MarkRMorrisJr.com

Step Number One To Building Huge Blog Traffic

• ·       Mine was easy and if you are a writer/consultant/personality of any sort, I suggest you follow suit. Sure a catchy name is great, but personal name recognition? That’s priceless.

• ·       If you are running a more traditional business, consider a name that contains one or more of your central keywords. People will know what you do, and it helps with SEO, too.

• ·       Keep your name short. In my case, I just used the form of my name I use on all of my published books. Short and sweet, no more than 4 words at the most, 2 is better and 1, if you can find the right word, or make one up, “Travelocity” is a good example. 

Step Two to Building Huge Blog Traffic

• ·       Choose a bold header! Mine right now is a huge vintage typewriter graphic that gets a lot of comments and has my name in huge letters.

• ·       Make your navigation easy to find and follow, make sure if I read your headings, I will know where they lead. No mysteries here, people won’t play your guessing game.

• ·       Put your most important information first. Since I want reads, I have my blog posts front and center with only a few other options. I have not added my “services” page back in for freelance writing, but the site still gets me jobs. 

Step Three to Building Huge Blog Traffic

•  No one shares crap. There, I said it. No one cares about your internal struggles, unless you’re funny, no one cares about your business discovery unless it can help them. Think this thought before you push “PUBLISH” Why would anyone in their right mind share this? If you can’t come up with an answer, it does not belong on your blog!

• ·       Give the audience great information. Go above and beyond. Find resources and graphics and make movies and music videos, and build tutorials and make them really awesome and if you do all of this in a niche people give a shit about, some of them will show up. Not all, but maybe a lot, if you keep doing it.

• ·       Make it stand out! You don’t have to be the best, or even better than most. You just need to be different and stick to it. If you do funny, do it big. If you do data, share away. Whatever your thing, make yourself stand out. I help. Really. Email me about anything writing or marketing online and I will send you some resources. I will.

Step Four to Building Huge Blog Traffic

• ·       Every post you write should be shared in multiple places, including your own personal social media.

• ·       Buy ads if you must, but understand, they are becoming less and less effective and are not the best means for building sustainable organic traffic, plus they are expensive!

• ·       Here is a  list of 20 hot social networks, as of April 2016, some of which you probably thought were dead, but aren’t and others you never heard of. Start sharing!

Step Five to Building Huge Blog Traffic

• ·       Use tools like IFTTT or Zapier (I prefer IFTTT and it’s FREE) to automate a ton of sharing so that every single blog post builds back links and gets in front of your potential readers.

• ·       Set up a social media dashboard to automate sharing in places these tools can’t reach (like Google Plus) and don’t be afraid to tweak  and repeat your posts. I have some short stories that get dozens of hits a week after months on my site.

• ·       Guest blog, post articles, do interviews and otherwise make yourself known. Leave links to your blog content as you go like a trail of bread crumbs. Make sure they are on topic and useful and they will be welcome. 

Step Six  to Building Huge Blog Traffic

• ·       Be active on social media for at least some time every week. Every day is better. Automation helps, but you need to be responding to comments, likes, RTs etc personally.

• ·       Engage in conversation and like other people’s work too! Share if it’s appropriate to your audience. It builds your authority and your reputation as a member of the community, not just a talking head.

• ·       Try to be the person you needed when you first got started. Or the author you'd want to be a fan, or a generous consultant who helps beyond their bottom line, etc. Be nice, it comes back to you. 

@Copromote!

• ·       The free account allows you a limited number of shares every day. If you want more, you can upgrade to pro, but their prices are a bit steep for what they offer, in my opinion. You’ll have to try it yourself, since I opted to stick with free.

• ·       You select posts to share with your audiences from people you follow on the site. Each share is worth “share” points, that represent the number of audience members your own posts can be shared with.

• ·       Select one of your own posts to “boost” and input it into the system. CoPromote users that follow you can find and share your post to earn points as well. I get dozens of RTs and shares when I boost, which lasts for 7 days, I typically pick up followers each day as well.

This great list of promotional sites

• ·       Follow the links and do your homework before you give them any information, especially money.

• ·       Check for online reviews on writing blogs if you are considering paying for promotion. The vast majority  of paid promotions sites give limited value at best. So be aware. If they have a single shot option, try that first.

• ·       Keep track of which sites you’ve used and the results you get. Be sure to pay attention to the rules on free promos. A lot of sites will promote you every time you have a giveaway, provided you follow the rules.

Contentmo.com

• ·       They shared my book on their blog, with an advance email to let me know it was going up so I could share it.

• ·       They promoted the post, with the other books that were also featured during the same time, on Twitter and it blew up my newsfeed with shares and new followers. I don’t think I got hundreds of downloads from it, but it definitely worked.

• ·       They have an active audience that continued to share that post after they had finished promoting it and I engaged with some great followers through it.

Twuffer

• ·       Set up what days and times you want to share on a calendar. These will be repeated, so take  some time to look at your stats and figure out when you get the best response.

• ·       Add tweets in the forms of links to your own content, links to other’s content, images, anything you would normally share on Twitter.

• ·       Twuffer will automatically use that new Tweet to fill the next slot in your pre-selected schedule, creating a constant cue of juicy, useful content.

Massplanner

• ·       I’ve tripled my engagement on Facebook, which was my primary platform for the past couple of years until recently.

• ·       It has google+ tools, which almost none of the others have and if you are not using Google+, you’re stupid. It works great. Less spam, more response. A little slower, but consistent.

• ·       The initial set up is cheap for basic service, the subscription is never more than $10 a month, and you OWN, not rent, your add on tools, so they work on the same $10 subscription forever.

• ·       The audience growth is paaaaaaiiiiinnnnnfullllyyy slooooow, but everything else works great, and I think the key is following active users and engaging them to turn them into followers.

• ·       Google+ communities are awesome. Many have huge followings, 20k+ and less spam, by far, than Facebook’s groups. The reach seems to be better as well, since I get almost instant response from posting there.

• ·       The +1 shows up in other places too when the content gets shared and the integration with Google’s other tools looks cool, although I have not had the time to play with it yet.

Get out and explore