Onedayblog.com Blogs

Posts Tagged ‘Online’

Blogs are without doubt the biggest thing to the internet almost since the internet itself. Blog as so popular it’s almost as if everyone has their own blog or two to share. While blogs are great, their popularity also makes them among some tough competition for the viewing audience. Creating the blog is as easy as filling in the blank spaces but most bloggers are not aware of how to get their blogs to the front of the line for internet traffic. There are few tips and tricks that can be used to increase your page views although.

Naturally the first step to get hits on your blog is to be sure to have an interesting subject. If you are writing about your professional life be aware that you might find your work fascinating, this may not be particularly exciting for someone else. I have no doubt that what you do does interest many people, but this audience will need to be specifically sought. However if you broaden your subject range you are widening your blogs appeal and target.

When you have decided on your subject matters you can then go about creating your blog. When creating your blogs content be sure to keep it useful for your intended subject. Trick two for content creation, make lots and lots. It is the content that search engines read and index to provide relevant websites to search engine queries, hence the popularity of the blog.

Ideally a high search engine ranking is what increases traffic to your page, but high rankings are not so easily achieved. If your blog appears in page 5 of the search results, the chances are it won’t even get viewed by the searcher who has moved on after page two or three. This does not mean you don’t stand a chance. It does mean that you really should explore a few other ways to attract traffic to your blog.

One of the hottest things behind blogs today are video websites, especially free video websites. These sites allow members to upload their own video creations to be shared online with the internet community. Once a video has been uploaded to a video website it has the potential to promote your blog to the many thousands of browsers surfing the video website. Video websites are an affordable and even free marketing tool for your blog, product or service.

Before you can take advantage of the opportunity to promote your blog using video websites you must actually create the video. You could use your trusty camcorder or even just your webcam. It is important that you should not appear to be spamming your audience, keep it subtle. Let the audience know what theme and intention your blog represents, and a little of what they are likely to find on your blog. Another idea you might consider are perhaps recording yourself or someone visiting your blog and showing off a few of your blogs features using still shots or screen captures.

Once your video has been created, you can upload it to your favorite video website. You may first consider editing your video using one of the many available video editing software applications available on the internet and save it on your computer. Then it’s just a matter of following the steps to upload it to the video website.

It’s important to remember that promoting your blog using video websites does not guarantee increased traffic, but it is a matter of not doing anything to promote your blog isn’t likely to help either. With the fact that most video hosting offered on line being free, and likely traffic your video does attract can be considered free hits.

More Tips and Tricks and even making your video can be found at http://www.vid121.com

There’s a very good chance if you are a regular Internet user that you spend a fair amount of time at online forums. For the people reading this article who don’t know what a forum is, here’s a brief introduction.

Online forums or “community forums”, are dynamic websites that allow users to start discussions by posting new topics, which other members of the forum can reply to. Forums are available for any topic with a following from hobbies, to business, to gossip, entertainment – virtually anything!

While forums come in different sizes, from the brand new that resemble ghost towns because no one uses them (yet), to large uber-communities, with tens of thousands of new posts made every day.

I won’t go into more detail because forums, while being simple in concept, are complex in features, you really need to go check some out if you have never seen one. Forums bring together like minded people with a common interest. If you are a forum virgin I think you will quickly become addicted once you join one full of people who share your interests and passions.

HOW TO USE FORUMS TO PROMOTE YOUR BLOG

Let me start with how not to use forums to promote your blog. DON’T join a forum and make your first post something like this

Hey check out my blog, it’s great – www.myblog.com

Blatant self promotion doesn’t go down well in forums, especially if you are a new member. Forum communities have rules for conduct and won’t tolerate bad behaviour. Often rules are available as “sticky” posts, which are at the top of each forum page, so read them if you are unsure of what is expected from members. Even if there are no specific rules, it’s never a good idea to start off your membership in a community by trying to sell or promote something. Would you start a new friendship by trying to get a person to buy from you? No you wouldn’t, so don’t try it in a forum either.

Credibility, as I’ve mentioned before, is important, and when using forums as a traffic tool for your blog, your credibility is important again. Forum communities often have what I like to call “elders”. These are members who have made thousands of posts and have a lot of respect in the forum. They may be moderators who have been members of the forum for many years. Elders have a lot of credibility since they have devoted so much time to the forums.

ADDING VALUE TO A FORUM

You don’t have to become an “elder” in a forum, although if you find a forum which has the perfect audience for your blog, becoming an “elder” it may be one of the best traffic strategies for you to aim for long term.

The important concept to grasp is — to actually get someone to click through from an entry you make in a forum to your blog you need to have credibility and add value. The more often you add value, the more credibility you gain.

Adding value to a forum is just like adding value to your blog. If you help people to solve problems, gain insights or make money, you add value to their life. How you eventually gain traffic is simple – you leave links to your blog in posts you make in forums.

Here’s how I do it

Step 1: Forum signature and photograph

Your forum signature is the most important tool for gaining traffic from forums. In your signature you leave a link to your blog and for most forums your signature can be automatically added to the end of every post you make. Once you set it up you’re done – every post you make to a forum is a little advertisement for your blog.

Make sure, if the forum rules permit it, that you set this up first. Some forums only allow you to have a signature after you have made a certain number of posts or restrict what content and style you can use in your signature. Be aware of signature policies before creating your signature.

You should also include an avatar/photograph in your profile which is displayed in every post you make. If you are into personal branding like I am, and you should be if you want more blog traffic, it’s important you start exposing your image and name in as many places as you can. Posts made to forums help increase exposure and public awareness of “you”.

Step 2: Add Value

Once you have the basic profile data set up you need to start adding value to the forum. This means you can’t be a lurker – just reading the forum isn’t going to get you traffic. You need to start making posts, demonstrate your knowledge, expertise and personality by helping people, interacting and making friends.

Step 3: Indirect Self Promotion

Once you have built up a little credibility you can start to subtly self promote your blog outside of your signature. It’s still not acceptable to spread links to your blog everywhere, but what I like to do is offer links to my blog pillar articles when one of them is relevant to a question or discussion in a forum. This is a great way to add value to a forum and send traffic to your blog – just remember you have to get the context spot on or you will appear to be self promoting.

SIGNATURE POWER

If you just focus on making 10 value adding posts to forums every day by the end of the year you will have over 3500 links pointing to your blog, sending a nice consistent trickle of traffic to your blog. The more credibility and respect you have in a forum the greater the potential for that trickle to become a stream or even a torrent of traffic.

For your Internet Help questions, including blog promotion, traffic generation and the like, I recommend Internet Help Direct where internet-related questions get answered by knowledgeable users.