I know it´s not easy – where do you start? You have set up your blog, you added the one or other post and now it´s time to start the promotion to get people like, tweet and stumble you. The hard part is the start. Sending and email to one subscriber (and the one is you because you wanted to try out if the setup works ) is not very helpful. How do you get traffic going ?
Here are the best tips for traffic generation. I don’t want to say that this list is complete but it´s helpful . All I do still means that we spend about 2 hours daily doing this. The most important thing is that you do all different things regularly – not just once because doing this just one time won´t get your name out there. But if you stick with your personal list and do all you can 3-4 times per week over some month – I´m sure your traffic will sky rock. Beside that you don´t have to do it all – if you feel you can just work on two or three places then consider doing just that – nothing is worse than feeling overwhelmed because you cannot keep up with your schedule.
Traffic Generation – a question of consistency
- Facebook Pages
When you just start off you might like to join some Facebook pages related to your niche. Try to discuss the topics people mention there, try to be active and get known by the owner of the page. Relationships just hurt those who don´t have any People might see you there again and again and check out your page to discover more about you. It´s maybe not the most direct way to get traffic but it could be one. - Facebook Groups
I´ve recently discovered Facebook Groups – a place where people related to your topic exchange about ideas and such and maybe even promote themselves. I think groups have a great potential. It´s not that I suggest that you should create your own. As with a Facebook page it will lead to lots of struggle because you´ll have a hard time to get your first followers. It´s better to join some groups and start to discuss and “like” – after some weeks you can start promoting yourself a bit and some posts (if allowed). This will most probably generate visitors to your profile and make people want to join your Facebook page or check out your website (which is even better). - RSS Graffiti for Facebook
RSS Graffiti is an application for Facebook. You can search for it under applications and install it. It´s really easy to handle, you just add your RSS feed address and it will start posting your posts to your Facebook wall in a schedule you decided. It´s absolutely helpful and great for traffic generation – I have a new product feed at Digidesignresort and once a new kit comes to the store it is posted on the Digidesignresort Facebook Fanpage. For me, this leads to a great amount of traffic. You don´t need new products of course to do that but an RSS feed in general (each WordPress blog has a RSS URL). - Tweet old post plugin
There is a WordPress Plugin (free) which can be connected to your Twitter account and automatically promote old posts. As this is no extra daily work from your site – it definitely can´t hurt so I highly recommend to set this plugin up. It will cost you 5 minutes. - Twitter
Twitter can be a successful tool but here as well – you need to follow people and participate – it doesn´t help if you are just there and post your tweets. To make it work you need to participate. - Forums
Forums are a traffic generation strategy I highly recommend. You can modify your signature and you´ll be able to add a link to Facebook, Twitter or even your website. Make sure it´s not against the forum rules though. Again – participate, answer posts, give valuable information – just maybe answer 3-4 questions per day. This won´t cost you more than 30 minutes but you will generate traffic for all time. People in forums often search for the right answer and this will lead them to your post – the more posts the more traffic you´ll generate - Social Media Shopping sites (e.g. Etsy, Kaboodle)
Social Media Shopping sites are not great for anyone. If you do not sell products you most probably won´t have much success. In our store each product has a button on top and it can be posted to Kaboodle in seconds – this hopefully generates views and again make people come to jump over to Digidesignresort. It doesn´t cost much time and will definitely lead to a link to your site (I´m not sure if you get a quality backlink, I don´t think so) but you get seen. - Commenting on related blogs
Beside forums this might be one of the best strategies to generate traffic – for several reasons. On the one hand you build relationships with people in your niche, on the other it will also generate you traffic for years to come (even if it´s just one or two visitors a day per post – that´s nice if you sum it up). People do not just read the newest posts but also search on search engines and find posts where you might have left a comment. So investing some time here is a great investment into the future of your blog. - Guest posting on related blogs
I haven´t tried it so far but anyone who did seems to have had great results. The idea is to write a great article and send it to blogs in your niche. Some bloggers might accept your blog post which gives you not just a great quality backlink but will also put yourself in front of the audience of another site – people will jump to your blog, check it out and hopefully sign up. - Social Bookmarking Sites: Delicious, Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit
Social Bookmarking sites might lead to tons of traffic (in my case a post on TheMacMania.com led to over 200 new visitors in just one day) and it keeps sending me traffic – so for me Stumble Upon is great for traffic generation but I also get some traffic from Delicious and Reddit. Social Bookmarking is just done with the click of a mouse. Install the Sexy Bookmarks Plugin, sign up for some bookmarking sites and yes, stumble, dig and reddit your own posts to get going – this doesn´t mean that you shouldn´t also stumble other´s posts – if you do so you might get followers on these sites which will get an email about each new discovery you made. Also, maybe – at the beginning – ask your friends to check out your blog and stumble what they like. - Stumbleupon, digg and retweet others
Again – be social. If you like other´s posts they are more likely to check out yours and this will maybe lead to new readers, followers, fans on your Facebook page – we don´t wanna miss anyone. - Subscribers Magnet
Subscribers Magnet is a great tool – it allows you to position boxes with email addresses directly under your posts, in your footer area and sidebar – and if the person has visited the site before their name and email will be added for them to the box already so it´s very easy for them to sign up. I realized an increase in subscribers of about 30% – so it´s definitely worth although I wouldn´t believe the hype that people say they increased their rate about 200% – it´s nice for sure, but been there already and you need to be careful when you use it because you don´t want to annoy your visitors. - Blog communities (e.g. Blogfrog)
For traffic generation it´s also good to join a blog community – they will link to each other, sometimes even write a report about the one or other but definitely connect – again, it can´t hurt – if you like to belong to a community where people talk about their blogs and problems with them and support each other – it´s truly nice - Install ComLuv Plugin and comment on your own blog posts
The comment luv plugin will encourage your visitors to leave comments because it displays also the latest post of your visitor. But once you have written a post and you have something else valuable to add – you can also leave a comment to your own post or answer other´s comments – this will lead to a link for you and encourage readers to keep reading. - Yahoo Groups
For digital scrapbooking sites Yahoo Groups have been really popular but this nearly died over the last years – people just sent advertising stuff through them which led to the problem that anyone advertised but nobody read it. So again, it´s better if you are “social” – do not just spam your groups but also reply and send your own advertising very sensitively. Again, it depends what you prefer – if you enjoy commenting more, do that, if you love participating in forums – I´d say do that for traffic generation – you´ll need to be able to keep up with it. - YouTube
According to YouTube all videos uploaded have 3 billion views each and every day. Of course there are tons of videos on the site but you can always make one and let it generate some traffic for you – screencasts are easy to make and – if you have something valuable to teach – they are nice for traffic generation. - SEO
Last but not least traffic generation from search engines is GREAT – it´s free, it´s consistent and it will lead to new visitors without anything additional from your part. When you write a post try to optimize it for the search engines. Remember – you write for readers BUT it doesn´t hurt if you include some H1, H2, etc tags – not your readers and it will be great for the search engines. I am not crazy for SEO but I take care of it while I write my posts. I use SEOPressor – a WordPress Plugin which analyzes my posts and checks if something is missing.
Paid Advertising for Traffic Generation
Paid advertising is always a chance to generate traffic much faster than it would be possible with the methods mentioned about. But traffic generation with paid advertising can also be really expensive. So be sure you set a daily limit and do not invest in it before you have not at least 100 articles up and running – I know I set a high number and it can vary from niche to niche but what we want is to keep people on the site and if you have just 20 articles they won´t be so impressed and stay for long. So make sure your website looks “ready” before you buy traffic.
- Google Adsense
You bid on a keyword and get listed on the right side of their website. Be sure you set a daily limit and be sure you spend some time on finding the correct keywords. - Facebook
Facebook advertising has been really successful for me – I´ve added the subscription bonus, a beautiful digital scrap booking kit, as a link and got people on the site – it did´t just lead to a huge amount of traffic but also to about 130 new newsletter subscribers daily (not each day of course, sometimes I had “just” 50 – but all in all it´s a good idea to advertise over Facebook) - Banner advertising
I wanted to post it for the sake of completeness but over the last years most people got resistant to banners – they ignore them. I do have just some clicks when I get the paid advertising on other sites. So I don´t do that any longer.
It can´t be wrong to put your traffic generation on different feet – means – make sure you do not rely on just one traffic source. Once you got started it is not that hard anymore. Try to stick to your schedule for at least four weeks and I´m sure you will see a result with the methods mentioned above. If you like to see a quick result (nothing is really quick though) you can always use paid advertising for traffic generation.
Do you have more suggestions? Ideas? Comments? Leave them below and tell me what you do for Traffic Generation.
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