How Many Twitter Followers Do I Need?
Here’s an old parlor trick of SEO folks from the late nineties. The SEO agency would tell you that they would be happy to be paid on performance and then define “performance” as keyword ranking. They told clients they promised page one ranking on Google for a great term like “big yellow bananas in Tallahasee.” They achieved the ranking. And of course, client’s business didn’t change one bit. And SEOs developed roughly the same ethical image of heroin smugglers.
Then smart SEOs and clients said, “Let’s measure how much business comes from search. Our keywords may be on page one or page two or page five of the search engine results, but what really matters is this: looking at all the traffic that comes from search engines, are we getting more leads, sales, media coverage, voters, donors or members then we were before?”
Then a few years back we all started to realize that we need to pitch bloggers like we pitch reporters. In the day, blogger pitch plans had a crazy number of target bloggers: “We’ll e-mail 200 blogger for $5,000 and 500 bloggers for $10,000.” Then, (and I’d like to think Webbed Marketing was one of the first to figure this out) us online PR folks figured out that it’s really dumb and inefficient to reach 500 bloggers, but if we find the three or five or 10 most influential bloggers in any space and build great relationships with them, we have much more successful campaigns.
Now, social media is going through the same evolution in figuring out what to measure. A year ago people just said, “Get me some of that Twitter.” Then we all decided we need to set goals and track success. The easy way to do this is to set goals on number of followers. So, 150 followers is better than 50 and 1,000 is really great.
Well, maybe.
See let’s take it down to the business goal. If Oprah retweets you and drives 500 people to your Web site and you sell a lot of books, which is a great thing — even if she is your only follower. Now let’s say there is this guy John you have never heard of. But John has connections on Facebook with editors and analysts. And on LinkedIn, he’s connected to CTOs from Fortune 500 companies. And on Twitter, he is followed by your Governor. And when John talks about your products and services, your Web site traffic triples and your leads from your site quadruple. That’s what I’m talking about.
The bottom line? Tracking number and types of social media connections is important, but followers and fans don’t make payroll. Stick to the business goals. If social media is driving more sales, leads, media exposure, or whatever your core success metric is, then the program is successful.
Tags: Followers, Many, Need, Twitter
Posted in Microblogging |
Too Many Blog Traffic Strategies, Which One To Use?
I believe that you have read lots of different blog traffic strategies if you have been blogging for some time. So, which one is the best method? Is it search engine optimization or pay-per-click? Is it the free ones or the paying ones?
The answer is…
It depends on your blog topic. As a blogger, you should choose which traffic strategies fit your blog instead of trying to figure out which one is the best. The magic question you should ask yourself to get the answer is “What visitors I want and where they usually go?”
After testing more than 10 different traffic strategies for my blogs, my results shows me the there are 3 sources of traffic every blogger should get is:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You might already heard SEO. And would probably love to get traffic from Google. However, you are also convinced that it is hard and complicated. Well, blogs have lots of advantages in SEO. Google love blogs because blogs always provide fresh and lots of content. I rank high for many keywords with blogs easily. All you need to do is learn and apply the SEO basics. The first step is to optimize my blog for SEO. Next, I’ll start writing original and valuable blog post consistently. Finally, I’ll build backlinks by submitting articles and web directories. This is not hard but it takes time to reach. Probably 2-3 months.
2. Blog Commenting
Give valuable comments to other blogs which are related to your blog. The purpose of this is not to get readers to click on your link to your blog. Of course, it will be some bonus traffic. However, the main objective is to make new friends who share the same passion- blogging and talking about the same topic. When you have more blogging friends, all of you could help each other. They could recommend your blog to their readers if you write something good. You can do the same to provide more value to your readers too.
3. Word Of Mouth
Believe it or not, blogs are very powerful at word of mouth. Since the day I’ve learn about blog, I shared many blogs to all of my friends. I didn’t share that for some ‘Good Blogger’s Practice’. I shared them because I love those blogs. Their content helps me and I think it will help my friends. My friends thank me for sharing with them and I bring traffic to those blogs. If you are interested in people spreading the word for you, always remember this: ‘Provide Valuable Content’. Write contents or put up your own video that provide values to others.
4. Article Marketing
This is my favorite. This traffic strategy doesn’t takes months. You could start getting traffic from Article Marketing within days. All you need to do is write articles your targeted visitors want to read. Submit those articles you wrote to 5 popular article directories. You could start getting some traffic within a week and automated traffic over years. However, it is important to write a lot and not just few. Another benefit from using article marketing is that you can simply rewrite them in an informal style and post it on your blog. Both articles have similar contents but looks different. With this method, you are able to get traffic and update fresh content for your blog as well.
5. Forum Marketing
Forum marketing is fun and easy to many blogging beginners because all you need to do is chat in an online forum. Register an account and include a link to your blog in your signature. You might get some traffic if you reply often to the members’ post. But if you are interested in more traffic, learn to start a new topic. Start an interesting topic with an attractive title. If your topic draws people’s attention and replies, people would like to check out your blog to see anything more from you.
These are the 5 traffic strategies I recommend all beginners should start with. Although all of them take time to grow, it will grow into huge traffic streams and it is effortless to maintain.
Tags: Blog, Many, Strategies, Traffic
Posted in Link Building |