Blogs Equal Traffic, Part Deux
Just a note on site stats: Ever since we switched to having the blog built in to the site, the blog home page and individual posts are now overwhelmingly the most popular pages at telltenfriends.com.
That means that now, if I want to know how many people are reading about services, etc. I have to dig a little deeper, because none of the pages on the main site are in the top 5 of my site stats anymore.
This tells me two things.
1. People are more interested in what I have to say than what my site is selling. This is hardly shocking, and is certainly not bad news to me. In fact, it only reinforces what I (and many others) have been saying all along.
2. If you build it, people will come. Okay, that IS a straight rip-off of Field of Dreams, which was originally written by one of the great authors of our time, W.P. Kinsella, who’s from right here in BC. (I’m a fan. Let’s move on, shall we?)What I mean by that is that if you publish relevant, personal, valuable and up-to-date content, traffic will come. The best way to do that is to build a darn blog.
I’m a copywriter and conversion specialist. I sweat over tiny details: keywords, conversion rates, punctuation, and a whole lot of other subtle nuances that factor into a site’s effectiveness. And it turns out that when I’m just me being me, sharing my views and insights on things that may or not be related to marketing, that’s where the traffic comes from.
I realize that this is skewed, since many of you come back time and time again just to see what’s new. But isn’t that the point? I’ve been a “blogger” for less than a year, and I’m thrilled that people read this stuff at all. In fact, I’m floored by the consistency and steady incline in the number of visitors and subscribers. (Side note: The switch from Blogger resulted in a big jump in the number of subscribers to the feedburner feed!) Yes, I read my stats. All of them. It gives me a better idea each day of what people respond to, and subsequently helps me when it comes to doing the same for my clients.
Bonus link:: One of my mentors, Scott Armstrong has just started his own blog, giving advice to young entrepreneurs. Scott is the author of the Start Me Up! Business Guidebook for the young at young at heart, and started his blog on my advice. It was a fair trade, since I’ve been benefitting from his advice for months.
The book is intended for students that are looking to answer the call of entrepreneurship (Instead of wating until they’re all grown, like I did). If you have youngsters that may want to subscribe to his blog, fear not; a feedburneer feed and other publicizing features will be added to his site soon.
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June 16th, 2006 at 2:46 am
I just watched “Field of Dreams” the other day. Marvelous story. I didn’t know that the James Earl Jones character was written as J.D. Salinger in Kinsella’s book, but knowing that now makes the book-burning town meeting make a LOT more sense.
Glad to see your blog doing well. I think there are several of us in our little community that are on the rise. Just think what it will be like when we’re all A-listers
June 16th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Trouble is, although my feedburner stats are better than ever, My Alexa ranking (Mack’s criteria for the Top 25 Marketing blogs) and my Technorati ranking both took a massive hit; essentially in each case I’m starting from scratch.
Still, I have Google Analytics, and the traffic itself is indeed growing, even if the blog tracking software isn’t reflecting that yet.
June 17th, 2006 at 12:04 am
I don’t follow Alexa. For me Site Meter is almost perfect. I have found Technorati rankings to be completely useless. I know of blogs that I have inbound links from that NEVER show up on there, and my ranking hasn’t changed in MONTHS, so I know it can’t be right.
June 17th, 2006 at 1:44 am
I’ll have to give Site Meter a look, me thinks. Thanks for the tip, J.D.
June 25th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
The first sentence in item No. 1 is the RBI of Blogging (Relationship Building Intentionally). J.D. Thanks for the reminder on Site Meter. I’d used them previously, but forgot about it with other sites.
June 26th, 2006 at 3:03 am
I like Site Meter because I can see where my referrals are coming from, the location of the reader, and various other trends. Like if someone on a message board links me, I can see all the incoming traffic from that link (and I can also go there, post comments, and further ingratiate myself by joining their community.)
June 27th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
[…] That’s why I was just tickled when Mike Sansone dropped by to comment on one of my recent posts, because it led me to his blog, whereupon which he is giving a step-by-step tutorial on the subject of business blogging, in a series of posts, entitled: […]
July 17th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
[…] I have the stats to prove that I draw more site visitors with my blog posts than I do with the rest of my site content (the “sales-y stuff”) and almost everyday I meet a “newbie” to the idea of blogging that appreciates my candor and my personal approach to blogging, which happens to be one of the main ways I market myself and the services at Tell Ten Friends. (Catch that? Subtle, huh?) […]