Blog Marketing Strategics to Boost Traffic!

Being a newbie in the blogosphere, I need to do research from top blogs such as John Chow or GatherSuccess to find out what are the ways to boost traffic. Although my results ain't impressive, I do see improvement in the amount of traffic to my blog after implementing the 4 strategies which I will talk about later. I believe that consistent effort in practising these strategies will pay off eventually.

Now the selection of 4 strategies from tonnes of techniques found during my research, which I believe will help beginners like me.

Beginners' 4 Blog Marketing Strategies to Boost Traffic

1. Leave comments on high traffic blogs

Visit relevant blogs that share the same niche as yours. Leave your comments on posts that interest you. Be sincere and not post comments like "visit my blog at..." Visitors who find your comments helpful and interesting may click on your name and there you go! A visitor to your blog!

2. Join social networking programs

Earlier in my post, I mentioned about MyBlogLog [Review about MyBlogLog]. Till today, I have not stopped networking at MBL. It really brings traffic, especially when you have joined many communities of similar niche and made friends with many others who share the same interest. You can add them as contacts, just like friendster and mingle with them through the messaging system. Once again, be sincere in making friends.

3. Participate in community forums

In forums, you have a signature where you can create link to your blog. Being active in forums will increase the exposure of your signature to more forumers, which increase the traffic (or rather, chances of visit). Be professional in your posts and establish a guru status in the particular field or niche in the forum. This will lead to targeted and relevant traffic for your blog.

4. Social bookmarking

Bookmark your posts to high traffic bookmarking sites like Digg.com or Technorati and it will expose your post to many millions of visitors. If your post/article is interesting, visitors will visit your blog to read the post! Another way of doing this is to add social bookmarking links for people to bookmark your post. In this way, they help you gain exposure for your post! (See below for the Digg or Technorati links for example)

All the strategies above are free and easy to implement. Perhaps after I cashout some of the money from my other online ventures, I will experiment with paid advertising strategies and review them for all readers here.

Over-Monetization of Your Blog?

Many bloggers start their professional blogging venture by searching for all the revenue sources for their blogs. Placing Ads on blogs is the most common revenue source for beginner bloggers like me. However, have you ever visited a site with banners occupying most of the page or ad units placed all over the page?

Feeling irritated by ads that distract you from the content you are after? Yes, that may just be the feelings of your visitors when you place too many ads on your blog. There is a term for this, "over-monetization". Most beginners thought that having more Ad units will lead to higher probability of clicks. Statistically speaking, it may be true. Realistically, probably not. Why?

You may get a click from the visitor on his first visit. However, he may feel irritated by the overcrowding ad units and decides not to return again. This is what I term as "poor reader experience". What you want is actually consistent traffic, not one-time visits.

In the beginning, I was guilty of over-monetization too. After realizing that I have been receiving one-time visits with no returning visitors, I decided to work on that. And one possible reason I've come up with is poor reader experience!

That is why I've revamped my blog design a little recently, restricting only to a maximum of 4 units on a page. Google Adsense allows a maximum of 3 per page, while I add an Advertlets unit in the sidebar. Now even I myself feels more comfortable reading through my blog.

If you think that your poor traffic is due to over-monetization of your blog, why not take a step back and try reducing the number of ad units? You may just get a pleasant surprise with the sudden soar in readership.

P.S. I am still experimenting this technique. A follow up report will be posted after one month. Wish me luck!

Inline Adsense Within Your Post?

Many bloggers have started to put reasonable emphasis and noticeable efforts in ad placement strategies in order to boost revenue. Other than the usual side-bar loaded with a 160x600 skyscraper or a 468x60 banner in the header, people are integrating their ads into their blogs' content. One way is to implement inline advertisements into the post.

I researched for almost 10 hours before I finally succeeded. The final product was pleasing while the process was frustrating. Lack of support from Adsense or Blogger certainly made this project an arduous journey. After many rounds of trial and error, I finally got it right.

Now, sharing with you the fruits of my labor!

1. Login to Blogger, go to "Edit HTML" under "Template" tab of your blog.

2. Check "Expand Widget Templates"

3. Search for the line <div class='post-body'> and add the Red code above it.

<div style="float: left;">
<--parsed Adsense code-->
</div>

<div class='post-body'>
<p><data:post.body/></p>

4. Go to Blogcrowds and parse the Adsense code. Replace <--parsed Adsense code--> with the parsed code from Blogcrowds.

5. Save template.

Recommendation: Use 300x250 Medium Rectangle or 336x280 Large Rectangle for inline adsense within post.

Time - Critical Factor to Succeed in Blogging?

To succeed in blogging, time is an important factor. While there is no cost to maintaining a blog, your precious time is depleted for this sole purpose of blogging. For casual bloggers, they blog whenever they feel like it. But for professional bloggers, their blogs must be updated regularly in order to retain the readership.

Updating regularly does not mean a simple two-liner or just a comment on the weather. It is the addition of relevant content to your blog. We are talking about top quality articles which creates value for your readers. To maintain the standard of your articles, you need a great deal of time to generate the points and ideas, as well as pen them down in words and paragraphs. Much effort and time is required.

Articles are nothing to a writer with flair in writing. But for average souls like us, it may be a tedious job. I spend an average 45 minutes on writing a 200-word article, excluding the time taken to generate the points and ideas.

With my university semester starting, I may soon face the problem of insufficient time to maintain my blog. However, I shall look upon part-time yet successful bloggers like John Chow as my motivation. Time management is key to success.

He can make it, so can I.

MyBlogLog - Blog's Friendster?

I joined MyBlogLog due to a simple intention -- Join the community of a blog that I frequent. Little did I know that MyBlogLog is actually a social community for bloggers to communicate and link up with one another!

What is the opportunity that MyBlogLog offers? It is the opportunity to network with people sharing same interests and beliefs as you. For monetized blog authors, networking is important because people sharing the same interest as you will visit your blog!

For the past few days, I have found many blogs of similar niche to mine and learn a great deal from them. In the meanwhile, I have made new blogger friends who share the same interest as me, both local and overseas. Today, the world has shrunk with the invention of internet. Making friends has no boundaries! Everyone is blogging!

Reading about other people's daily happenings has never been my hobby, especially blogs that belonged to someone you don't even know. However, nowadays, blogs are no longer just musings about your daily life. Instead, it has become an avenue for one to share his thoughts and opinions.

While most of my friends' blogs (at least those I visited) are hardly blogs with a niche, many blogs at MyBlogLog have consistent content in a particular niche such as internet marketing or even recipes! Reading them can be a pleasure as it takes you through a train of thoughts. You can learn a great deal in the process.

So what's in for you at MyBlogLog?
A huge network of friends with endless number of interesting and entertaining blogs that talks about anything under the sun!

Sign up for MyBlogLog and join my community now!