Bringing Traffic Your Way

You just created that awesome blog site, and your family and friends are proud of you and your work. They come to visit the site a few times a week, reading and commenting on your posts; they actually let you know how cool you are for writing these posts! 

But, you want to tell the world about your blog. You want to start driving traffic your way! Well, I’m going to help you with some cool ideas so your blog can get your first 1 million hits.

 Social Media Working for You 

You did it! Your blog is looking pretty awesome. You have created a cool brand and now you’re ready to take it to the next level. Here’s where social media can help immensely. Go to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to create your precious brand personal accounts. Even if you believe your blog won’t be a success right away, is better to avoid headaches by creating your own accounts on every social networking site.

Now that you have created accounts on these, it’s time to start sharing every post to them. Make sure to invite friends to like or join your name so they receive notifications and or emails every time you post a new blog.

Using Analytics to Track Everything

Install Analytics Tools on your blog and let it collect data. Tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Site Catalyst can be installed on the back-end of your blog. These tools track everything from new visits, to time spent on pages. Analytics can also track, where your visits are coming from, if the visitor landed on your blog by an organic search(1) or by a paid keyword(2). These tools can be configured to your liking and they provide detailed information in reports that can be customized and delivered automatically. 

If you have been following this post from the beginning, you should have a Google+ account. That’s all you need to create a Google Analytics account. The interface is very simple and Google provide great documentation for it. You can also take a look at the Universal Analytics brand new tool from Google in this post. Here's a great post about how to use Google Analytics.

Study Your Audience and Write Accordingly to What They Want

Finish your blog posts with specific questions; you’re going to start knowing your visitors based on the answers you get.

You can also try sending surveys via email or post these surveys along with your blog post. This is a quick way to understand what your visitors want. You can start writing about what your visitors wants once you get the necessary data about them.

Again, use social media to interact with your users. Learn from them and become their friend. Participate in communities your visitors visit frequently and learn as much as you can from them.

Use Great Designs on Your Website

Make sure you visit different blog sites to see and learn the trends used. Stay away from using bright colors that can cause temporal blindness on your audience, and use one font type for your posts. Use pictures and videos related to what you’re writing about and listen to feedback from your visitors.

Reply to Comments

Interacting with your audience is just another way to increase traffic to your site.  Make sure you interact with them when they leave a comment. Even if it’s a simple “thank you,” from your part; they will be grateful and come back to visit your blog. Replying to the audience comments creates a great discussion environment. Try to avoid religion or political comments unless your blog was created for these purposes.

Conclusion

We talked about using social media to interact with people and expand your blog to different audiences. We also talked about creating a Google Analytics account and installing these tools in the back-end to learn about your audience. Along with that, we took a look at studying your audience, using great designs and interacting with your visitors. I hope I was able to help you and my words encourage you to start writing about the things you really love.
 

One more thing…

Keep posting and don’t be discouraged if you had a few visitors this week. Don’t give up and be consistent.

Do you have any ideas on how to start bringing blog traffic your way?

References
Seomoz.org
dauofu.blogspot.com
Google.com/Analytics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_advertising

Social Media: A Cautionary Tale

Social Media, is it a good or a bad thing? That would depend on whom you ask. Judith Aquino, a reporter for CRM Magazine, describes social media as a marketing tool. Something to be mined for data and used to further the strategies and goals of a business.  Americans spend just about 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook every month.[1]  I don’t know about you, but to me, that is a lot of time. Every minute could mean a potential customer for any business. How exactly do you use social media in the best possible way? Well for starters, be careful what you write. It is easier to make incredibly simple mistakes.

Mistakes and the Negative Effects of an Uniformed Decision

Social media is, of course, based on a community. That means anything that is posted is there for the world to see, and the world will see it. I am sure many of you have seen this tweet. For those who haven’t, this was posted the same day as the shooting in Aurora, Colorado. It is obviously an unfortunate mistake, one that probably cost the business dearly. The marketing team did not take the time to find out why #Aurora was trending and simply assumed it must be because of their Aurora dress.[2] The point is, that a tweet such as this one could destroy a business.[3] In the analytical sense, it is ok to make mistakes. Mistakes tell you what works, and what doesn’t work. So what is the moral of this story? Pay attention to what you have in front of you. Do not make uninformed decisions. Make sure you are looking at your data and going through it thoroughly before making any decisions based on it.

Uses of Social Media Data

Now that we have established the fact that social media can have negative effects as well as positive effects on a business, lets talk about the analytical side to social media. What exactly is social media data good for? That is an incredibly good question. Lets take the show Teen Wolf as an example.[4] According to CRM Magazine, this TV show by MTV, had many issues in the beginning. Too many people thought it was like the old Michael J. Fox classic, when really it was an entirely new show. How did they figure out what was confusing their viewers? By using comments made on social media and analyzing the information.[5] The marketing plan to pitch the show as a “remake” of the original film backfired. The viewers were more interested in the romantic relationships between the characters. Those who chose to watch the show in hopes of it being like the original ended up being disappointed that so much about the show was different than the old movie. Comments on social media websites, like Facebook, can give a business a large amount of information about how their customers think and what they may be interested in. The problem is tracking this kind of data. For one, there is a lot of it, and for two, it is not as easy to track as other forms of data, such as a bounce rate.

         Social media is definitely an important part of web analytics. It helps a business understand their customers better and as a result help them market their products better. There is always a chance for a mistake in any kind of analytics. Mistakes that come from valid sets of data will serve as a learning tool. Those made without adequate information can have disasterous effects. Regardless of any mistakes made, social websites are stock full of information ready to be extracted and analyzed.

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[1] Aquino, Judith. “Transforming Social Media Data and Predictive Analytics” Issue17 Vol. 2. November, 2012. Destinationcrm.com accessed: Jan. 25, 2013.

[2] McFadden, Katie. “CelebBoutique.co Makes Huge Twitter Mistake In Regards to Aurora Colorado Shooting”. July 20, 2012. Travelerstoday.com accessed Jan. 25, 2013.

[3] Laird, Sam. “Oops!” Sept. 25, 2012. Mashable.com accessed. Jan. 25, 2013.

[4] Schaefer, Sandy “’Teen Wolf’ TV Show Trailer: ‘Twilight’ Style Teen Drama’”. January, 2011. Screenrant.com accessed Jan. 25, 2013.

[5] Aquino, Judith. “Transforming Social Media Data and Predictive Analytics” Issue17 Vol. 2. November, 2012. Destinationcrm.com accessed: Jan. 25, 2013.