Jul

31

Getting Traffic from Social Bookmarking: 30 Top Sites

Filed Under Tips, Featured | Leave a Comment

I receive quite a good part of my blog traffic from the social bookmarking sites I submit posts to, which is why I was interested the eBizMBA article on the 30 largest bookmarking sites.

The poster ranked the list according to “a combination of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast,” all of which together give a pretty accurate idea about their relative audience size.

Which sites do you submit your posts to? Are they chosen for your niche, or just for their popularity? Check the list to see if you’re sending your posts to the right places.

30 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites July 2007

Did You Enjoy this Post? Subscribe to Accelerated Blogging

Sphere: Related Content

Jul

30

Choosing the Right Niche for Your Blog

Filed Under Lessons, Featured | Leave a Comment

This post is for beginning bloggers. If you are in the contemplating phase of your blogging career, the most difficult and important decision you will have to make is very straightforward: What should I blog about? Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to help you with this decision.

What am I good/great/expert at?

For some of you that decision is actually quite easy. You are an expert on a topic that people are interested in. If you happen to be an expert on digital photography, for example, you have a ready-made niche. That’s what you should go for. You’ve presumably taken many years to acquire your expertise, and it has enormous value, so you should be able to leverage that knowledge base very effectively.

What interests me?

You don’t have to be an expert at something to write about it. If there’s a subject in which you have a deep and abiding interest, your enthusiasm can carry the day. Your zeal on this topic will spur you to investigate it, research it, and otherwise own it. The other advantage of being interested in the topic is that you’ll be motivated to blog. One of the best parts of blogging as a career is that you will hopefully be doing something you love to do. If you can wake up every morning actually looking forward to your work, you’ll have a rare and wonderful thing going.

What are people searching for?

The thing about a niche is, there are people who really want to know more about that topic. It’s a big world out there, with billions of people. It would be better to write about something that half a million are passionate about than something billions don’t give a rat’s behind about. You don’t have to look further than countless bloggers’ site titles and descriptions to see that they have no focus. “Randy’s Ramblings,” or “Tonya’s Random Musings.” I’m sorry, but I just don’t care to wander through the detritus of a stranger’s stream of consciousness.

If you can combine these three characteristics into one blog’s theme, you could very well have a winner on your hands.

Did You Enjoy this Post? Subscribe to Accelerated Blogging

Sphere: Related Content

Jul

29

Top 5 Mistakes That Keep Blogs From Building Traffic

Filed Under Lessons, Tips, Featured | Leave a Comment

This blog tends to focus on the positive, on tips to enhance your blogging effectiveness. But there are also useful tips that are negative, common mistakes that detract from the effectiveness of your blog. Sometimes you have to get rid of the bad to create the good. How do I know what stops a blog from gaining and keeping readers? Simple: I put myself in the shoes of readers and think about what turns me away from certain blogs. Here is my list of the top 5 things that keep blogs from growing consistent traffic.

  1. Terrible grammar and spelling: One of the characteristics of phishing emails tends to be horrible grammar. I mean, would the officials of the UK Lottery really send you an email that abuses the Queen’s English that badly? Everyone can let a typo slip by their proofing once in a while, but consistently writing you when you mean your just takes away from the professionalism and skill you want to convey.
  2. Information overload: Blogs that have the density of a neutron star tend to be overwhelming and send me scurrying for a breath of air. There’s just too much there, and rather than sort it all out I’ll just go elsewhere. One caveat: If the information is sorted and categorized extremely well, that’s a different matter.
  3. Enormous headers: When your header takes up my entire screen and forces me to scroll in order to see a bit of content, I find that too much to ask. I want you to give me a good reason to scroll down, and a header doesn’t do that.
  4. Link Pop-Ups: SnapShots and Kontera hot spots are arguably the most annoying things on the web. I find myself carefully navigating my pointer just to avoid them. On some sites they are everywhere, sprinkled throughout the text like little digital mines waiting for you to trip them so they can go off in your face. I’d rather go somewhere else where it’s safe.
  5. Positive reviews of bad products: I will forever distrust someone who tries to sell me a bad product. They may sell me once, but never twice. When I review a product on my blog, or just recommend it, I need to know that it’s a good product. There are many products I find that I cannot recommend in good conscience, so I don’t. It pays to examine what you are recommending before recommending it, and if you write about a product with some negative aspects, be sure to include that information in your post.

Lord knows there are lots more, but these are the ones that I find detract the most from effective blogging. Enjoy!

Did You Enjoy this Post? Subscribe to Accelerated Blogging

Sphere: Related Content

Next Page →