A lot of resolutions been talked about lately. How many of you have set up goals based on what you’ve learned in the past? Now I must admit, initially I have no intention to do a blog review based on performances in 2009. To dig up old archive seem troublesome and it’s much better to save effort for a much productive work, right? Wrong.

Measuring blog success isn’t just about bragging how good you are, but identify how much you could or should have done to improve blog traffic. Bottom line, if you are serious to increase blog traffic, a review is needed for:

• Periodic goal-settings

• Understanding own potentials and ability

• Measuring current blog status and progress

• Knowing parts to improve and avoiding repeated mistakes

• Following up on lost comments & connections

Based on these 6 ways to track blog success, I can have a general idea how my blog survived all the way from March, 2009 (1st post about social media). During the process, I immediately realized the first and utmost lesson is to involve Analytics and Feedburner more in my planning instead of just a casual check monthly.

Popularity and Blog Traffic Review

Results are ranging from 17th March, 2009 to 6th January 2010 (my 1st day of work in 2010):

What I love about tracking comments is to find out which post type attracts the most discussions; what matters to the readers when they visit and the content that stands out from the rest. Engagement is a big deal here therefore I’m blessed to have a group of loyal readers who are taking comments very seriously! May the spirit continues in 2010. Of course, in order to obtain more accurate results, social media strategies and time factor are to be taken into considerations as well.

Other criteria that helped in commenting: Do-Follow, CommentLuv (Reasons To Love), Blog Promoting via Social Media

Top 5 Famous Posts via Google Analytics:

13 Facebook Applications to Promote Your Blog
How To Pick Up From Your Blogging Downturns
How Seriously Do You Take Blog Comments?
16 Social Bookmarking Plugins to Promote Your Posts
16 Misconceptions About ‘Serious’ Blogging

The results are slightly different but undeniably, Facebook is a hot topic here. The post was only written in October, 2009 but it overtook other posts and came first in Analytics. Also, it made me realized which type of posts are search-worthy; which are favored in social bookmarking sites and so on.

My Top 5 Traffic Source in 2009

I’m only active in Stumbleupon after migrating to wordpress in July. SU brought me a lot of new visitors but its bounce rate was still among the highest comparing to other traffic source. In order to capture the right audience in StumbleUpon, do make sure the submitted post is tagged correctly. Here’s a great post of 5 Tactis to drive in traffic from StumbleUpon, old tricks but good tips. As for Google Search that improves to rank #3 out of no where, no doubt that WordPress plugins such as All In One SEO helped me a great deal.

I believe migrating to WordPress from Blogger is the smartest decision I made in 2009 to increase blog traffic.

Power of Twitter & StumbleUpon in Promoting Blog Posts

Even though I started to blog in August, 2008, I only switched to social media blogging in March, 2009. Between my first and last social media post in 2009, I found 2 spikes happened in May and September respectively. It was during the time when these 2 posts were published:

a) The Best of Twitter Desktop Clients – Secrets Revealed!

- (61% direct traffic while 21% Twitter.com)

I remembered clearly it was the magic of Twitter that drove in the traffic. Loic from Seesmic tweeted about this post and soon the tweet went viral! You may be surprised why Analytics showed most of the visits are from ‘direct traffic’ instead of Twitter.com, this is because some clicks from Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck, Twhirl etc will not be counted in Twitter.com but as ‘direct traffic’ to your blog.

b) How To Pick Up From Your Blogging Downturns – ( 85% stumbleupon)

I was very surprised with this result but I think part of the reasons is the kind support given by my blogger friends. Could it be due to the Su.pr evolution and easy-to-adapt toolbar for browsers which made stumbling quick and easy? I think so too since I’m also an active stumbler in the same way. Everyone can easily participate in more than one social media sites nowadays so it will definitely help if we manage to assist one another in post-promoting. That’s the beauty of integration and networking.

Now It’s Your Turn…

What is your most popular post and which social media site has been your main traffic source so far? Share your post link and ideas in the comment below.

Are you a prolific blogger who owns multiple blogs and eager to share everything on your Facebook Fan Page? If yes, congratulations! This post is dedicated to you.

We all are aware of how easy it is to autopost from A BLOG to facebook account. You can have plenty of app choices even among the 13 Facebook Applications to Promote Your Blog. However when it comes to multiple blogs, sometimes we are forced to input them manually or rely on combination of apps such as Notes, Social RSS to make it happen. Actually there’s an easier way!

Here’s a request earlier from a blogger friend who posted on my blog’s fan page :

As much Wordbook sounds promising, we know it is not capable enough to post for multiple blogs and to Facebook Fan Pages. Truth is, you don’t have to add any WordPress plugins. The answer lies in the hand of NetworkedBlogs and I’m gonna show you how:

Register Your Blogs to NetworkedBlogs

First requirement is you need to make sure all your blogs are registered to NetworkedBlogs and you’re following them individually (skip this section if you’ve done that already):

1.  Add NetworkedBlogs to your Facebook application.

2.  Then click ‘Register a new blog’. Fill up the details required.

3.  At ‘Blog Feed’ section, click ‘Pull Now’ to import all posts from your blog. Refresh the page if needed.

4.  Verify your account for each blog (either way) following the instructions given (Repeat step 2 – 4 for your multiple blogs) :

Configure Your Facebook Fan Page For Autoposting

1.  Go to your Facebook Fan Page. Click ‘Edit Page’ to enter management page.

2.  Scroll all the way down to locate ‘Networkedblogs’ and hit ‘Edit’.

3.  All the blogs you’re currently following will be displayed in the Page Settings. Select the blogs you wish to import to your Facebook page.

4.  Grant permission and Save your settings.

Done. Now whenever your blogs are updated with new posts, they will be published on both Facebook page and personal account.

But, what if you wish to prevent personal account from receiving blog updates?

Some people may not like to harass their real life friends with business related info, here’s what you can do:

1.  In NetworkedBlog, look for ‘Feed Settings’ at the right sidebar to change your feed-posting preferences.

2.  At ‘Fan Pages’ section, click ‘Configure’ and mark the ‘Auto-Publish blog posts to Page Wall’ ; whereas for Personal Profile remained un-ticked.

That’s it! All can be done within Facebook Fan Page! Import as many entries you need to enhance blog traffic.

Recommended Read: How to Import Twitter Favorites to Facebook Page
(More ways to import blog posts to your facebook Page with RSS feed)

Here’s A Great News…

We reached 100 members today so we got ourselves a custom URL ~ facebook.com/SocialBloggingTracker ! YAY! You guys rock and can’t thank you all enough for the participation. If you haven’t join us, by all means! It’s a perfect place for all readers/social media enthusiasts to meet and get inspired!

Do you find the tutorial useful? If you know a better way to autopost from multiple blogs to Facebook Fan Pages, do share with us in your comment.

We all read other people’s blogs. And often the case we’re advised to leave our digital footprints in ‘comments’. Hoping by doing so, while gaining some link juice (from Do-Follow blogs), the author or visitors will be kind enough to, maybe, return the favor? That’s the general idea of commenting as one of the traffic-magnet and relationship-building strategies, is it not?

I am NOT someone with the highest ability of commenting, but just how serious we should take blog comments? I know there is a need to be succinct so we could have links spread on 100 new blogs daily! However, what if all the efforts went down the drain just because we didn’t  apply QC in our commenting?

There should be an awakening on …

Treating Commenting as Micro-blogging (Quality over Quantity)

Even I, made the exact same mistakes! Came across a perfect post that I have nothing else to add but to compliment on the effort. Then it makes me realize, “Gosh, I’m doing the ‘You’re great’ type of commenting!” Then I’m in dilemma – shall I comment at all? Does the author bother to check out who am I?  Of course you can, but you may need to do it differently. We’ll be discussing about that shortly. But first:

What type of posts attract comments?

Ask yourself, what do you like to read best? Here are just some that probably have crossed your mind:

• Informative & thought provoking.

• State out a problem, providing solutions, asking for more opinions and added ideas.

• An inspirational story that makes people go teary eyes, strike the emotional cords.

• An honest confession / experience that teaches a lesson.

• List post that’s one of a kind – resourceful, entertaining or different.

• Self made comic, poetry, vodcast – there’s a risk for putting yourself out there, but surely there will be tons of feedback on it. Be prepared as some may not ‘enjoy’ it as much.

• Tool-type reviews – How cool/ effective is the tool? Sometimes it requires more than just a brief content to evoke comments. Otherwise people will be more into ‘great review, I’ll consider using it’. Don’t blame them for doing so. They may read through them just not in need of using it for the time being.

• Totally Out Of The Box!

My Personal Favorites:

Informative + personalized postings = while absorbing the useful information I could learn a bit more about the author as well — personality, creativity, his/her art of blogging… It matches my goal in learning while building a relationship with the author through commenting.

What type of comments that least likable by authors?

a) Covering 80% of the already limited sentences with same-meaning vocabs — ‘great, love, good’ or ‘bad, sucked, hate’.

“This is great. Love your blog. Good job!”
“This sucks! Dislike the idea and really bad!”

— Kindly prove your point a little bit more? Otherwise..

b) Not speaking straight to the point, left the author hanging with ‘HUH?’

“Thanks for sharing 8 great ways to drive in traffic. Can you explain how to get more traffic to my blog?”

— Do you mind to read the post beforehand? Or do you need particular elaboration? Try to be clear.

c) Translated comments from software with no further modification.

“I really like you to write the article..”

— Some direct translation might sound unnatural. Modification is needed otherwise the author may think you’re a bot.

d) Too extreme with self-centered opinions, with disrespectful tone.

“That’s stupid. No way that would work! I have a much better solution for this problem on my post ‘ABC’ (with link). I explained it more thoroughly on how to deal with problem XYZ with cool examples. So you guys do head over to my site and catch the real deal!”

— Seriously? Kindly be respectful and more specific instead of just self-promoting for people to visit your site.

e) Repeated ideas without strengthening your point.

“I like your point A. I also use point A to deal with Z problem. A is really a good way. We shall all apply A.”

“Others have given good ideas. I have nothing else to add.”

— Alright, A is good, but how did it really help you? Kindly elaborate on that. Nothing else to add? You gotta do much better than that to get approved.

How To Comment and Leave an Impression?

1. Be personal with your comment. Share you opinions/insights as you are microblogging.
2. If disagreeing, kindly be respectful and provide advises to assist author in strengthening the point. – you come to build relationship not to ruin one.
3. Needless to be over-used with vocabs, make it plain and understandable.
4. If ‘Me Too’, type anything but the two words.
5. State your interest/gratitude for the provoking story as it helps you in what ways.
6. Request for explanations for your doubts, respectfully.
7. Can you be humorous and unexpectedly entertaining? Even a ‘Me too’ comment attracts with a simple twist.

What If the post is too perfect and I have nothing else to add??!!

Bookmark the page, tweet it or stumble it! An action speaks a thousand words. Whether you meant it genuinely or to ‘bribe’ the author, doesn’t matter as you’re doing a good favor. A little act of kindness is always a beautiful thing to do, why not? It’s just a simple click away nowadays.

Should I notify the author? It’s up to you. I don’t see the harm in doing so but in reasonable frequency. Don’t ‘hard sell’ your effort and do expect nothing in return.

Commenting is a type of social networking

Drop the author a note at the social media sites, complimenting him/her for the great work. It’s much better than just a ‘I love your post’ comment — such visibility may not be in much help since no constructive comments are given. Or you can try Add/Follow the blog author in social media sites. Be initiative.

As of the authors,
Obviously, we still need to provide quality content or else, show people some personalities. Sometimes don’t just blame the commenter as maybe we need to improve our content firstly.

Here are some links that may help you in proper managing your comments and encourage feedback:

30+ Plugins for WordPress Comments
WordPress : Combating Comment Spam
WordPress Plugins for Comments

I don’t plan to use all of them for now, but plugins like Akismet, CommentLuv, Do-Follow, Recent Comments, Subscribe to Comments are the ones activated in my blog.

It’s Your Turn..

Do share you opinions on how to manage your blog comments. What are you likes/dislikes and how us, as visitors could improve our commenting skills over time? Love to hear from you.

Traffic is life and blood of Internet. It is the driving force of any successful online business. There are dozens of channels through which traffic may arrive on your web site or blog. Some of these are conventional channels and some are unconventional and relatively new which were non-existent a decade back. Here are some popular traffic sources that contribute in building traffic on your blog.

Organic Traffic

Social Media

Feed Aggregators (Email + RSS)

Guest Blogging

Discussion Forums

Article Marketing

Comments

Blogrolls

Advertising

Other Traffic Sources

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