Posted: 8:24 pm by tom in
Blog,
Blogging,
Marketing
After blogging for a little while now I’m beginning to feel very pessimistic about the recommended promotional methods that most bloggers are telling people. In my eyes almost all of these methods are ineffectual, and a complete waste of time and money.
I’m going to outline just what I think is wrong with most promotional options available to bloggers:
Digg - Almost impossible to get on the front page, and very ineffective otherwise. Also if you do get on the front page you get a massive traffic spike sure, but also the possibility of a server crash. The main downfall of Digg is that the traffic is highly worthless. The Digg traffic spike is typically a massive vertical line up and then straight down. You would think that it would have some gradual run-off time, where a few visitors would be interested enough to check back to your site for a week or so. But sadly no, Digg users seem to have the attention span of a reality-television fan.
Stumbleupon - Only really effective if you’re willing to pour valuable hours into Stumble exchanges - and these a generally frowned upon as unethical. Also the traffic from Stumbleupon is about as worthless as Digg.
Adwords - One word: expensive.
Banner Advertising - Overpriced and doesn’t convert that well.
Guest Posting - You can read my thoughts on this here.
The trouble with all of these methods is that it’s very tempting to use them to your advantage (supposedly) by exploiting BAD traffic. That is to say that bloggers are often tempted into spending hours each day following all of the above methods simply to keep their daily traffic stats up. However, the key point here is that if they stop this tireless ‘promotion’ the traffic won’t stick around, in fact it’s already gone.
So the obvious question remains… How do you achieve good traffic?
The answer I’m afraid isn’t what you wanted to hear, and may sound like a cliche… but time. You may have thought hard work was the answer. However, the blogger achieving ‘bad traffic’ is probably working a lot harder than you to achieve temporary results, and worthless traffic. I’m going to be striving for ‘good traffic’ from this point onwards, and subsequently may see an initial decrease in my traffic. However I’ll be happy in the knowledge that this traffic is more meaningful, and hopefully it will gradually creep back up to great heights. I will be doing the following, which I feel are the best options for achieving quality traffic:
Getting to know other bloggers, commenting on their blogs and chatting with them. Networking is a great way to build up some long term relationships - opening all kinds of doorways to new visitors.
Spend more time on forums. This is simply another form of networking. I’m not talking about advertising my website or asking for link exchanges. I will be getting to know other bloggers, helping people more, and building a reputation for myself.
Search Engine Optimization If you spend the time optimizing your blog for the search engines you will be receiving organic, targeted traffic that is finding you, and not the other way around.
Write great content, and keep doing so. I’m going to be focusing more time on researching for great articles, checking and rechecking my posts and making sure that I never run out of stuff to blog about. This may seem like a lot of work, but I’ll be saving an enormous amount of time that I currently spend chasing ‘bad traffic’.
So there you have it, a harsh lesson learned on my part, but I’m sure glad that I learnt it early on. I’ll be posting about the results of this little experiment in Blogging Diary Week 2, so stay tuned.
Such a great post! Quit contrary to everything that is being talked about right now! Keep up the great articles Tom!
Thank you for your continued honesty!
Thanks for the support Josh! I had a bit of a revelation today and realized that I couldn’t keep chasing stats like everyone else, I’m going to try and aim for the best content possible, and hopefully everything else will follow.
Great to hear someone speaking out on this. I completely agree. The stuff touted on most blogs should be titled, “How to get a temporary meaningless spike in traffic.” Thanks for pointing out this very important fact!
Cheers Coryan, I agree that not many people are talking about this, but it’s very important in my eyes.
I also gave mention of this great article in my most recent blog post. Thanks again Tom!
http://www.joshtilton.com/blog/design-re-alignment-complete
Thanks Josh! I’ve posted you a comment back
Tom, I posted about Entrecard. You should check it out. I have found several great blogs that I’ve subscribed to, just through networking on Entrecard. I’ve also noticed that several Entrecard users have started commenting regularly on my blog. So even though the traffic I’m receiving isn’t huge yet, some of the visitors are sticking around!
Oh, and I did find out the answer to the question you asked. You can display your Entrecard on other blogs without displaying the widget yourself. However, you’re not shown in the directories on the Entrecard website when you do that. I think it might be worth giving Entrecard a try though. Hopefully you’ll get great results!
Thanks Tish, I’ll go check out your article now! Entrecard is definitely on my list of things to do.
Great article Tom! Just today I was telling my daughter how many worthless programs are out there and how I am spending to much time experimenting, when I should be sticking to basics. Networking and writing.
Your article came at the perfect time!
By the way, Entrecard is really good. I have been meeting a lot of nice people who have subscribed to my blog and I have also subscribed to many myself.
I also really like BlogEngage. It seems to be working out very well for me. So these two are my keepers and the rest I’m not even bothering with.
Theresa
A great post but I don’t agree with your thoughts on Digg. If you spend a bit of time learning how the site works and just how people get articles to the front page, it is very easy to get there. It’s true that it is literally a huge burst of traffic for usually just a day (longer if you get enough diggs, as you’ll be listed in ‘most diggs this month’ and week, etc) but at least your brand gets flashed to half a million people, just like a small TV ad…
Thanks Theresa and Kieran! I’m currently using BlogEngage but both of you have made me want to explore Entrecard and Digg optimization as of tonight.
Cheers!
Hey Tom, I must say I can relate to your article. Marketing a website seems harder than working a “real” job sometimes. You’ve got some good tips there regarding what to focus on.
I think you must be on the right track (content wise) coz I keep coming back to see what your up to.
Simon.
You’re welcome Tom.
The easiest way to get frontpage of Digg is to create a list-type post, e.g. ‘10 ways to do…’ ‘my 5 favorite…’, as these are a very popular type of content on Digg.
To get the actual Diggs, 70% of articles on the front page get 100-200 diggs from friends. This might sound hard, but you can easily add 50-100 friends per day in just 5-10 minutes. All you do is go to the profile of one of the people who have a well dugg story, and then add all of their friends by clicking the ‘+friend’ button. When you have 200-300, you just submit your story, click ’share’ and then select all of your friends. They will receive a notification and digg your story (at least half of your friends will digg it, probably 80% of them if your article is interesting!)…
Good luck
Thanks Simon, I really appreciate it
Kieran: That’s great advice, I hadn’t thought of the friending people route… To be honest I’ve steered clear of Digg a bit in the past, but I’ll be sure to try your advice and see if it results in an increase in ‘good’ traffic. Thanks!
Agree with what is being said here, there is no substitute for networking. To get people to read your blog, you have to read theirs.
A couple of people mentioned Entrecard, I’ll third that, it’s a great site.
Yeah networking is key. I’ll be officially joining Entrecard tomorrow (when I’ll have some spare time to do so), but I hope it’s everything people say it is.
I’ll be joining Entrecard too in a few days (thanks Tish)
[…] main drive behind my blogging efforts this past week is this post. I basically explain how I’m not going to try and get traffic for the sake of traffic, but […]
Hey Tom, I just found your site, and I love it. I’m a very new blogger, but am trying hard to make my newly found passion grow. I totally agree with you. It seems to me too that all these sites that promise great traffic are inefficient , and the best way to make your site known is through word of mouth, networking with other bloggers, and advertising in the real world. Anyway, keep up the good work, and I’ll check back
Thanks for the support! Your site seems pretty cool, you have a nice niche going on there. Best of luck with your online ventures!