This post is written in response to Jeevan’s recent guest post – Why Commenting and Social Media Suck as Traffic Sources.
First of all I must appreciate Jeevan’s boldness; this is not the first time I’m seeing him writing such a controversial post.
I always find him writing his opinion in a plain and bold manner without thinking about the A-Lister’s or guru opinions – hats off to that attitude.
Let me now get to the core matter of this post.
Traffic is THE life blood of a blog. And we can’t do without it. We don’t have an upper limit for it. We always want more of it, right?
Of course, right!
Let me get to the two main points discussed by Jeevan in his guest post.
Commenting on other blogs does bring traffic. I cannot deny the same fact. But you need to be doing commenting the right way.
And as Jeevan said, this is gonna take quite some time and effort. You need to be doing more and more of it in order to gain attention.
Also, it is not just about the quantity, you need to be writing good quality, insightful comments.
When you start out and build up an online business, you should be doing a lot of it. That is how you will be able to send smoke signals to the community. That is how people will be able to recognize your name and your blog.
But if you become a super busy blogger, you won’t be able to engage in blog commenting in the same way as you did before. That’s from my own experience.
But I have not abandoned blog commenting altogether. I comment on my favourite posts once in a week. But I don’t do it for traffic generation.
However commenting still works to build backlinks (and with Commentluv enabled blogs, that’s a double plus)! Backlinks help pushing your pages in SERPs, they’re good for SEO (ya still!) and hence indirectly help you get more (search) traffic.
Sticking with blog commenting also helps you stay active in your niche community!
Bottom line: There is no “generalized” opinion on this issue! With time and with your kind of business, you need to tweak your approach with blog commenting. And the results you get out of it also changes with time and with the kind of your business. You can’t expect a flood of traffic with blog commenting; but it does help you stay connected.
Social media
This is one heck of a controversial topic. Some say it works and some say it doesn’t. Both are true in some sense.
Some big bloggers say “Don’t spend too much time on social media. It’s a waste”! That’s so true. Social media is certainly a time killer.
If you know how to stay in control of your time while you’re on social media, then you’re safe. If not, you’re in trouble.
However, in spite of all these bitter facts, social media still acts as a great channel to promote your posts. It is a place where the crowd gathers; so it is also a place where you’ll get noticed for sure.
For me promoting my posts on Facebook works great! For the others it could be Twitter, Google+ or whatever.
In my opinion, social media is a wonderful outlet to promote our blog posts and generate traffic.
Of course, you cannot be sure what kind of traffic you get if you don’t connect and interact with the right people. The amount of traffic you are able to attract also depends on your “kind” of presence on the social media.
If you login to Facebook only to post links to your blog post, then it won’t be surprising to see that you aren’t getting any traffic.
I submit my presence not just as an internet marketer. I scan my stream, participate in funny discussions, share funny and motivating stuff, and share some personal stuff (at an appropriate level) and all that. I’m basically that kind of person and I enjoy being that way on Facebook.
As a result when I post links to my posts they are very well received!
Bottom line: Again, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Social media works for some and doesn’t work for the others. And even so, some social media platforms work for some and some other platforms work for the others. Test and find out what works for you and spend quality time on it.
Bottom bottom line: Social media traffic might not be sticky and could lead to increase in bounce rates (that’s from my experience). Coz when people click through a link from their social media stream, people might not be very serious!
Formula for traffic generation?
As much as I and Jeevan have discussed what doesn’t work and what works, it’s just about time when everyone’s mind starts asking “Isn’t there a formula to generate blog traffic?”
I wish I knew the formula that works for everyone. But I know the one that works for me in a consistent manner. I’m not talking about the traffic spikes – but the right kind of targeted traffic that is consistently growing.
It is a 3 step formula and all the 3 steps are highly crucial.
1. Create high quality useful content. You cannot by pass this step if you want to attract traffic in the first place and if you want to also keep the traffic you’ve attracted.
2. Don’t be shy to promote your blog posts. You may use social media, blog commenting, guest blogging and all those tactics to promote your post. Choose the one which works for you. But whatever you mode you choose, make sure you establish yourself in the community first. Don’t be just a poster of your own blog post links.
3. Don’t ignore SEO. I know what you’re thinking. With the very frequent changes in search engine algorithms it is very hard to predict what “effect” your SEO campaign will produce. But stick to the basics. That should just be fine. Basics = Know your keywords, optimize your posts for potential keywords (don’t over-optimize, though), build backlinks.
Let me know what works for you and what doesn't. Let's learn from each other.