makemoneyfromhometips.com Blog

Social Bookmarking Traffic Is Loyal

January 26, 2008 on 2:50 am | In social media marketing, stumbleupon | | 2 Comments

Yesterday, I experienced a nice increase in traffic. Some may not think it amounts to much, but I like to celebrate all my successes, great or small with the same amount of enthusiasm.

As familiar as I am in various social media groups, there are still many things that could stand some polishing.

For instance, that the dynamics of my relationships will change, affecting everything. What I’m about to show you is the effect you get when you begin to properly create strong networking relationships and the fruits that they can bear.

Three groups within my circle of social media sites dominated my referred traffic. Probably because I spend more time in these groups than any other.

Entrecard was responsible for 85.71% of referred visitors; these visitors also clicked through ads more than other traffic sources.

My StumbleUpon friend, TrishaLyn, who stumbled my story had the second highest referral rate, with a 40% traffic surge. You’ll want plenty of business cards after you register for the Affiliate Summit West 08.

And PsPrint has a 20% discount off Premium Business Cards. The designs are very unique, and create powerful marketing messages. Check them out.

Mixx was also a strong referrer. Friends like spacer, disturbedme101,
and digitalfever, among others voted for my story. Thanks everyone.

Two Page Rank 6 sites also ran my stories. The Post Chronicle and Huliq (I had never heard of these two sites.)

The biggest surprise of the day came from my other blog, Teasa’s Blog Marketing Techniques.

It seems I also got a fair amount of referral traffic from there as well. There is a feed from Offbeat News on here, so in hindsight, this may not have been a bad idea.

Social media marketing is the epitome of what we practice in everyday life.

According to Google Analytics, yesterday I had 2,697 Page Views and 1,712 Unique Views. My traffic also spent 8:12 minutes reading material on the blog. The traffic bounced around to other pages within my blog; my other regret here is if I had of continued my practice of deep linking within my posts. I’ll start doing that again. Here ares screen shot of my Google Analytics for 1/24/2008 for Offbeat News And Videos.

I also had great reciprocal traffic from Teasa’s Blog Marketing Techniques. A month ago I inserted the code feed code from Offbeat News And Videos. Since I had written a popular post on this blog, “StumbleUpon Tips Of The Day,” the increased traffic from that blog spilled over unto Teasa’s Blog Marketing Techniques. A naïve move on my part; when I first placed the feed there, I had no idea the potential value it would have.

A long post I know, but this needed to be shared with anyone interested in increasing blog traffic from social media marketing.

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My StumbleUpon Page

StumbleUpon Tips Of The Day

January 24, 2008 on 7:33 pm | In social media marketing, stumbleupon | | 2 Comments

My StumbleUpon Page

If you’re using StumbleUpon as a source of social media marketing, you’ve chosen a highly responsive group of people to network with. I’ve been stumbling since last July and I’d like to pass along some lessons for success there. Also, StumbleUpon stories that get stumbled a lot will definitely cause you to have higher search engine rankings.

1. Treat people like comrades and not sales prospects.

2. Respect the relationships you develop.

3. Visit random blogs in your niche, subscribe to their feeds and leave nice, constructive comments about them. When you leave comments think of it as visiting someone’s house for the very first time and while there you enjoyed yourself. Sending a thank you card is always appreciated. And don’t ask for anything in return, leave a nice comment because you mean it.

4. Install the StumbleUpon toolbar so you can stumble random sites easily. Give those sites the thumbs u if it’s something you like and are interested in. Don’t forget to give your own site and posts the thumbs up as well. You like your site don’t you? Another good reason to install the StumbleUpon toolbar is so you can quickly send links to your favorite posts to all your friends. Simply click on the “Send To” button and all your friends appear in a drop down menu.

5. If you want to add friends, visit your StumbleUpon page to see who has viewed your page recently. Simply click on that number (usually in red) and a list o the most recent visitors who checked out your site will appear. These people are not your friends yet, but you have the option of requesting their friendship. Until I started using this option, I didn’t realize the power of StumbleUpon.

I usually visit their pages, stumble their faves, and click “add as friends.”

The reason I stumble their faves is becaus in social media marketing, friendship is powerful. Respect needs to be given to that power. Remember in order to make friends you must first show yourself friendly and more friends will come to you.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you how a late night news teaser turned into a traffic bonanza for one of my blogs!

Stumble It!

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Social Network Marketing Etiquette

January 1, 2008 on 8:56 pm | In social network marketing, social network marketing etiquette, stumbleupon | | No Comments

When you’ve got a friend, that friend will sing your praises for all to know if necessary. That is one of the values of friendship. And the more friends you have just means they value your company and you theirs.

In social network marketing groups no one blog can stand alone. If you are without friends in a group such as StumbleUpon or even Facebook, you probably aren’t marketing your blog very well and the traffic you get or aren’t getting is a direct relation to that.

I believe networking with only those blogs in which we share like blog-o-torial (new word I just created) behaviors. This strategy, will result in higher traffic numbers for myself as well as those bloggers who trade links with me. As a cohesive unit we will stand a better chance of benefiting from a pool of shared, like-minded readers as opposed to small crumbs or chunks here and there.

For those marketers who were deeply into list building, StumbleUpon is a variation of that, but without the spam. However, etiquette plays a big part in the level of success you achieve when maximizing the friendships you foster there. Here are some rules to follow when you are Stumbling.

1. Review a stumbler’s post. It doesn’t hurt to look at and read what the community is doing. This helps when you request friendship.

2. Use the Connect With Friends option. This always helps when you invite friends to stumble with you.

3. Utilize the Browse People button to discover other like minded bloggers and stumblers. It’s like introducing yourself to strangers at a party.

4. Share popular, blog relevant videos you find. Click the link for this stumblers’ video submission. It is a video of a robot drawing a human face. Kind of weird and offbeat, the kind of information you’re going to find on this blog. Click For the Video.
Reviewing other stumblers is a show of professional courtesy. Be careful in requesting reciprocal reviews, some stumblers frown upon this (oh by the way I forgot to mention, this particular video is a recently popular one.)

5. Be patient. Building relationships with people takes time. Be willing to invest the most precious thing you have, time.

6. Dedicate a specific amount of time to cultivating those friendships. I’m learning to spend less time on multiple submissions, and more on a few key submissions per week, and then spend the rest of my time exchanging blog posts with my friends. I’m going to treat friend time like a few friends chillin’ and having a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

I figure the less I focus on magnitude and more on qualitude (another word I created), then the target audience will follow.

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Pwned: The StumbleUpon Digg Experiment Initial Results

December 18, 2007 on 1:30 am | In Social Internet, Social Marketing, Social News Sites, social media, social media marketing, stumbleupon | | No Comments

First, a disclaimer about this experiment and the analysis.

In retrospect, this experiment was flawed. The subject matter and style of delivery was very clearly geared in favor of one of the combatants. When it was initially conceived, it was decided that the experiment would best be delivered through a post that announced itself. By checking traffic statistics on a post titled: “The StumbleUpon Digg Experiment”, there would be equal billing, equal exposure, and most importantly, equal chances through the delivery methods to give both sides a chance.

We were wrong.

In retrospect, it is clear that the title and subject were more geared towards a social experience. While Digg offers ways to share stories with friends, it isn’t nearly as suited for this as StumbleUpon is. The very nature of SU is designed to where members passively share stories they like by stumbling and reviewing them. Digg requires active participation by people to see the story. Stumble requires nothing other than clicking and waiting for websites to be served to them.

The Digg traffic of lore says that websites will get tens of thousands of visits in a short period of time. The problem is, not all stories get this kind of traffic when they hit the front page. Because they have to be actively clicked on, people have to have an interest to click. This story, while more popular than past stories that have hit the front page of Digg from this blog, still didn’t have the universal appeal to get a ton of traffic.

Stumblers are, by their nature, more interested in stories about SU than Digg users are interested in stories about Digg. This and other factors make this experiment somewhat flawed. Thus, the results were tremendously in favor of StumbleUpon.

Detailed statistics are being compiled. We are breaking it down hour by hour, noting traffic spikes and comparing them to specific times of reviews on SU. The data so far is interesting, but for those interested in the general results, here they are:

Story posted early in the morning, PST, December 14th. It was Dugg shortly after being posted by ThinkingSerious. Then, it was Stumbled by hockeyguru around 7:00 am PST.

December 14th, 2007:

* Traffic from StumbleUpon: 15,694
* Traffic from Digg: 8,463

Surprised? So was I. Traditional thought is that Digg wins the short race and SU catches up over time. Again, the subject matter/headline were geared to get Diggs, but not actual visits. Another thing to note as that this story made it to the “Top in All Categories” box on the front page. Less than a minute later, it was buried off that page after getting 24 hits. Stories that do can get a huge bump in traffic for that day. Some stories whose statistics I have seen have gotten twice as much traffic or more from being there than they did when they were initially on the front page.

December 15th, 2007:

* Traffic from StumbleUpon: 4,761
* Traffic from Digg: 2,357

This is actually a very encouraging number from Digg. Considering most of the traffic came from people when the story had to be found on deep inner pages, this is a huge number relative to the original day’s response. Stumble traffic, if anything, was a little disappointing, as some stories get 80% of their initial day traffic on day two. Despite the positive reviews still rolling in on day two, the percentage compared to the first day was low.

December 16th, 2007:

* Traffic from StumbleUpon: 3,689
* Traffic from Digg: 349

There is the drop that happens with Digg. There is also the famed residual traffic from Stumble.

Again, let me be clear. This story was unintentionally geared to for SU. The results are not a real representation, as stories that aren’t about Social Media will still have the normal results of Digg wins the first day and SU may or may not catch up over time. The subject matter appealed to SU’s manner of delivery. One digg is one digg and helps very little. One stumble and especially a positive review by the right person can generate a chain reaction, a viral effect that can snowball into more and more stumbles.

Thank you to all who participated by reading, sharing, stumbling, and digging this story. We want more data. If you have statistics from posts other than social media themed ones, please contact us. We want to explore, analyze, and share the data.

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