Being a web business developer, I know quite a bit about strategy, planning and marketing a static small business website. I know how to drive traffic and convert that traffic down a marketing pipeline into your products and services. It’s basically just a formula, mostly.
Over the years I’ve seen my static site’s traffic fluctuate up and down a bit – but never in large amounts. Traffic usually just went up steadily. Sometimes I’d get blips by placing articles or running campaigns, but they were never huge spikes and they often returned to their nice, easy upward slope once the campaign was finished.
Then I got into blogging. Really just three weeks ago. Yeah, I’ve got older posts I wrote during my psuedo-live development time. But I wasn’t pinging and had no outgoing feeds. So I think of my blog as beginning three Sundays ago when I ‘officially’ launched it.
And boy have my traffic patterns changed.
Almost from the first day, I saw increases in traffic. And over the first week, as I posted once each day, got involved with MyBlogLog and commented on other blogs, I saw a much more agressive upward trend – with some really interesting spikes in my traffic patterns. My blog had definitely changed my reach just in the first week.
Over that first weekend, I didn’t post at all and watched my traffic pattern drop just a bit below its pre-blog state.
The second week saw a steeper climb as I returned to writing on Monday and made more comments on more blogs. I also spent some quality time with MyBlogLog that second week. By week’s end I had some pretty interesting results:
- In my first two weeks of blogging, I had more unique visitors to my site than my best entire month of 2006.
- More interesting was that after two weeks, my page views were 150% higher than my best entire month of 2006.
- Lastly, my time per page view went up almost 1 full minute.
If trend continue, my first month of blogging should bring me more than double the unique visitors to my site as my best month in 2006. I should also see my page views rise 300% over my best month in 2006.
I’m not entirely surprised by these results. What I am surprised about, however, is how these results came with, what I consider, very little work. Basically, all I did was:
- Write one blog post each day – usually early in the morning. A couple of days I wrote two posts.
- On each post, I linked out to other blogger sites and posts
- I spent about 30 minutes finding and commenting on various posts.
- I joined and spent about five hours total with MyBlogLog. Then I visit once-per-day to check for updates and write comments.
That was it. I also managed to begin relationships with a couple of bloggers, Gary Conn and Gleb Reys. And, I had one of my posts, Why Would I Possibly Want to Link to My Competition, highlighted at LexBlog.
All-in-all, I would say it’s been a successful first two weeks. Interesting considering I have so many more plans for developing and reaching out with my blog. Today, the sky seems like the limit. I’ll keep you updated.
Tell me or link me to stories of your first weeks blogging. I’d love to hear more…
I agree, MyBlogLog has increased my traffic as well. And it’s a lot of fun, I am now visiting more blogs and getting more experience with bloggers than before. All thanks to MyBlogLog.
At the moment I am thinking about how to get even more traffic from MyBlogLog and how to actually use MyBlogLog, I am not sure what to do with my community 🙂
That sounds like something that would work.
But do you know if you should do something with your own community? Do you post messages to your community?
Yeah Jens, that’s my experience too. I’m slowly getting through the communities I’ve joined, finding more and more interesting blogs. So I double the ‘thanks to MyBlogLog
What I did, and will do more of, is search for communities and join those that look interesting. Then, I go through the communities and visit the members blogs, get feeds and make comments. MyBlogLog members will then see your presence on their blog and check you out. Some may join your community.
I think it’s a great idea to post messages. I don’t do that enough – aside from welcoming people to my community.
For, so far, MyBlogLog has been about making connections by visiting and commenting on interesting blogs. It’s worked pretty well so far.
Great work so far. MyBlogLog has been very useful for me as well in building my traffic, and finding great new blogs – like this one 🙂
I actually enjoy finding posts that prompt a response.
Having arrived here through a post you made on another blog I see that you, too, are a MyBlogLog member.
All the best.
Thanks David. I just joined your community and added you as a contact. I also checked out your site and subscribed to your feed. So I’ll see you around.
Thanks Brandon. I’ve been very happy with MyBlogLog too. I wonder what Yahoo! will do with it?
Well, it’s a hell of a start for your blog!
I wish you reach even higher results, and most of all look forward to learning more from your articles and emails!
Thanks Gleb. I second that. And same back to ya.
You make it sound all so easy. You forgot to factor in the ability to write compelling content, which I believe has a lot to do with talent.
Adam,
For me, solid, compelling content is a given whenever we talk about anything website-driven. Not that it’s always easy, or simple, to do. But like any skill, good writing can be learned.
Dawud,
I believe you can improve upon the your writing skills, but I also believe that some writers are born with the gift of being a talented writer. But I do agree that given enough motivation, a person can improve their writing dramatically.
Those of us not born with talent, must work harder…Feel like I am rambling…sorry too much coffee this morning.
Adam,
Oh, certainly. Some people do take to writing easier than others. Personally, I’m sort of in the middle. My writing seems to touch people, yet I do have to work at it. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.
One thing that helps me is to think of my writing and speaking as the same things – especially on a blog. So I try to write as though we’re sitting down in a coffee shop, talking to each other. This usually helps me remove any ‘pressure’ I feel around writing.
Sounds like an interesting technique, I will give it a try, thanks.
Adam,
Let me know how it goes.
Thank you for great sharing.Let me do it.
usa,
Sure. I don’t use MyBlogLog much any longer, but still find it valuable from time to time. And I definitely teach new bloggers about it still.