Value Added Blogging - The Art of Growing Traffic Organically One Reader at a Time
January 1st, 2008
Would you like to have slow growth for real blogging success? Are you interested in pursuing quality (daily readers), or quantity (quick one time visits)?
I think the above are two questions that all bloggers and web professionals should ask themselves, and reflect upon, when determining the life-cycle, branding, and tone of their website.
Photo by strangejourney
The other day while I was out running I was thinking about some of the value added services that we provide at our small business here on Culebra and I thought it is a great way to get referrals, and repeat customers because people typically leave very happy. Blogging (or any online marketing venture) really is the same.
If you can add some value to the lives of your site visitors they will leave happy (fulfilled) and refer their friends to you!
Recently, I have read many good posts on social media networks and their ability to drastically build your site traffic at a rapid pace. Here are two articles that you might enjoy ‘How to Win the Hearts of Digg Users (and All Other Social Media Communities)‘ and ‘What are Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimisation?‘ At present, I can honestly say that I do not have that much time to focus on trying to build social media relationships that would lead to quality networking and marketing opportunities. But, I can strongly attest to the fact that every time one of my posts gets stumbled I do see a nice increase in temporary traffic.
For example, about a week ago I posted my list of ‘The Ten Most Inspirational Bloggers of 2007‘ and it was based on people who motivated or inspired me to try and ‘do better’ during this past year. Well, the post got “discovered” and stumbled by Maki, and then also Leo Babauta and Muhammad Saleem (a power DIGG-er). Below you can see the spike that I got in traffic from this exposure:
Unfortunately, the spike in traffic was like a drug, it gave a short lived high but coming down was painful.
Next, out of some strange coincidence I received a gift that had a lot of meaning to me, so I jotted down (literally) the fastest post I have ever written, ‘Ten Simple and Effective Ways to Let People Know They Matter‘ in well under ten minutes. I finished and posted it on a Sunday morning and my traffic (after the initial Maki stumble) had been abysmal. Before going to bed on Sunday night I did a quick check of my Google Analytics to discover a massive spike in traffic! My new friend Ami, of Sri Lanka and Amispath, had ‘discovered’ and stumbled the post. You can see the spike in traffic in the graphic above, it was the most visitors I have ever had in one day. Look at the dropoff - Holy Smokes!
What kind of traffic are you looking for?
Like everyone else, I want as many people as possible (who find my content interesting and of value) to read what I publish on my site. For the next few months I have decided to focus on the slow growth model, and to increase my sites traffic more organically by having a ‘person to person’ dynamic, as opposed to ‘person to group’.
With respect to my site, and what I am trying to accomplish, it fits in better with my self branding and image. Pretty much, I equate the process of growing my reader base slowly like giving one solid virtual handshake at a time to each of my visitors. If someone leaves a comment I will respond by either commenting back on my site, emailing them, or by leaving a comment on their site.
Most of you reading this post might think that I am crazy. Possibly, you are thinking, why that seems like a lot of hard work? And the truth is, YES it is a lot of hard work, but no worthwhile venture for me has ever come easy.
Are you lucky enough to have the Midas touch? Are you able to breeze through any challenge and achieve success?
If you answered ‘yes’ to both of those questions then consider yourself extremely lucky!! Sometimes, everywhere I look it appears as though some people are able to achieve success without any effort. Success seems to flow to some people like water. However, I realized long ago that I would have to work hard to achieve success with every goal, ambition, or crazy idea that I try to pursue.
Why should my desire to build a creative and interactive reader base be any different?
The primary reason why I am happy to build traffic slowly, organically, is because these readers will stick with you! They will check back regularly to see how you are doing and what you are posting about. In fact, if you look at skellie’s website for example, her readers are an active part of her site. The end result is a great community atmosphere, and more of a ‘give and take’ experience as opposed to just being spoon fed information.
Essentially, like any venture, your dedicated readers are your repeat business and word of mouth traffic builders.
One of my goals for the year is to really make an impact online and I am happy to do that on this site, or by acting as a guest poster on other sites.
Social media can ABOSOLUTELY add tremendous value to your site and help you to attract new readers, provided you have the time to invest in becoming an active participant. Unfortunately, some of the social media sites have been accused of having slightly unethical practices. With respect to building traffic for MyTropicalEscape, I am not really that comfortable with paying for Digg votes in order to get a quick traffic spike (and accompanying EGO feed).
There has to be a happy medium?
Truthfully, I guess, I too, am looking for the happy medium between social media spikes and slow, organic traffic growth. The following are the ideals that I try to keep in mind as I work to establish my place in the blogosphere:
- Remember that behind every comment, or email, there is a real person. Make the effort to comment back, email them, or leave a comment on their site.
- Focus on quality (not quantity) in both post content and reader traffic. Also, when you look at your site stats don’t be deterred by the number of visitors but really study how long visitors are staying (i.e. bounce rate) and what content they are reading.
- Create a true sense of community. I believe this is more difficult than it sounds but if you can establish a positive flow of dialogue between your readers then traffic is sure to grow.
- Make an editorial calendar and stick to it so visitors know when to check back for the articles that they are interested in. For example, on Tuesdays I run the ‘Ten Questions With‘ interview series, which attracts different readers than my Friday ‘Humanitarian Friday‘ series.
- Strive to make every post count!
What do you think? Have I missed any steps, or opinions, for either the slow growth traffic method or social media tactics?
Editor’s note: If you enjoyed this post please consider signing up for my RSS feed. Also, you might enjoy reading these posts:
Ten Questions - Interview With Yaro Starak
You Can’t Possibly Do That - My Personal 2008 Mission Statement
Ten Simple and Effective Ways to Let People Know They Matter
StumbleUpon | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit
January 1st, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Hey Mark, I truly agree with you on this. Even though my site’s traffic’s not rocket high, I do make it a point to reply each and every comment. As much as I can.
Trickle by trickle. Every little counts.
Cheers,
Ellesse
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:28 am
The best blog post in the new year 2008 so far!
Stumbled!
It’s like taking over the niche one percentage at a time.
January 2nd, 2008 at 3:20 am
@goal setting college - “trickle by trickle” is a very good way of putting the traffic growth (of moste sites, I think?).
@terence - THANKS for the compliment! And the stumble… :)
January 2nd, 2008 at 4:56 am
One thing about Stumble is, it’ll send you a strong inflow of free traffic. But, you have to be real smart to make them come again to your site directly. Those who doesn’t understand this simple principle, blame Stumbleupon saying “the traffic is not quality, and it’s not sustainable”.
I started researching about Stumble, for a Social Media Marketing project for my company. With my experiments, I realized that Stumble can initiate a strong traffic flow of about 200 to 300 visits per day, if you get about 5 to 10 thumbs up. But, most of these visits are just “passing by” and don’t stop on your site.
That’s why you have to make sure, you get the attention of the visitor as soon as they land on your page, and make him engage with your site somehow. By doing so, you can convert that “passing by visitor” into a loyal/regular visitor and or a subscriber to your feed.
I’ve found several interesting websites through Stumble, and this blog is one. Now I’m a regular reader of Mark, and that’s thanks to Stumbleupon!
But we have to beware of the spammers. Very soon, they will invade Stumbleupon too, and start to spoil everything. That’s why I firmly believe, Stumbleupon should encourage quality, more than quantity. At present, the criteria for “top stumblers” is simply the number of thumbs up you’ve given. But, there’s no measurement of quality at all.
January 2nd, 2008 at 5:06 am
Hi Ami - thank you for shedding some light and statistics on the value of Stumble Upon.
I was just out walking and wondering if anybody had actually quantified how many “quick” visit stumble or digg visitors come back to a site that they have gone to because they were drawn in by a headline, or a friend’s recommendation.
January 2nd, 2008 at 6:17 am
Thanks for the link and the great post
Stumbled
January 2nd, 2008 at 6:22 am
Hi Glenn - I was happy that I was able to “discover” your site while researching for this post.
@Everyone - Darren Rowse just sent me an email regarding, how he divides his time between SEO, social media, and organic traffic growth (e.g. interacting with readers). I will be posting his comments as a ‘bonus’ question in his interview that I will be publishing next week.
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:10 am
Excellent entry, Mark. My primary focus right now is content and interaction, as those seem to be the keys to keeping people interested. I’m also looking forward to what Darren has to say in his interview.
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Hi Joshua - how are you drawing your traffic?
Do you use social media to let people know you are online?
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:44 am
One reader at a time is what I believe in too. I’ve had spikes of very high traffic at times and then there are days when the site looks lost and lonely! and even though that gets a bit discouraging, I think people you have interacted with in some way will come back and stay… great article Mark..
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:16 am
Hi Pearl - very good insight! Those “lost and lonely” days on the site can be tough.
Hopefully, persistence will pay off for all of us :)
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Great post, which I found via a post on PiggyBankPie. I like the idea of building your readership base one person at a time. Some of these strategies have worked well for me on my newest blog.
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Hi Sharon - glad to see you coming over from Patrick’s site. All the best for 2008!
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Hi Mark… this is my second visit to this article - my first visit was submitting it to StumbleUpon :) I really like the comments your post has generated since my last visit, I found them to be also very informative.
Here’s my observations about StumbleUpon based on what I see it do for my blog:
* I would see a huge spike immediately when it hits SU, like 10 times the normal traffic
* This spike does not last the day, it only last a few hours, something like 3-4 hours. Then it peters off to normal levels.
* The specific article that got SU’d will get a trickle of SU traffic for several days afterwards, which actually does add up to be impressive numbers as well.
I believe what’s going on is that an initial SU spike is with random people hitting the Stumble button, and SU puts new articles high on that list. The later SU that happens days afterwards are from SU users browsing their networks. This is just speculation on my part though.
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Hi Al - Thanks for coming back around! I have been trying to get my “Subscribe to comments” plugin working (even had a suggestion from Skellie) but the darn thing does not want to cooperate.
It is funny you mention the spikes…I have been checking stats and SU for the past couple of days because this post and the Yaro interview got stumbled but there have been no real spikes, which is actually okay. In fact reddit has sent more readers than any other social media site. Go figure.
January 10th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Great Article, I really like it.
I almost agree with you on everything, except that I look more optimistically to the temporary traffic spikes those come from StumbleUpon or Digg, because I know that some of those visitors will subscribe to my RSS feed and I think that my RSS readers are the most important thing to my blog, I even measure the success of any blog I visit by the number feed readers. I guess its totally fit with your idea about having a few loyal readers instead of many temporary visitors.
Thanks,
Lara,
January 12th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Hi Lara - I absolutely agree that the RSS subscribers are the most important element to any blog following.
In fact, it is my goal to have many loyal RSS subscribers by the end of this year…
June 27th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Mark,
I know this an old post but I just found it. And after reading other SEO blogs, this post — the photo, the background color, the tone of the writing — was quite refreshing indeed!
I admit to having a bit of blog envy when I read about others. I’ve “optimized,” I post frequently, I comment on other’s but growth is very slow.
So I enjoyed your take. And as I run a business, I find your strategy to be terrific.
Glenn
June 27th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Hi Glen - thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment! My wife speaks fluent Spanish so I like the looks of your business.
Don’t worry too much about the growth…it will come. I would try to get some guest posts on other sites as a way to gain some traffic.