Entries from February 2008 ↓

It is one thing to get 10,000s of visitors from Digg, Stumbleupon e.t.c; it is another thing to keep and make them regular readers. These are some suggestions for making the most of any surge in traffic that may come your way.

Content Not Ads above the Fold.

If you really want to maximise the traffic from social media, it is best to sacrifice the optimal ad positions. Sometimes I am stumbling and the only thing I see on the screen is a logo and a 330*300 Google adsense block. Invariably I mark the content thumbs down, without even seeing the article. This is not to say you can’t have ads at the top of the screen, but, if the only thing that is seen by the viewer is ads, what impression does that give? It is helpful to view blog traffic as investment. The small return from short term advertising is worth much less than the potential benefit of attracting long term subscribers who will help grow the blog. If you really want to have ads dominating the top, you could at least remove them from articles that are targetted at high traffic.

Easy to Subscribe.

It is important that it is easy to subscribe. In my opinion this is the most significant benefit of getting traffic from social media. Visitors will not click on ads, most will never return. But, if you can get even 0.5% to subscribe then it’s all worth it. The obvious thing to do is to place an RSS subscriber link in a prominent place. Some people like to make a feature out of it and place it at the top of a blog post. This probably has a good conversion rate, although it does have the drawback that the content is pushed further down. Email subscription is also worth having.

Best Articles

I have found that on a strategically designed blog a stumble visitor can visit an average of 2.3 pages. (this may not sound a lot but, it does disprove a theory that stumble visitors have a high bounce rate. However, to get a low bounce rate requires an effort to keep readers. An excellent way to do that is highlight your most popular articles. You can do this with a plugin or manually add the articles. Recent articles are also good to highlight as long as they are not just average page fillers.

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Today I signed up for a new affiliate programme for my finance site.

However, I noted that the css for the affiliate banner looked skewed on Mozilla Firefox. That gave the impression that the affiliate programme was quite new and unprofessional.

I then thought about the afilliate banner. In fact they were cleverly getting html links with desired anchor text within it. Therefore the affiliate programme could just be a clever way to get lots of free inbound links to their site.

Therefore, I added rel=”nofollow” to all the links. This way I can test the affiliate programme without having to worry about displeasing the mighty Google for accepting paid links. (I know they are not paying for links, but, I don’t trust Google to differentiate – it can’t be easy)

• Top Tip – Always test your website in other browsers. I have been caught out myself  by shockers on Internet Explorer (I mostly use a mac and Firefox )
• If their banners had not been buggy in Firefox I may not have got worried and added the ‘nofollow’ tag to all the affiliate links. The presentation of your site DOES matter. Bugs and errors say you are either 1) incompetent 2) don’t care or 3) Can’t afford to pay a proper css designer.

Email have become an intrinsic part of personal and business life. However, we often write emails without considering the best approach and style. These are some suggestions to write more effective emails and avoid any potential embarrassment that a badly written email can give.

Make it Clear.

The first rule for writing an effective email is that the message and content should be clear. Unfortunately I often receive emails with about 7 different questions all in the same sentence. It makes replying very difficult. To write with clarity it is essential to keep the message no longer than necessary. Also try to stick to just one point. If you want to cover several topics, write different emails with the title showing the correct topic. This also makes archiving emails easier.

Keep it Simple and Short

Related to the first point about clarity, simplicity is the essence of a good email. Try and convey the point using the minimum number of sentences and words. For example, if you are writing about a solution to the problem, don’t add a lengthy story about why you have been delayed in answering. If a word doesn’t add anything worthwhile, leave it out.

Don’t Be Vague

Before writing an email, have a clear idea about its purpose. If necessary ask direct questions, or strongly suggest some alternatives. Don’t leave it open ended and vague – get to the point.

Good Use of Language

I think it is a mistake to feel that just because it is an email we can ignore the basic essentials of English language. Maybe we got into bad habits when dealing with friends. But, we increasingly use emails for dealing with official business; in these cases the quality of English should be similar to a letter. Remember the quality of your English will also have a subconscious impact on how you are perceived by others. If you can’t be bothered to use a spell checker and capitalise the letter i, it doesn’t look good.

The importance of Reflection

The ease of which we can write emails, is also a potential problem. Most people will have had the experience of sending an email, which soon after, they regret writing. For any important or contentious issue, it is always best to ‘let it lie for a while’ before posting. A delayed email is better than an email which creates more problems. If you have any hesitation in sending, you could also ask for a second opinion from a trusted friend. They may be able to offer a dispassionate perspective on your email.

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English is a complicated language. Wouldn’t it be easier if words meant what they say they do, rather than mean something that they don’t actually say.

I’m sure this short guide from the fully revived The Uxbridge English Dictionary will provide an invaluable (worth nothing) and impeccable (bird proof) guide to the complexities of the English language.

Balderdash – A rapidly receding hairline.

Biology – The Science of why Women shop

Biro
- Property developer
- To purchase fish eggs

Boulangerie – To heckle underwear

Brouhaha – Jolly tea party

Candid – past tense of cando

Chairs – A toast by the Queen

Childhood – a very young gangster

Cinquecento – A hundred year old Chinaman

Ciabatta – The wookie in Star wars

Climate – The motto of the Everest climbing club

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Recently, I had two articles which received 1,000s of visits from Stumble’s. These are some observations from the experience.

The first article was Top 10 Financial Products to avoid at personal finance blog. This received about 1,500 stumbles in a short space of time and appeared on Stumblebuzz – a list of the most popular current stumbles. The benefit of being on stumbleupon is that it led to creating links from other sites. Gaining links is something that rarely happens from ordinary Stumbleupon traffic.

The second article was Effective ways to get out of a negative mindset at my self improvement blog. This started off slower, but still received 1,000 on the first day. Since it went down well, I sent it to a 3 stumbleupon friends who I thought might like it. This created a second wave of stumbles and this second wave seemed to create a momemtum which has kept the article being stumbled throughout the week. In the past 7 days, the article has received over 10,000 stumbles and seems to be going strong.

On this blog Why Stumbleupon is Better than Digg has also done quite well

Things I learnt From the Experience

• Stumblers don’t bounce straight away. One of the best results of this experience was looking at my Google analytics to see that stumble traffic actually stays for much longer than expected. On average readers from stumbleupon saw an average of 2 pages per visit. The bounce rate was 66%. Not amazing perhaps, but it does refute the myth that Stumblers only ever stay 5 seconds.
• Do Ask Friends for the Odd Favour. I wouldn’t want to overdo it. But, it does seem worthwhile finding friends who would appreciate your content and using the stumbleupon toolbar to ask them for the occasional stumble. I assume it is also good to look for new friends and not just rely on the same few for favours. I believe stumbleupon give less weight to votes from people who repeatedly vote for the same website. Continue reading →

In the past few months I have written guest posts for a variety of blogs such as Lifehack, Pick the Brain and Dumb Little Man. It has been a good experience, helping the development of my blogs but also improving aspects of my writing.

These are some of the things that I learnt through writing guest posts.

Titles Do Matter

I have written quite a few articles for Pick The Brain, John would often change the title to something more appealing and eye catching. For example, I wrote an article “How To Meditate” John changed the title to “4 Powerful Reasons to Meditate and How to Get Started“. I would never have thought of using this kind of title, but it did very well on Digg and Delicious. Now when I write articles, I think carefully about the best title. Note, this is most important for long articles you hope will be popular on social bookmarking sites. However, this does not mean every title should be written with Digg in mind.

See also: 7 Tips for eye catching Titles 

Grammar is Important.

Sometimes I would write 2,000 words and some commentators would pick up on a small grammatical error, 3/4 of the way down (e.g confusing their and there). Previously, I had seen this as not particularly important. But, when people pick up on these errors it encourages you to proof read an article several times, especially when it is for a big audience. You could take the attitude that you should ignore these grammar pedants; but, my philosophy is if you are going to write an article, it is best to make it as good as possible and give as little scope for criticism as possible.

Write From Personal Experience

The articles which have done well, tend to be those where I have written from a certain personal perspective. Some topics have been covered many times on the internet. The thing is to find topics where you have a specialised knowledge and can offer some personal insights. This is the case for my articles on meditation and a recent article on 10 Effective strategies for writing

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Moved to: Other blogs

1. Ask as many questions as you answer. If you blog post is a definitive “how to”, if you tone is that of an undisputed authority, in a way the only comments you invite are – nice post! There is nothing wrong with writing with authority, but to encourage comments, it is advisable to sometimes leave questions unanswered, see what the readers can add.
2. Take a strong stance on an issue. If you take a strong stance on an issue you will attract people leaving comments either supporting or rejecting your stance. e.g. Why we should Raise driving age to 21
3. A top commentator list. At least, I offer recent comments in the sidebar.
4. Invite Link Suggestions. – There’s nothing bloggers like more than a free link.
5. Reward Regular Commentators. If someone leaves a good comment, I sometimes will link back to their blog. This is something Darren Rowse often does. Even though it is one of the top blogs, he is very generous with his linking out.

This is a short post on a few quick tips to impress other bloggers. They are mostly things that have, at some time impressed me.

1. Leave meaningful comments about the post and blog. Comments are a great way to receive feedback. It is also good to receive comments about the blog in general and not just about articles. Don’t be reluctant to point out problems. For example I appreciated Inspiration Bit kindly leaving a comment about the text in the comments being too grey. A comment was the motivation I needed to get it fixed. (Of course don’t go over the top in your criticism. It will hardly endear you to other bloggers if you point out every misused apostrophe and give advice like, your writing sucks why don’t you go back to  high school.
2. Submit Their Article to Digg / Stumbleupon. Also when you submit it make sure that it is clear who you are and where you come from. This does mean you can’t digg your own.
   
3. Offer opportunities for Links. Run a competition / blog carnival which enables you to submit your articles.
4. Link to Other Bloggers. The easiest way to impress and please other bloggers.
5. Email them. By emailing someone directly you can build up a friendship. If you only reply to a comment on your own blog, there is no guarantee they will come back to read it.

Some bloggers look upon the Digg homepage as the holy grail of blogging. I don’t think this is true, but nevertheless, social bookmarking sites can be very helpful in raising the profile of your blog and generating the interest of new readers. If you really have enticing, original content, then there is no reason why it can not do very well on popular social bookmarking sites. These are some suggestions to make effective use of Digg and related social media.

1. First Impressions Count

The visual impact of the site does matter. People don’t just vote on the article, but their subconscious opinion of the site. Make it clean and attractive and don’t go over the top with ads and banners. It is also important that you have the content above the fold. Don’t have huge headers and graphics which makes it hard to see any of the actual content.

2. Be Focused.

Every week, try to create 1 or 2 outstanding posts / articles. These should be original and offer something of real value to visitors; it these 1 or 2 articles that you will focus on promoting. Be prepared to take time to write the best article that you can. Don’t be half hearted in creating content – it is better to have an attitude of all or nothing. It is also important that the articles have a clear focus. Don’t get sidetracked into relating unnecessary personal experiences.

3. Headlines are everything

Quite often people on Digg will vote for a submission based on the title alone – without ever reading the actual post. Because of this it is vital to hone your headline writing talents. A good starting point is to just look at the kind of headlines that get to the homepage of Digg. A good headline has the following characteristics:

• Grabs people’s attentions
• Is Descriptive
• Is Original.

A title like “How to Increase Your Traffic” is so boring and repetitive it has absolutely no chance, no matter how good the article. Try, “Secrets of Increasing Traffic to a new Blog” “10 Powerful Tips for boosting Your RSS readership”

See: Ideas for Eye Catching Titles

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