We all want more traffic to our websites, right?

We dream of the day that we get that massive wave from Digg or StumbleUpon. And when we do, it’s a rush, right? We watch our stats climb by the minute – 500….1,000….5,000….10,000 visitors – “oh God, don’t let it end!”

But it does end. It ends as an ocean wave ends: breaking on the shore, splashing its wake up the sands and retreating once more to whence it came. Such it is with our blog traffic.

These social content sites are great, don’t get me wrong. And I’m not suggesting not to use them. I use them and will continue too. But the deluge of traffic they bring can often give us a false sense of our blog’s health.

Essential Keystrokes’ Char wrote about this recently in her Web Traffic – I’ll Take Quality Over Quantity. In her post, she explained how the traffic she got from Digg in a recent post was matched, and in quality perhaps surpassed, by a link in a post from a prominent blogger like Darren Rowse.

Now, don’t run out and link to Darren or Brian Clark thinking that’s the way to get traffic. Though it could be if you’re doing what Char does – write great content. Which is why Darren picked up her link.

But how did Darren find Char to link too? The relationship, of course. Darren had to know Char exists in order to find a link to her. That begins with the relationship.

Same is true of another good friend, Adam Kayce at Monk at Work. Recently, he had a post picked up by lifehack.org. Adam’s blog is fairly new, yet growing at a nice rate. However, when he got picked up by lifehacker, he got a nice, large traffic blip with a number of first-time commenters. His traffic has increased by a nice rate since. But most interesting is that his feed subscribers almost doubled in the few days after.

So even though social content sites are certainly useful, it seems that writing great content and building relationships is the key to building traffic.

What’s been your experiences? Am I right….wrong….short-sighted….somewhere in between?

You’ve heard the term social networking, right? But do you really understand what it’s about?

I’ve found that while many have heard the term, most don’t know what it really means. Yet, most of us are engaged in social networking dozens of times each day.

How?

Well, if you tell a friend about a service or product you like – you’re social networking. If you share another blogger’s post with your blog readers…you’re social networking. Hand out a business card – you’re social networking. Returning phone calls, responding to email, contacting your blog commenters, building relationships with other bloggers, even writing on forums – all of this – and more – fall under social networking.

Basically, social networking is a way that people of some similar interests connect. The beauty is that this happens when people you may not know find you (and your business) because of some connection they have with someone you both know.

Social networking is happening all the time. The real question, then, isn’t whether you’re engaged in social networking. Rather the question is are you taking full advantage of the social networking you’re already doing?

One great way is to utilize social networking communities such as Linkedin, MyBlogLog and Facebook. Each can get you linked to friends and colleagues who link to people who link to people – creating your network.

Need a little more about the basics of social networking? Common Craft put together another great video describing social networking in plain English. Check it out below.

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From the video transcript describing using social networking sites:

When you find someone, you click a button that says, “Add as Friend”. Once you do this, you and that person have a connection on the website that others can see. They are a member of your network, and you are a member of theirs.

What’s really cool, is that you can see who your friends know, and who your friends’ friends know. You’re no longer a stranger, so you can contact them more easily.

This solves a real world problem because your network has hidden opportunities. Social networking sites make these connections between people visible.

Like a map for a highway, they can show you the people network that can help you get to your next destination, whether it’s a job, a new partner, or a great place to live. Your network is suddenly more useful.

How do you use social networks? And what results have you gotten from using them?

Thanks to Chris Brogan and Beth Kanter for helping me discover this video.

Let’s face it, people do business with people – not with businesses. A business owner may like, want and need something that a marketing coach, for instance, offers. But the single biggest reason they hire the firm is because of the people they meet, talk to and build relationships with.

Why?

Well, people want to be in relationships. They want to feel connected to the people they work with. In some way, at least, the business owner wants to trust that the marketing coach really cares about them, their business and helping them solve their problems.

Sure there are other things business owners look for before they sign a check – like competence, professionalism, knowledge, previous results, etc. But ultimately, the relationship will be one of trust.

The New Oxford American Dictionary lists trust as: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone.

Think about it…aren’t these the qualities you want in your business relationships? So do your clients. So how can you build greater trust with your target audience?

• David Airey’s 5 Easy Steps to Building Trust Online
• Naive by Design’s How to Build Trust Online
• Susan West’s Building Trust is Key to Business Success
• Greg Balanko-Dickson’s Business Blogging Strategy: Build Trust and Rapport
• Marius Wlassak’s Earning Customer Trust Online
• Paul Sarvadi’s Building Profitability by Building Trust
• Shonnie Lavender’s Building Trust With Your Business Blog
• Beautify’s Building Trust in Your Business Relationships – 10 Steps
• Michelle Howe’s Earning Customer Trust Online

Here’s some examples of how others are building greater trust with their audience. How do you?

As I’m restructuring my business offers, I’ve been struggling a bit with branding. Though I help my clients with this all the time, it’s seems hard to help myself. No worries, I do have some excellent brand experts in my corner.

While branding was fresh on my mind the other day, I stumbled across a video on Phil Gerbysak’s site. The video, put together by ZeFrank, brings branding down to a simple concept:

A brand is an emotional aftertaste that’s conjured up by, but not necessarily dependent on, a series of experiences.
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If you’ve found my blog you likely know that I’m a huge proponent of removing nofollow from comments.

What’s this mean? Basically, it means by removing the nofollow attribute in comment links, Google and other search bots will follow links placed in comments – giving all commenters link love.

For me, removing nofollow was a no-brainer. I want to give link love to anyone and everyone for commenting on my site. I mean, why not? You take time out of your life to join the conversation around something I’ve written – it’s only right to want to give something back to you.

John Chow apparently sees removing nofollow differently. It appears he’s not about giving back to his readers and commenters. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. He’s decided to charge a fee – $10 per month – to have nofollow removed from someone’s comments.

Now I’ve never been impressed with John’s money making decisions. But this one is way over the top, if you ask me. And certainly one that I cannot, in any way, condone.

While I don’t want to get into a battle with anyone on this point, I do want people to know about this tactic – especially new bloggers who could make the mistake of both trying what he’s trying and paying him for it. Because for me it goes against everything the blogosphere is about. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong for others. It’s just wrong for me.

I see the blogosphere as a place of open sharing and giving. I see a world where people like Darren Rowse and Brian Clark give as freely as they can and yet still make a good living. Read Copyblogger. Go back in Brian’s archives. Everything you could ever want to know about writing great copy is there – free of charge. And the same with Darren. Problogger is the most amazing resource for growing your blog.

Yet, they both monetize. They both have affiliate links. They both make money off their blogs. What they don’t do is sell themselves out for a buck. And that’s why I appreciate everything they put out and will continue to be a fan for a long time to come.

Now, I don’t personally know John Chow, nor Darren or Brian for that matter. So I can’t say without doubt that I know John’s motivations. But it doesn’t look good. And I just wonder that if he’s willing to take this rather low tact, what else questionable would he/is he doing to make all that money he writes about.

I’m not angry or upset with John. I am disappointed in him, though. I’m disappointed that he seems to stop at nothing to squeeze every little dollar out of his blog. It’s his decision, his conscience and ultimately between he and his readers.

I can tell you that I WILL NOT be billing any of you for removing nofollow from your comments. IT’S ALREADY DONE. SO ENJOY THE LINK LOVE.

So what are your thoughts? Should you do everything you can to make money with your blog? Or is there a line that you don’t want to cross?

According to Seth Godin, we quit things all the time. Most of us aren’t studying ballet or trigonomety any more. We quit. Likely, we quit at the right time.

But as business owners do we know when to quit? Can we identify the right time to stop what we’re doing and head in another direction?

Seth was in Ann Arbor, Michigan yesterday to talk about this very topic – which happens to be the subject of his latest book, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches you When to Quit (and When to Stick).
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There I was sitting at SOBCon07 over the weekend enjoying the speakers and the conversations they started. Soaking in all kinds of great ideas for taking my blog the conversation (and my business) to the next level.

Then, out of nowhere he said it…what’s been on my mind since I began writing publicly. The meaning in the question I asked weeks back.
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As far back as I can remember I’ve wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. When I was 3 years old, I told my parents I was going to be a firefighter so I could “make people’s houses not burn down.” Around 10 I decided I wanted to be a doctor so I could help sick kids. By the time I was on my way to college, I was set on being a surgeon.

Well, I never did go to medical school. The awakening to alternative medicine when I was a freshmen at Purdue made sure of that. By the end of my second year I left college to pursue studies in alternative healing.

The next ten years or so was an amazing adventure. I studied various forms of healing, supporting myself as a website designer along the way. I eventually opened a healing practice and saw clients regularly. Sometimes the results clients got were nothing short of miraculous. Other times, the healing caused them turmoil – as though they didn’t want to accept change in their lives. Either way, within a few years, I was burned out.

One thing my healing work and my studies gave me was the sense of constantly looking inside myself for the meaning in things. It gave me the tools of self-reflection; tools I could use to look back at my life and see that I’d always wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. I know I didn’t want a private healing practice any longer. What I did know was I wanted my work to have meaning – to me and to my clients.

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UPDATE: I am no longer participating in this meme.

We all want more traffic, right?

Well, I’ve been watching my friend Garry Conn participate in Dosh Dosh’s Ultimate Technorati Favorites Exchange. Gary has seen huge traffic increases. As have a number of other bloggers.
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If I’m honest with myself (and you), I’ve failed at more things in my life than I’ve succeed. Yeah sure, if I look at my life over time, nothing’s really been a failure. I’ve succeeded at number of things from sports to business, mountain climbing to blogging.

But when I look at each, individual event – each day or moment – I’ve failed far more than I’ve succeeded. I mean, just something simple like not wanting to worry – I’ve failed at that a number of times today alone.

So what is failure? In general, failure refers to the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective. Basically, failure means having things not turn out the way you want them too.

Is that a bad thing? I think not. As a matter of fact, I think it’s quite necessary.
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