How to Direct Traffic to your Blog

This post was originally posted on BlogPressive.com for Impressive Blogging - http://www.blogpressive.com/2010/08/27/how-to-direct-traffic-to-your-blog/

I've always wanted a website that has grew and grew, and I've always wanted to give tips to others withsmaller blogs on how to make a success of traffic building. Since I started blogging in 2008, only 2 years ago, I feel as though I may not have made a huge success on those 'famous' names such as Lisa with 2CreateAWebsite or Rob with RobsWebTips but I feel as though right now, I have made enough traffic come to my site, and it'll keep growing but it's about time I shall share my tips on how to direct traffic and also target traffic to your blog.

Discussion Boards, Forums and Signatures

When I joined Host Gator to host my personal blog, JonnyRowntree.com, I didn't take much notice of how much the company helps out their customers reach maximum potential on the web. Yes, I've been with different hosts such as GoDaddy with the Hosting Connection and Squarespace with the Developer Forums, but there has never been a web host where I have been comfortable making posts with suggestions on how the host should grow, considering they may already be enough static websites and blogs on their servers. I do however communicate with the Hostgator (or sometimes I call them Gator) community and submit ideas about blogging packages and ask for feedback and information to others who use a package that is new to me. Now, discussion boards and forums are key to maximizing traffic to your blog or website. The past couple of the weeks I have been posting on the Hostgator forums, I must have received about 20 to 30 referrals per couple of days and on Wednesday, I made double the amount of traffic when I relaunched my website. Now, not only does posting on discussion boards and forums help you communicate with others who are interested in the same topics your website talks about but they are obversely interested in web hosting and website development, another reason you should find forums useful.

Social Media and Twitter Hashtags

Target traffic using social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Myspace because who doesn't use any of those sites at this moment in time? Make your readers stay connected to your blog using those sites, implement share buttons on your posts to enable sharing to these networks and you're going in for the kill. Now, how about targeting those readers? Well, on Twitter you can use #hashtags, which work with the search function and funnily enough, tweeters watch them for new posts and before you know it, you're targeting them. Of course, its different on Facebook as you can join pages that contain a discussion board and talk about the same topics you talk about on your blog. Overall, social media is sometimes off at targeting traffic in my opinion.

You can find our Twitter #hashtag, which is #BlogPressive.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is great for connecting with new readers on different blog and forwarding them to your blog. Not only are you reading this on BlogPressive, but you may also be reading this on TekSocial (hello!) too! Allowing guest posters on your blog is a great way of directing traffic as now only are you sharing about your latest post but the guest poster is sharing about their latest post, making your traffic go through the roof and you're collecting more followers. For instance, I'm a guest poster on TekSocial and soon TutorialZip so I'll be targeting 3 audiences, my own environment and 2 out in the wild! I also accept guest bloggers on BlogPressive, like Jack Kirk who joined us yesterday for a Hostgator review.

Comment Discussion

How do you target traffic and visitors? Are there any tips you can leave us or others that are really helpful? Leave a comment below.

How To: Receive Review Products

Like many aspiring technology reviewers on YouTube, I am always trying to find a nice product to review for my channel. I'm always contacting companies to try and obtain sample or review products. What person would not want a free product in return for a review video or blog post? 

To many, it sounds much easier than it is. In order to try and receive these products, you have to build up a channel of quality, professionalism, and mature manners. As a YouTuber with a fair amount of subscribers, wide range of viewers, and high amounts of feedback, one might think that getting review products is as easy as snapping your fingers. That's where many reviewers go wrong. In this post I will try and explain helpful tips to bringing more viewers and more products into your room or office through this post.

First of all, build up you content. Post videos on a regular schedule, advertise your work (but don't spam!), do your research. More than likely, companies will over look a blunt and boring channel with content found in a million other places. Think of it this way: you are contacting a company for a reason, obviously in hopes of receiving review products, and you have to believe thousands of other reviewers are doing the same thing as you. That's why you have to be better. Above the crowd. Stand out. It might take a bit of time to get strong amounts of views and hits, but in the end, it will make that much of a difference. This might mean spending your allowance or baby-sitting money on a camcorder that records high quality video, or even spending a few dollars a month on advertisements, such as the ones found on this blog. You don't have to go crazy, a nice set-up can be had for under $100. Quality is key.

Secondly, write to companies in a mature manner. Address them formally in an email, with key points about your channel, and you goals with a product they might have. Use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. You wouldn't write poorly to your teacher or boss, so why write like that to a company? I always tell my viewers to give the company a brief description of your channel or blog, an explanation or reasoning that you are contacting them, and a paragraph explaining what could benefit their company. It's nice to let them feel confident and comfortable with your review. Although this isn't mandatory, I always explain to a company that I could send the product back after full review purposes. They almost never require that to be done, but it's nice to let the company know you care more about the review than the product.

Lastly, and most importantly, keep doing what you do. Build on your success. Show your viewers that you care about them by answering questions, helping them build a better channel, giving advice. Don't feel discouraged if a company doesn't respond to you, or isn't interested in sending products. You learn from your mistakes. A closed door doesn't mean a new door can't open. 

I hope this blog post has helped you understand the measures it takes to receive products to review. I would also like to say that I love the new changes to the Social Blog, and I hope TekSocial will just rise with more amazing posts. 

-Brandon Goldman (iTalkTech)

YouTube

Spotify opens up link to Facebook

I've always loved music and Spotify especially for finding some of the unusual genres. Recently, this past week Spotify released a new version of its software for Mac and Windows (Linux if run under Wine) that spices up the user interface, social connectivity and overall peformance. 

Spotify did 'scrobble' your played tracks over the the Last.fm platform that allows your friends to see what you're playing when you're listening to it. Now, Spotify have extended the usage to social network giant, Facebook. The new UI offers a profile for yourself, along with your Facebook profile photo pulled in and all of your friends using the Spotify application, whether they are part of the Spotify page or not. 

After using it for just over an hour, I have become much a fan to the new changes and even more so to the Facebook feature. You can also import your own music library from the standard operating system music libraries such as iTunes and Windows Media Player. 

You can try it if you live in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France or Spain and unfortunately I don't have any invitations left.

Follow me on Twitter for more music-technology babble!

What happened to Bebo?

Currently I live in West London - I am 14 years old and I do keep up with the current trends. In Year 7 the prime website to be on was Bebo, I mean you could customize your own skin, add photos and tag them, draw pictures on your friends wall, and give them love! But what happened - why is AOL who brought the company on March 13, 2008 for a costly $850 million saying that it was not worth the investment, they also said that they are planning to sell or take the site down as soon as May 2010. 

I can tell you why: the interface. The interface that Bebo had was very crowded and didn't look very smart and elegant at all - as we grew up from year to year we matured in our tastes and got bored of the layout very quickly.

But indeed, as you should have already guessed; the overall answer to this question is Facebook. As I said everyone's tastes matured so we wanted something new, at the time Facebook was going mainstream and was very simple to use. As we grew older all of the new Year 7's to the school saw what everybody was using, and skipped the "Bebo" stage.

I hope this story was informative to you, as you can see I am a new writer here at SocialBlog and I am looking forward to staying here and being a writer. Thank you for reading!

Top 5 Must Have College Gadgets

I'm sure we are all very pissed excited that a new school year is about to begin. What's a back to school experience without your latest and greatest tech gadgets? Here are my top 5 must have gadgets for the 2009 back to school year. This article was intended mainly for college students but any high school or grammar student can benefit from this video as well. A good article review is under this video.

To read the full article Click Here.