Social Networks
This is not any kind of new big and hairy information right? Social media sites are your “go to” place for READING traffic. Remember, I make a VERY big distinction between reading blogs and money blogs. You can use social networking for money too but MY preference for my money blogs is search engine traffic. Having said that, you’ve got to learn about the top 10-20 social media sites. You don’t need to be using all those I’d say pick at least 6 or 7 social media sites and register. But getting your username and logo/photo out there is important.
Here’s the thing; I’ve used Digg and Stumble to submit my stuff. But what I’ve learned is that the kind of stuff I write, well thought out, long pieces, don’t do well at Digg. Short, list filled, 20 second, glance-pieces do better. But each network has a “flavor.” Stumble tends to be quick visits too but those visitors will stick for reader specific topics. And I do still get traffic form stories Dugg a long time ago. I also use MySpace some, but it’s tough to pull people off that site. MySpace does that on purpose, but it is possible. I built up and maintain 1000 friends and I keep it at that level because just like Facebook the people who I see making money start groups WITHIN the site. Yeah, basically since you can’t bring a horse to water, you just gotta take the water to the horses.
So I strongly encourage sites like MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, and BlogCarnival. The first two allow you to make “friends” so do as many as their systems allow (15 per day and unlimited). I just heard about that strategy about a 2 months ago, and as you can see I haven’t really implemented it. But I DO contribute to BlogCarnival and get some traffic from there.
Entrecard
Entrecard is great for a new bloggers. You will learn a lot and you can get general traffic and even targeting traffic if you take the time to focus what you’re doing. And I’ve said it before, but targeted traffic is much better than general traffic. And this brings us to MY theories about understanding Entrecard. Plain and simple it will boost your numbers. I see some of the most awful and poorly visited blogs in the world within the Entrecard system, BUT they have fantastic Alexa numbers, lots of comments, AND some of them are making a few bucks without a lot of knowledge. That’s how good the EC system is. There are lot of great blogs too! But the point I’m making is that participating in this system puts you in a good position to build traffic, build links and make friends. IF you understand what it is and how to maximize from it.
So to reiterate Entrecard is a nice place for “traffic,” and as it stands I would estimate maybe 10-20 percent will actually read stuff. The other 80-90 percent will just drop and leave. I have proof. See my blog is set up on the homepage to just list stories, to see ANY post you have to click a link and go to a story, so I made a VERY easy drop box up top. So if that’s what a person is here for they can get in and out-boom. But if they read I know it, because my stats will show me that they clicked a link.

But this is OK! You’re getting your numbers up-and if you believe my Alexa theory-it’s good to have “general traffic.” But EC people WILL visit your blog if they’re just out exploring, and that happens quite a bit. I even do it myself and I have NO time to waste. You can also generate a lot of reading visitors by commenting-but this is standard practice for blog traffic anyway. However, the extra bonus is that you belong to a “club” so people have a more compelling reason to visit. And the third sort of reason they’ll come is your “advert;” so again, the accuracy of your traffic is determined by what message you put out there. Plus these last few weeks have seen a few technical glitches but that’s because they’re adding lots of new and very smart features. Like the “add a blog” tool which allows you to link multiple blogs, they also put out and instructional E-book . And again for new bloggers, and even more experienced, it is a great way to see hundreds and hundreds of blogs and how they do things. Many of them are just playing follow the leader, but there is some very innovative stuff out there.
Ping baby! I’ve got a long list of ping sites in my WordPress installation, but if you use Feeburner, they have a bunch you can check off too. AND you can go to Blogflux and use their tool. I do that after every post.
Tags are CRUCIAL. Sites like Delicious, StumbleUpon and Technorati thrive on the tags. And you can even build your story ideas off BIG tags in the cloud at those sites too. I learned about this too by accident, when I started using the Simple Tagging plugin and found traffic JUST from the tags from various sites. Speaking of that, if you’re a WordPress user additional good traffic plugins are; All in One SEO, Do-Follow, Link Luv (that I’m trying to get set up) and Yet Another Related Post.
LASTLY, JTPratt showed an incredible spin on an old standard. You know you should have a signature in your emails and especially in your forum posts right? Well he shows how your sig on forums should be specific wording like “My blog talks about this interesting topic.” That’s not what you should write but how you should word your sig in an interesting way instead of “Yourblog.com.” And if that wasn’t good enough, you can even think about using specific post instead of homepage!