘big deal’ out of a guest blogger.
Blurbs with links in my email newsletters out. This has been good. It keeps traffic moving back to the website (where I make my offers) and also gives me a way to send traffic to the ancillary McLendon Bylines site. I’ve seen my numbers steadily climb in both locations since I began linking the articles back to my ezine.
Check my blog for comments and respond. I have it set up to alert me by email when there’s a response.
Added my websites and a brief description to my email tag lines.
Last way I’ve increased traffic. I’ve started attending a lot of live events and networking sessions. I’m sending a personalized note and carefully worded offer to link to my freebie to every person I come into contact with – even those who are not potential clients. Most leads don’t come from people we know, but from their connections. (I understand my work is rather specialized in its audience.) But…it’s getting about an 80% sign up rate for my list. Not bad for a uniquely targeted niche like mine. This technique is probably better suited to entrepreneurs, not corporations, but I’m happy with the results so I thought I’d share.
Results
These steps alone have increased my web traffic on both sites measurably, and my list signup by about 10% in the past week or so. It was time-consuming…but as I understand how much each person on my list is worth…totally a good investment of my time. I also got some good freebies from the directory companies, i.e. search engine ranking reviews and suggestsions, and decided to stop using templates with frames on my sales pages because they don’t report search very well.
Looking forward to your adding thoughts, information to this post so everyone can benefit!
For guidance type information, I like Jessica Swanson. She writes for solo-e.com. Her series on blogging is very utilitarian. 50 types of blog topics. How to generate more traffic. That kind of stuff. http://www.shoestringmarketingkit.com takes you to her freebie. Her articles are on solo-e.
Blog Indexing
I spent about 6-8 hours on this last Sunday, manually uploading two URLs. Yeow. But I have seen an increase in blog traffic, and picked up some followers. Now, I opted for the free versions so I could decide which service I like best, but here are the ones (below) I think are useful to clients.
Finding the RSS Feed
It’s the little orange box on your browser toolbar. Just go to the blog as a user instead of a writer and click that orange box. It will give the rss feed for that blog. Cut & paste.
Blog Directories and Catalogs
These guys are like a clearinghouse, and they blast to other blog directories and catalogs. Increased exposure all over. First is Technorati. All you have to do is submit the blog’s RSS feed on their form. It’s considered the ‘biggest’ one.
Other blog catalogs and directories. I researched these. The ones I did were “entry level,” aka “free.” I was pretty happy with the results. My top two: OnToplist.com – includes article marketing and *ways to get in touch with other bloggers and promote your blog*; Blogged.com – blog directory and ‘news’ feed of blogs listed. *can follow other bloggers and promote your blog*
- Blog Catalog – mainly a directory, but I liked parts of it, because you can search for topics and users.
- Corporate blogging – the big guys, in addition to Technorati, are Best of the Web Blog Search, Bloggeries, Eaton Web Log Directory, Blog Search Engine, and others.
- Non-commercial only – Globe of Blogs
- Video blogs – Blog Universe
Best article I’ve found about the blog directories and catalogs out there now:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/20-essential-blog-directories-tosubmit-your-blog-to/5998/#ixzz1LnFAoHGL by Loren Baker, search marketing information guy. Blog #20 expired since the article was written. Most of the blog catalogs I explored, above, came from this article. He included links, so I saved the piece to my OneNotes pages and clicked through from there, then saved the doc for further reference later.http://www.freelinksfriday.com. Don’t recall why this is in my notes, but it is. Handwritten. I’m pretty thorough, so it must have had relevance on some level.
Self-syndication with social media – all my personal outlets, plus the one/s for my business – and a sharing policy. I share others’ things a lot. When they notice, they share mine.
Guest blogging. I’ve been doing this lately. So far, it’s mean more exposure and visibility, but not a lot more traffic. I let the host choose the topic, and I write about it from the Professional Moneta viewpoint. I’m beginning to pay more attention to those who do have more of a blog promotion process. That’s where the extra traffic will come from. Those who know to make a ‘big deal’ out of a guest blogger.
Blurbs with links in my email newsletters out. This has been good. It keeps traffic moving back to the website (where I make my offers) and also gives me a way to send traffic to the ancillary McLendon Bylines site. I’ve seen my numbers steadily climb in both locations since I began linking the articles back to my ezine.
Results
These steps alone have increased my web traffic on both sites measurably, and my list signup by about 10% in the past week or so. It was time-consuming…but as I understand how much each person on my list is worth…totally a good investment of my time. I also got some good freebies from the directory companies, i.e. search engine ranking reviews and suggestsions, and decided to stop using templates with frames on my sales pages because they don’t report search very well.
Looking forward to your adding thoughts, information to this post so everyone can benefit!
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