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E-mail List Building Strategy

April 18, 2011 By 15 Comments

How to build an effective e-mail list using a free gift and follow up automated messagesThis is a How To post, but bear with me as I go into a bit of background. Building and e-mail list and  gaining subscriptions to your blog are powerful ways to both help increase traffic numbers but also help you monetize your blog. By the end of the article you will know how to:

 

1) Build an e-mail list that also contributes to your RSS count

2) Give away free things and not feel guilty for it

3) Skin an alpaca, make a warm coat, and not cause any bodily harm to the alpaca

4) Tell when I’m being serious and when I’m exaggerating…maybe

5) Get your free Lonely Planet book put together by your fellow travel bloggers

E-mail What?

It seems that everyone talks about the importance of building an e-mail list for websites. An e-mail list allows you to connect more personally with your readership, and when the time comes offer something to them.

Why is this important? By subscribing to your e-mail list the reader has already shown an interest in your blog or writing. This makes connecting with them easier. It also allows you to deepen your relationship with them and eventually turn their interest into an action. This action could be as simple as coming back to your site, sharing it with others, or buying a product from you.

I was not entirely convinced on e-mail list until I started building one here on TBC and then used the service to help with my Blog4Japan campaign. I have to admit, the ability to reconnect with those already interested is amazing. Here on TBC I use my list to send out updates on new posts. This works for me as I don’t published too often (1-2 times a week max) and thus I don’t annoy people (hopefully). But you can also set it up to send out newsletters that go out automatically after a certain number of posts. This is what many travel bloggers do. Just make sure to customize the interaction with personal details or contests only available to subscribers. Everyone hates useless crap in their inbox!

Human Nature works both For and Against You

It can be difficult to build up registrations (through e-mail or RSS) as human nature usually falls on the reserved side when it comes to taking action or committing an e-mail address. This is where incentives come into play as human nature also loves free, useful things. By offering a free gift to subscribers you are able to reward them, and get them in the habit of taking action on your site.

My goal on Todd’s Wanderings is to get as many eyes on my writing a possible. A reminder to those who have already shown an interest is a good thing. I also want to eventually sell my own books. This means letting those who already like my writing know about my amazing new book, which is a good thing.

But I also like to give value to my readers. I want them to be happy they are following and getting to know me. Until recently I didn’t have the proper reward to give them so I didn’t begin being an e-mail list. I was only using facebook, twitter, and RSS. As of this month I will have a great new reward:

A free Lonely Planet e-book that I managed the development of and which features not only me but 39 of my closest travel blogging buddies. BAM!

Free Lonely Planet BookYeah that’s right, a Lonely Planet book. I’m super excited about this project, giddy about the release, and psyched that it’s free. But just because it’s free doesn’t mean that I can’t derived value from it.

Building an E-mail List

Yes, I promised you a How-To portion so this is it. But first (or is it third by now?) the basics. An e-mail marketing service allows you to manage e-mail distributions to your followers (those who register). This can be automated as well as done manually. I use Aweber as my service.

The main reason I chose Aweber (which costs a monthly fee) over MailChimp (which has a free version) is that all e-mail subscribers get added to your RSS count. This means more authority and credibility in one place.

Aweber is also the most established in the internet marketing industry, has the best delivery rates, has a more intuitive interface (to me), I can use my open brand (MailChimp’s free service carries its logo), and it allows me to do affiliate marketing. I’m planning to expand my online businesses so this makes the most sense for me (yes, niche site related).

That being said, if you don’t make money from your blog, or don’t plan to in the future, than Mail Chimp might be a good option for you. But for me, it’s Awber all the way, and so this guide is based on this platform.

Heads up. If you sign up with Aweber I do get a small affiliate commission. Thank you for your support.

How I plan to Reward my Readers

You would think that after such a long introduction that I’m going to share the secrets of astrophysics with you. Actually, Aweber makes it super simple to set up a reward system for those who sign up for your e-mail list. It took me less than 5 minutes to set up a new list, and create a follow up e-mail with the link to where the e-book can be downloaded.

Step 1 Create the list

Create an e-mail list on AweberThe first step is easy, you hit “create new list”, create a name for the list, and then you brand it with your particular website details. This is exactly what I’ll be using for when the e-book is released.

Step 2 Create a Confirmation E-mail

Create a Confirmation Message on AweberNo one wants to automatically be added to a list, especially if someone else added them without their permission. By setting up a confirmation message that gets sent automatically you are showing that you are concerned about the readers’ privacy. We only want people on our blogs who want to be there.

Step 3 Create a Follow up Message

Once you have created the basics of the e-mail list all you have to do is hit this pretty green button.

Create a New Follow Up Message on AweberThis will take you to a text editor where you can craft your e-mail that will be sent after the subscription is confirmed. There is a lot that goes into creating appealing Copy in this message. But for now we will only focus on the nuts and bolts of getting the message out.

Create a Follow up Message on AweberYou can style this with HTML, choose from a number of different templates, or even just send it as a simple text message. The key is to include in this message the link to where the subscriber can download your free gift. In this case the place where the cleverly crafted “INSERT LINK HERE” is written.

This will eventually take the subscriber to the place where Lonely Planet is hosting the e-book for automatic download.

The best part about this, and the reason I don’t mind spending money on it, is that once it is all set up everything is automated. From people signing up, to receiving their gift, there is nothing more you need to do. You can even add a sequence of e-mails that offer an e-mail course, or timed announcements. The only limit is your creativity and the interest of your reader. We don’t want to contribute to more “suck” in the world.

Unsubscribe

I know, I know. A number of you are thinking, “Won’t people just subscribe to get my free gift and when unsubscribe?”

Yes, they will.

But two things to keep in mind here. One, do you really want these types as long term readers? Maybe, maybe not. But what those left are the committed loyal readers you are looking for.

Two, it’s your job to draw them into your blog. You have enticed them with your sex siren call and great free gift, but your job is not over. You need to give them a reason to stick around. This is partly about aligning your voice with their interests, having outstanding and compelling copy in your e-mail, a sexy fake image in your profile (kidding…maybe), and also about not sending them crap afterward. You need to send your readers quality content, or make it exciting for them to stay subscribed. Yes, I’m leaving this hard part up to you.

I hope you enjoyed this tour through the world of e-mail marketing. For those of you wondering where the instructions are to the alpaca coat…I have land I would like to sell you in Florida :)

As always, comments, praise, criticism, and free beer (for me) are all welcome below.

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Filed Under: Build Traffic, Marketing, Nuts and Bolts Tagged With: ,

The Power of Building Relationships

April 11, 2011 By 9 Comments

How to network the right wayThis is a guest post by Caz and Craig Makepeace.

One of the most overlooked parts to your success, not just online, but in any field is networking.

Like it or not, “It’s not what you know, but who you know” is a very real reality.

Some people think that this is not fair and spend forever moaning and griping about it. For me, I’d rather just understand the reality of this, become an entrepreneur, and do what successful people do.

Networking is the fun part to your business. It is the part that I find is the easiest and can produce the greatest rewards.

Networking is simply building relationships. Relationships cannot just be beneficial to you from a business perspective, but from a personal perspective as well.

Networking Purpose

There are two very important points I want to make before I go any further. What I am outlining are strategies specifically to address how building relationships can benefit your businesses. We never ever build relationships with people purely for personal or financial gain. The rewards that come from networking are a side bonus. We build relationships with others because we love meeting and interacting with people. We always bring the attitude with us that we have the opportunity and ability to offer something of value as well.

The second important thing is these networking strategies apply just as much to the online world as it does to the physical world. Don’t believe for a second you can hide behind your avatar on the computer. Everything you do must be backed by authenticity and sincerity or else your success with networking will be short-lived. If you are networking in the online world, these strategies will be applied through your online communication.

Get to know the other Person

After spending a whole day listening to entrepreneurs talk at a conference, we worked up the courage to approach our favourite speaker for the day after the seminar. We introduced ourselves, asked him if we could buy him a drink and then proceeded to talk about surfing, Australia, the US and travel. We spent the remainder of the evening into the early hours having a blast with him. Not once did we ask him anything business related or pester him for his million dollar secrets. The next day he found us to say goodbye, and spoke of the fantastic time he had with us. He gave us his personal details and said, “If you need any help with anything, give me a call.” That was a solid relationship building evening.

If you are meeting someone who you look up to in your chosen field for the first time, make sure you do not bombard them with questions as to how they can help you. First, get to know the real person. Make general conversation. They will appreciate it so much as they are used to so many people wanting to learn their magic secrets.

Make people remember you

In business, people are interacting and networking all the time. How is someone going to remember who you are? One of the best things you can do is have your photograph on your business card. This makes it so much easier for the person who is sifting through hundreds of them to remember you. Carry your business card everywhere and hand it to each new person you meet. Let them know how you can connect again and that you would love share ideas sometime. Make it casual.

Be bright, happy and positive. Smile lots, make jokes and light-hearted conversation. This is really the best way to ensure someone remembers you. In reality there really aren’t a lot of happy friendly people around so if you can be this way you will stand out.

Don’t be afraid to share your story with others. There is a very fine line here between bragging and sharing. Speak confidently about what you do, allow your passion for it to shine through.

Let the person know you, know something about them and appreciate what they do. Without sounding stalkerish, mention a recent post of theirs you read, or tell them how helpful you found their latest book. Make it short and sweet.

Lose your arrogance

I’m sure we have all met the person who thinks they are so far above you that you are not even worthy a look down their nose. These people stink and have no idea about building relationships. When their walls come tumbling down they will find no one around to help build them back up.

I don’t care how big or how successful you are there is no one who is not worthy of your time. Besides, how do you know the success these people may have in the future?

The more success you have the harder it is to devote enough time with others who want to get to know you. It is like when you get married, the evening finishes and you feel really rude because you did not get a chance to speak to your hundreds of guest. Do the best you can. Always offer a smile at least, and a nice to meet you. People will understand you are busy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t treat them with respect and leave a good impression.

When talking with others always ensure that you spend time getting to know them. Ask them about their life and what they do. Do not spend the whole time talking about how wonderful you and your product, website or blog is.

Follow Up

The fortune is in the follow up. Allocate time in your busy schedule to follow up with those you have recently met and would like to build a relationship with. Send them a quick email, facebook status update or even a tweet.

Let them know how much you enjoyed meeting them and you look forward to meeting them in the future. If you spoke about any particular topic, mention it with perhaps an answer, a website, or a link you can send their way with helpful information.

Always be sure to pass on your gratitude and appreciation for anything that people have taken the time to help you with. I know it is easy to forget sometimes, but you must make this a habit. I have had people contact me via email for help before, and I have taken time out of my busy schedule to help them out. Sometimes I never hear from these people again, not even a one sentence thank you. It always amazes me as that is a prime opportunity for relationship building lost. I’m less likely to help that person in the future.

Start connecting with your new friends online. Join their social communities, comment on their work and share it. This all helps to cement a deeper relationship with these people.

Entrepreneurs are always happy to network and share. They understand the power that comes from building relationships. You just never know where that relationship may lead.

Never be afraid to approach people. You are worthy of their time and you have a lot to offer. If you approach your networking from this perspective, with an open mind for learning and sharing you will build strong and positive relationships with others.

People help open up doors that you never had the clear vision to see. You also have the ability to help open these doors for others.

Caz and Craig Makepeace have been living and travelling the globe since 97, both solo and as a couple and now with a three year old. They believe life is all about the memories and their travel tips and stories at yTravel blog and their fanpage aim to inspire and teach others how to make their life a story to tell.

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Filed Under: branding, Build Traffic, Marketing Tagged With: ,

8 Tips for Going Viral With StumbleUpon

April 4, 2011 By 41 Comments

How to help your article or blog post go viralThis is a guest post by Jeremy.

Have you ever wondered how some posts go viral with 100,000+ hits on StumbleUpon and others only get 23?  Or why two of your posts of equal strength and style differ in the amount of traffic you receive by several orders of magnitude?

When using StumbleUpon, there are many tips throughout the internet that are designed to help you maximize your ability to get stumbles.  The sad truth to this is that StumbleUpon is as elusive as figuring out Google or other large SEO factors.  The amount of metrics that go into determining what is good and what is bad make it impossible to decipher.

After years of playing with StumbleUpon, having an account blocked, and another become successful, then lose that success only to regain it again, I’ve figured out a few things that should be looked at loosely when trying to send traffic to blog posts.

1) Account Strength is the Beast

StumbleUpon lets you share many posts, make friends, and even have reviews of your account.  The more of these you have over more random sites, the higher your account will be rated.  This is simple; StumbleUpon trusts the views of users with hundreds of shares and a pattern of quality submissions than a spammer who only has a few dozen.  I did not even begin getting 100+ views on a stumble until after 50 unique reviews, and that is a modest count.

Try this: A great way to strengthen your account is to stalk sites that you know will get many reviews on StumbleUpon – like Matador Network.  Be the first to review a post immediately after it is live, and let the people behind you fill it with likes.  Your account gets stronger significantly from this.

2) The Friendship Double Edged Sword

Having friends on StumbleUpon is a great way to strengthen your account.  Your stumbles get a boost because people are friends with you, who in turn make you appear to be a trustworthy source.

Sharing recently stumbled articles with your friends, unfortunately, does absolutely nothing to get a post viral.  StumbleUpon cares more about organic likes than your friends liking a post just because you are connected.  With this, a post that gets 20 thumbs up and 5 reviews from friends may be stuck at only 50 views.

3) Organic Likes are Better

An organic like is someone who thumbs up or reviews your page that you are not connected with.  In order for this to happen they must stumble upon your site either by the toolbar or reading your site on their own.

When they thumb up your post or review it without any encouragement, the benefits are more substantial as this is a sign of an actual quality post.  It is possible for you to get one thumb up after a post from someone you don’t know who has a strong account, and end up with 600 or more views.

Remember: You can only get organic likes from your initial discovery if people are actually around to read your post, so submission time is key.

4) Submit Your Post at the Right Time – Staying in the Cycle is Key

When traveling Asia, I would submit posts at the equivalent of 3am, 4am, 7am EST time.  My StumbleUpon returns were low.  Why is that? No one is using StumbleUpon at that hour.  A post can’t be looked at if no one is clicking the Stumble button. Better hours are between 5 and 10pm EST when more people are at their computer.

When you submit, you get an initial boost of shares based on the post criteria (through means that are still unknown) and the strength of your account.  The rest of the traffic you get is from people that the post is shared with, and how many thumbs up you get.

If you get zero thumbs up, the post will fall out of the StumbleUpon sharing, and may never get traffic until someone boosts it in the future from reading your site.  If you continually get thumbs up and reviews from this initial burst, the sky is the limit and you will stay in the network for some time – the key to being viral.

5) What Posting Criteria is Good?

It is hard to say on this one. Since StumbleUpon is so secretive, everything is always purely speculation.  My best articles are always authoritative and not personal stories, making the use of the program even harder against us travel bloggers.  List posts also seem to do well as a site is deeming the “Best of” with authority and are generally easier reads.

The other major topic that you’ll see from time to time is photos.  We all have amazing photos, and it is important to showcase them front and center in any post you want to get stumble traffic from.  A post without photos is meant for certain doom.

Try this: You can get a feel for this by selecting the ‘travel’ topic and stumbling 20 or so posts just to see what comes up.  Here are the first few that I got:

“Mondays are for dreaming: Ten dream-worthy moments”

“7 Epic Journeys in SE Asia”

“Hohenzollern Castle – photos”

“Top 10 Man-Made Wonders: Amazing Monuments”

“Ultimate Guide to Packing Lists: 45 Tips for How to Pack Light”

“Mopeds in Mykonos – photo essay”

“Thailand Travel Photography”

See the trend?

The Pitfalls of StumbleUpon

Even with all of these tactics, there are a few thoughts you should keep in mind when submitting to StumbleUpon.  A few pitfalls will mean certain doom to a post and you will never get traffic to it again no matter how hard you try, unless a major player likes your page.

1) Review a post if you are the first thumbs up.

If you get a prompt for a review when you thumbs up a post, for the love of everything good, review it! A post with a like and no review is like the kiss of death and it takes a really strong SU account to bring a post back from this.  Ever see a post of yours stuck at ’1′ and no more, only to take 8 likes and 4 reviews to get it to boost to 50? This might be one of the reasons for the problem.

2) Small photos have an equally bad effect.

This may be a stretch, but from what I can tell, StumbleUpon really likes photos.  When you submit a post, a photo should be large enough that it gets grabbed by the thumbnail image on the SU discovery page.  If it is too small, the photo will be a generic image of your blog or blank.  That does not give a lot of credibility to your post, and seems to have a negative effect.  I’ve found that bigger than 240x300px does the trick, but this is an estimate.

3) Don’t Over Promote and Remember to Actually Stumble!

It is easy to say do not over promote your own pages, as a history of repeatable behavior is the sign of a spammer.  Break things up by actually using your SU toolbar and stumbling for posts, liking them, and giving reviews.  Forgetting these may flag your account and reduce your potency.  But even though using the toolbar is great, you still have to vary your discoveries from many sites in order to keep the appearance of being random!

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With these thoughts in mind, your StumbleUpon account can become very powerful.  But with that power, it is only as good as your organic likes let you become.  If you continually submit a string of posts that do not get likes, you will stop getting the critical initial traffic.  Be sure to balance the amount of discoveries you have from powerhouse sites and our independent blogs to ensure that your account gets ideal traffic on both ends.  Remember – It takes both an initial boost from your account and continual boosts from random users to go viral, and balancing that is very, very tricky.

For more great tips on using Stumble Upon check out Go, See, Write’s How-to Guide on driving traffic using Stumble Upon.

What is your secret trick to get traffic from StumbleUpon? Help us out and submit below!

Jeremy is the primary author of Living the Dream and Free Travel Contests, as well as co-author of the travel food blog The International Food Project. He has traveled to 34 countries throughout North America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East and currently planning his next long term adventure for 2013.

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Best type of Traffic: Quality or Quantity?

March 7, 2011 By 33 Comments

How Loyal are your ReadersAmar has now been elevated to a TBC Contributor! He is also British which is why all the words are spelled wrong :)

I recently spoke to a blogger, who despite having 5000+ Twitter followers, abandoned using it because he believed that the quality of the traffic coming from Twitter was poor. Almost all of us use or at least have Google Analytics (or some form of WordPress site stats plugin) but do all of you put the statistical data to good use? [Todd here. TBC members are now encouraged to us GetClicky because it rocks]

Traffic From Social Media

With Social Media being the main source of traffic for some travel blogs it’s important to analyse whether traffic derived from Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon is of any substantial quality. I believe it’s also important to factor in the time we spend as travel bloggers on Social Media traffic strategies.

I’m a firm believer in transparent blogging so I will use my own site as an example. Forgive me for all the stats but they are important to illustrate the point.

Gap Year Escape (at the time of writing) has 1998 Twitter followers and 628 Facebook Fans.

Time is a commodity that a lot of bloggers fail to ‘cost’ when analysing the productivity and profitability of blogging. Let’s first examine my own personal use of Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook

Time spent on Facebook is minimal. On an average day I spend a minute maximum. Whenever there is a new blog post, I share the link on the Gap Year Escape Fan Page. It takes literally seconds to do. In fact some online applications can share your new blog posts on your Facebook automatically.

Twitter

Time spent on twitter is much harder to quantify but it is certainly a lot more. I regularly check Twitter daily and have a healthy balance of user interaction, retweets and posting my own content. Links to my own content is what we are examining here which includes me posting my own links and users retweeting those tweets. I tweet my own content at strategic points throughout the day to hit the maximum amount of users. As you can imagine, a lot more time and planning goes into Twitter.

I’ve had both Twitter and Facebook for the same length of time but have over three times as many Followers on Twitter. I would estimate I spend half an hour a day on Twitter which is on average 30 times more than Facebook.

The results?

Facebook generates 46% more traffic than Twitter per month, Facebook users spend 47% longer on my site and the bounce rate is 4% less. Facebook not only generates higher quality traffic but also uses a lot less resources i.e. time.

From a statistical point of view, Twitter is far from an efficient use of my time. Clearly I should invest more of my time growing my Facebook Page as it generates better quality traffic using a fraction of my time. Furthermore, even with three times more followers on Twitter it generates half as much click-throughs as Facebook!

Now I’m not going to stop using Twitter as that would be a drastic action. Twitter has many benefits you can’t quantify such as relationship building with other bloggers. Furthermore, I have time to use both forms of social media. This just illustrates that some methods of traffic generation produce disproportionate results in relation to investment of time.

StumbleUpon

In one day I received 572 visits from StumbleUpon. Great that’s half of the 1000 challenge right there. The rest can be made up from Twitter, Facebook and Search Engine traffic. Job well done right? Not quite.

Let’s look at the quality of this traffic. Visitors from this source looked at an average of 1.15 pages. Even worse they spent an average of 6 seconds on the site and the bounce rate was 86.71%! Yes in purely numerical terms the traffic numbers are good but from a qualitative point of view it was a waste of time. It’s done nothing but inflate my traffic stats. I know that for some of you out there rankings are everything. Personally I would rather have a small loyal readership!

Summary

For many of you the 1000-1000 Challenge is black and white; achieve that target. Go further down the rabbit hole and you’ll get your fluffy white tail dirty. $1000 a month is exactly that. How you leverage that is up to you. Traffic is a whole other story. Would you rather have 1000 visitors from StumbleUpon who breeze through or 100 that stuck around, clicked an affiliate link and subscribed to your newsletter? There are many ways to ‘inflate’ your stats through social media and promotion. It may bring you instant gratification as your Alexa Rank goes up and you climb the tables but it’s a hollow victory of sorts. Admittedly you may be able to convince some advertisers and sponsors that you have a huge and thriving site but marketing and PR types are getting much more savvy these days. One look at your bounce rate and they might bounce too.

By my own admission, considering how long I have been travel blogging, my site traffic is ‘small’. But small is relative. Sure it would be nice to feature in Top 50 lists (which are almost always based on traffic stats or similar) but from my understanding I monetise more than the average blogger and have achieved various sponsorship deals despite my stats. I’d rather have that then the accolades (although they would be nice too!) What I am trying to say is don’t be in too much of a rush to complete the traffic side of the 1000-1000 Challenge. Focus on building quality and organic traffic that means something.

Finally, feel free to leave comments to agree or disagree with my own results. Perhaps your Twitter generates better traffic than Facebook? Maybe there is more worth to StumbleUpon traffic? Throw your hat in the ring.

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Win Traffic: Write Better

February 28, 2011 By 22 Comments

how to edit your blog postsThis is a guest post by Theodora Sutcliffe.

One of the things that many bloggers struggle with is, well, the word stuff. Y’know.

There’s something you’re burning to write. It’s original, topical, on the nail. You can see it already. Stumbled and retweeted to oblivion, popping up on Facebook pages around the globe…

But, somehow, as you sit staring at the screen, the words that are on there don’t seem… Well…They’re just not the post you’d imagined.

Not by a long shot.

In fact, editing text is one of the harder tasks any blogger has to face.

Here’s four tips that can help you clear up the structure of a post.

1: Write a List Post

When your thoughts seem woolly and a post feels like its going nowhere, turn it into a list post.

Break down each point you’re making into a headline. Write a couple of paragraphs about it, no more. Then cut, cut and cut again.

2: Begin with the End in Mind

Whether you’re starting with a funny observation, a general truth, a piece of dialogue, a description or advice, think of your ending line when you open the post.

All you need do then, is fill in the middle. And you’re there.

3: Use Dialogue to Structure the Post

In travel writing, dialogue can make a great, grabby entry point. You can digress wherever you want from that opening conversation, just as you might pan out in a film.

To wrap the post up? Just dive back into the conversation from the beginning. Try it. It works.

4: Research the Subject

Sometimes a post feels thin because it, erm, is. Research around your subject. Find facts your readers will not have heard of, things you didn’t know yourself. Use them to enliven the copy. And you’ll most likely find your opening line right there.

Once the structure’s finished? The editing begins. Here are four more tips:

Once You’re Finished Drafting, Cut the Word Count by a Third

Yes, really. One-third. Be brutal. Kill the adverbs. Massacre redundant adjectives. And, if you find yourself even thinking about whether to cut a paragraph or not, it’s time to cut that paragraph.

Cut Out –Ing Words

Why? They’re weak. They’re dull. They clog your copy. And who wants to read sentences that begin “Having boarded the train, we…”? Not me.

Dump the Passive Voice

Now, if you’re writing in Word, and haven’t switched off the grammar check, there’ll probably be an annoying little green line that appears when you use the passive voice.

It’s the difference between, “The priest cut the buffalo’s throat” and “the buffalo’s throat was cut”. AKA the difference between accountancy and drama.

Consider Splitting Any Sentence Longer Than 17 Words

There’s nothing like varying the length of your sentences. Though if you want to roll out expansive clauses of classical Victorian prose in high Dickensian style, the web is probably not your medium.

Generally, if a sentence is longer than 17 words, it will read better as two sentences. Or just a shorter sentence.

The shortest sentence in the world? I am.

Y’know?

Do you Edit? What are you own tips for crafting gripping travel prose and then cutting it away so that your reader stays longer than your own mother?

Theodora Sutcliffe has traveled independently in more than 40 countries since 1996 and has been travelling long term with her son since January 2010. She blogs at www.travelswithanineyearold.com. You can find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter: @mummy_t.

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My Little Nomads Traffic Case Study 1

February 9, 2011 By 22 Comments

This is a post by David from My Little Nomads.

Everyone is curious about blog traffic, how much other blogs get, and where it comes from. January 2011 was My Little Nomads’ 12th full month of existence. (I posted my first article on January 5 2010, but pulled down my site, chose a new theme, and didn’t really get up and blogging until the 2nd half of that month so I consider February my first full month.)

In the first week of January — in the comments section of a post on goals — Todd invited me to write a series of case studies over the coming year for my blog. I had said in my own comment that my goal was to get 60,000 visitors in one month by the end of the year.

Pretty lofty.

I was starting a new blog design and SEO company (Rocket Blog Design) in January and knew I would be very busy with that. So I made an unusual decision for a travel blogger. I decided I wasn’t going to write anymore new posts for the remainder of the month. I wanted to see what my traffic would be like without any day to day promotion or new posts.

I thought it would make a good first month for a case study on traffic.

So from about January 8th until January 30 the blog remained static.

The 3 posts I did make in January were the following:

-> A round-up post very early in the month on the best comments of the year on my blog. (This was actually posted in December, but I didn’t promote it until early January so I’m including it here.)

-> A post on the best parenting books for, uhmm — you guessed it — parents, posted around January 8th.

-> And then nothing for the entirety of the month until January 30 when I posted an interview with vaccine expert Dr Paul Offit.

So let’s take a look at the numbers

1. Traffic Overview

Case study in building traffic to a travel blog

Visitors are down a bit from previous months but still respectable when considering I had few new posts to pull in current followers. I like the average time on site which has always been quite high on My Little Nomads.

2. Popular Content

Content overview for building traffic

It’s interesting to note that — when we exclude the homepage — the 5 most popular posts were all posted between 4 and 10 months ago.

->Travel with kids

->The best 5 Greek Islands for kids

->The 5 best places to Visit in Thailand with kids

->Vacation Planning – Travel with Kids

->Buying air tickets – how to find the best prices

And that’s the power of SEO. (Todd here, don’t forget to check out David’s Tips on SEO)

3. Traffic Sources

Case Study on Building Traffic to you Blog

When you combine Searches and Media Searches you get a total of 7,624 readers visiting my site from search engines. This is often the most valuable type of traffic as they are people actively searching for information about a trip or destination. This continues to grow and it’s this traffic which forms the base to my monetization strategy for the site.

4. Search Traffic

Case study on building traffic through searches

I love getting people to search for the blog by its actual name. This is something I encourage and actively promote. When people from a wide variety of locations search for the same term it’s telling Google and Bing that readers are interested in this site. (As opposed to when they simply click on a link which search engines can’t register.) The 192 above shows only the people that searched for that exact phrase — many more searched for a longer or slightly different phrase, for example, “My Little Nomads travel with kids”.

I plan to post more traffic studies throughout the year and hope to reach my goal of 60,000 visitors by the end of the year.

How do your numbers compare? If you have any questions fire away at David!

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10 ways SEO can make your travel posts – and blog – Better

January 31, 2011 By 42 Comments

SEO tips and tricks

This is a guest post by David Robert Hogg.

Many things are said about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a good many of them wrong and misinformed. The most common of the critiques is that there is a trade-off between writing for your readers and “writing for Google”. A compromise between having a blog focused on content, readability and character, and a blog that is optimized to be scanned, indexed and searched.

Not only is this untrue, but more often that not good white-hat SEO tactics will make your blog better. Better for your readers, better for you, and better for the people that want to find what you’re producing – be it a product, information, or entertainment.

Good SEO tactics – the kind of SEO that you could proudly append to the bottom of any post, describing to your readers what you did and why you did it – can make your blog more readable, accessible, and just plain better.

Here’s how.

1. Focus.

Write posts that are detailed and thorough yet sharp and well defined. Posts that could be mistaken for entries in the encyclopedia. Great stories that have a distinct theme and subject. This is what readers want and it’s also what search engines want.

Search engines don’t like long unfocused and rambling posts (they don’t know how to index them) and neither do your readers (they find them vague and usually boring). And even you – the blogger – benefit on this one. One of the biggest challenges bloggers face is thinking up enough interesting topics to write about. When you go throwing 3 or 4 different subjects into a blog post, not only are you confusing your readers, but you’re also blowing off what could have been 3 or 4 different posts. Stay focused and everyone wins.

2. Conciseness

Similar to focus but more concerned with word choice as opposed to themes and topics. Trim the extra words from your posts and make sentences crisp, clear, and streamlined. Computers are not as smart as people when it comes to deciphering meaning so if your readers are having trouble with passages then so is Google. Make sentences short, easy to understand and memorable.

Also watch your use of pronouns, hackneyed phrases, and generic verbs.

Let’s look at 2 example sentences:

A. “When we got there everyone was waiting impatiently.”

B. “When we got to the hotel all the other guests were waiting to check-in.”

They’re both describing the same scene but the first one assumes the reader knows what you’re talking about (and some might not). The 2nd one is not only more clear but also has a number of keywords that people might actually be searching for. Hotel, guests, and check-in are certainly much more commonly searched than everyone and impatiently.

This might seem like writing for Google, but it will often make your writing more clear and easy to read. Remember as well: not everyone reading a travel blog has English as their first language.

3. Use headings and sub-headings within a post

Common SEO advice is to use keywords and keyphrases in headings and subheadings; and bold them in a couple of key sections throughout the text. Sounds like common tactics in the print industry long before Google was founded.

Headings, blockquotes, and bolded text grab peoples eyes and arrest their movement down the page when they’re starting to scan. They also make it easier for search engines to determine the main topics of a post or page.

4. Use a diverse array of media

People love posts with images, charts, and videos – and so do search engines – so use them. If you make videos embed them on their own page within your website and be sure to transcribe the audio into text that will appear below the video. This is good for Google and Bing – it tells them what this video post is about – but also good for readers. It allows them to quickly scan the content to see if they want to watch it, and also allows visitors with a slower connection to consume this information even if they’re not able to stream the video.

5. Post ideas

Do you want to know what topics search engines are interested in? Use a keyword tool to find out what words and phrases are being searched for.

Do you want to know what topics people – and your potential readers – are interested in? Use a keyword tool to find out what words and phrases are being searched for.

These are not separate ideas. As a blogger you should be interested in solving some demand – an answer to a question, a desire to be entertained, a need to feel motivated and inspired – and search engines are in the business of solving these demands by finding you.

Obviously you’re doing your readers a disservice if you’re writing posts just because they appear in a keyword tool. So stick to what you know.

But using a keyword tool is akin to emailing your friends and asking – “If you were writing a post on mountain climbing what topics would you want covered?” Keyword research tells you what the answer would be if you had 2 billion friends.

6. Load Time

Google has stated clearly that load times are one of the signals they use to determine quality of a page. Readers undoubtedly like fast loading pages as well. [Todd here, we have a very helpful discussion in the forums on how to increase the speed of your site with some simple WordPress plugins]

7. Use descriptive names and tags for images

Though search engines have made huge strides with image recognition software they most definitely are not using it on all images on the web. By using keyword rich file names, employing descriptive alt and title tags, and making smart use of captions search engines will have a pretty good idea what the image is about. Clearly humans are not as dependent on these hints but a good caption and title tag (the text that shows when you mouse-over an image) will give readers a much richer understanding about the context, location, and details of an image.

8. Use a descriptive URL and directory structure

Google likely uses URLs and directory structure to attempt to understand the subject of a post and so do readers. The URL string can often be the link text for a post and the only thing a reader sees when making a guess regarding a post’s subject.

9. Have an easy to navigate website

Google doesn’t index everything on a site so attempting to have the majority of your posts 1 to 3 clicks away from your homepage can make it more likely that all of your posts will be found by search engines. Readers like this too, and few things are more annoying – or will have users clicking away from your site faster – than making content hard to find.

10. Make awesome resource pages.

Google and people both love resources pages. If you’re planning a trip to India there’s nothing better than a list of high quality links to good information. The trouble is, resource pages are hard to do well. To the uninitiated resource pages can seem an easy and thoughtless attempt at attracting links – but they’re not. To do them well requires a lot of legwork, regular updating, and a keen eye for knowing what people are interested in.

What SEO tactics do you use that also benefit your readers? Are there any SEO tactics that you think come at the expense of readers?

David Robert Hogg blogs about traveling the world with kids at My Little Nomads and does blog design and SEO at Rocket Blog Design. You should follow him on Twitter here.

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Build your Brand: Be Yourself and Be Everywhere

January 17, 2011 By 66 Comments

Personal Branding for Travel BloggersThis is a guest post by Caz Makepeace of yTravelBlog.

“I can’t keep up with you guys. Everywhere I turn you’re there.” A couple of people within the travel blogging community have said this recently to Craig and I.

Our response: “Perfect. That means our plan is working.”

We started our travel blog eight months ago with a whole lot of determination and passion. Before we launched our blog, we had spent a fair amount of time learning from some very successful bloggers, so we had an idea of what we needed to do to enable such quick success.

The most important of these lessons for us was to build our brand. We had to build it big, and with that building we had to get ourselves out there in as many places as possible. We needed people to recognize us as authority figures and to not forget us.

This doesn’t seem nearly as hard as it sounds. All you need is a consistent plan of attack and an authentic and likeable brand.

Be Yourself

Who are you and what makes you special? Yes it’s true. You are special. There is something unique about you that you can offer to others. Really the greatest advice I can give in building your brand is to be yourself. Let what is unique about you shine through.

Being yourself means that whatever you do will carry authenticity, which is what attracts people to you. When you are yourself, it makes all your online marketing, communication and networking so much easier and a lot more fun.

You have to be your brand in everything you say and do, online and even off.

Not paying attention to what you are writing in every tweet, post, comment, facebook status update, and email can really kill your brand. Just think about how easily celebrities can fall from grace from an incident that was not in keeping with their brand. Michael Phelps got busted smoking bongs at a party and lost millions in sponsorship deals- not quite the squeaky athlete superhero image we were all used to.

Someone is always watching you and if you carelessly reply to an email, or tweet a couple of 140 characters that is not in keeping with your brand you could be in serious trouble. There have been several people in the online world that I have stopped following because of several tweets or emails that came out that made me say, “Ooo, I didn’t think they were like that. And I’m not sure I can relate anymore.”

If you are being yourself with your brand then you really shouldn’t have to worry about this. People will stop following you only if they think you aren’t who they thought you were.

Your brand in images

Have a clear photo of yourself, that shows you in your best light, prominently displayed on your blog. Use this photo for all of your activity on the web. This immediately brands you. As a potential reader moves from place to place they instantly recognize your friendly, happy face yet again.

Skip the sunglasses, hats that block your face, and forget using animals for your avatar. It is cute, I know, but it makes it very difficult for someone to connect with a faceless person. They are constantly left asking, “Who are you really? If I could just get a look at your face, I may learn more.” Cartoon avatars can work really well, if you can nail your brand with it at the same time. I think Where is Jenny does this really effectively.

We’ve had the opportunity to connect with and network with people in the offline world, because they have recognized us immediately from our photo. If you don’t have that, you could be missing out on some incredible opportunities.

Guest post and interviews

Take every opportunity that comes your way to guest post on other sites, or to be interviewed. Bloggers are always looking to interview those with interesting stories (and yes of course you have one) or for someone to write content for their site.

Make sure that you are maintaining your brand within your guest post and interviews. I always make sure I somehow interweave our tagline “It’s all about the memories, make your life a story to tell,” in our post. This is our message; I must remain true to it.

I always put my hand up to do these sorts of posts and I track people down to ask if I can. I’m not really interested in page rank or subscriber numbers, or posting on the most popular blogs (although this is a great strategy to employ). What I am interested is spreading myself wide and deep.

Each new website I appear on gets pushed out to a new bunch of RSS subscribers, twitter followers, facebook fans and commenters. If I write good content, I am likely to get new followers. Not only that, if someone is browsing around websites and they see me on one site, and then see me on another, they start thinking “Hey this person is everywhere they must be important.”

Sidenote: I also like posting on other sites so I can perhaps bring some of my readers over to the new blog and help them out. Your interactions should always be win-win.

Promote the heck out of your work on other sites.

My mentor always said, “Whenever anything about you appears on another site, you need to promote it. I don’t care if it’s good or bad, you want to stumble it, tweet it, like it, link back to it, comment on it and say thank you.”

Don’t be afraid of losing your followers to the new site you promote. This won’t happen. You are verifying your brand and providing more social proof that you are an authority figure. And you are increasing the power of the links that are coming back to your site, which in turn grows the authority ranking of your brand.

Comment on other blogs

Commenting on other blogs is such a great way to build your brand and authoritative voice. Always leave a positive and thought provoking comment, that follows your brand’s message.

There are many strangers reading blogs who might read a comment from you and be intrigued to learn more about you. Sometimes I leave comments that could be a whole blog post by itself. This is not a strategic move on my behalf, it just turns out that way because I have had a passionate response to what I have read.

Andi Puerillo from My Beautiful Adventures and Ayngelina from Bacon is Magic, do a fantastic job of commenting on other blogs. Every article I turn to read, they have already been there and left a comment. “Oh my God, there they are there again! How do they find the time?”

After seeing their bright happy faces for a while, I decided I liked them and needed to check them out more. I now follow them both keenly. And every time I have seen their comments, they have stuck to their brand–positive, supportive, encouraging, and thoughtful. Who doesn’t want to follow that?

Much of your success will be determined by how you build your brand. Be yourself and be everywhere.

Caz and Craig Makepeace have been living and travelling the globe since 97, both solo and as a couple and now with a three year old. They believe life is all about the memories and their travel tips and stories at yTravel blog and their fanpage aim to inspire and teach others how to make their life a story to tell.

Photo Credit

Filed Under: Build Traffic, Business of Blogging Tagged With: , ,

15 Traffic Building Tips from some of the Internet’s Most Popular Bloggers

January 3, 2011 By 23 Comments

Increase visitors and traffic to your blogBuilding traffic and getting your blog in front of new eyes is a struggle for all blogs and is ultimately determines its success. Earlier I asked some of the most popular bloggers around the internet to offer advice on making money blogging. They came through huge. But I didn’t stop there. I also asked them to share their creative tips for building traffic and keeping visitors engaged. They didn’t disappoint this time either. Below are 15 pieces of advice on traffic building from bloggers I highly respect and who have proved their methods work on their blogs.

1. If you want to build an audience for a travel blog, you first need to figure out what it is that makes travel unique. Why do people consume travel media? There are many reasons, but you need to pick one. It could be providing advice or tips. It could be providing inspiration. What you pick has different implications. If you are in the data/advice business you are probably going to want to go an SEO dominant strategy. If you are in the inspiration game, you will want to go a social media strategy.

Either way, travel is an extremely visual medium. Invest in the time and tools to improve your photography and video skills. People don’t read Playboy or National Geographic for the articles.

Finally, don’t just market to other bloggers. That is the biggest mistake you can make. Travel is an ENORMOUS worldwide industry. If you just have other bloggers commenting on your site, you’ll never break into the larger public. Bloggers are easy to target because they are online and you can comment on their site, but they are tiny fraction of the potential audience.

Gary Arndt, Everything Everywhere

2. To build traffic to your website you first have to develop something that is useful, helpful or entertaining to your target audience. You have to effectively answer the question “why should I visit your site instead of one of the thousands of other choices out there?” Once you’ve nailed that, it’s all about getting the word out about your site through social media and by interacting with other influencers in your space.

Corbett Barr, Think Traffic

3. Building traffic takes time – it’s not going to happen overnight, and that’s what’s so discouraging to so many. You think, I’ve been writing for months and hardly get any interaction, comments, and my traffic is stagnant. Give it time, and above all, stay consistent. Consistency is the single most important thing to focus on when building traffic to your site – being engaged and interacting both on your site and away from it (via social media, etc) on a consistent basis will get you far. The quickest way to fail is to lose focus – stay committed, stay engaged, and the results will come.

Matt Cheuvront, Life Without Pants

4. There’s no “quick” ways to build traffic that lasts – any of the shortcuts are gimmicks and almost always worthless.  I know this because I’ve had many of them happen.

The best way to get genuine traffic is to create compelling single-topic content. Pick a single question, content, or point and really drive it home. Make it the best resource for that one specific need that you can find on the internet – make everyone who sees it feel like they need to bookmark (or copy) it.

Then look outside your niche for communities that could benefit from that (or similar) messages. Guest post, offer free products or help, or reach out to those larger communities that you know could benefit from your knowledge or post.

In other words, the best traffic you’ll ever get will be from a large peer in a slightly different niche that respects and recommends a high-quality post you did on a single topic.  :-)

Adam Baker, Man vs Debt

5. There’s not quick and easy solution to traffic building. It’s a process and thinking you will get it quick will just lead to frustration and disappointment. One creative way I build traffic is to guest blog outside your niche. Think laterally. I blog on finance sites because people on those sites like to travel and save money. As I write about budget travel, it’s a good fit for those blogs and it exposes my site to a new audience, thereby building new traffic and getting more readers.

Matt Kepnes, Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site

6. While there’s something to be said for sheer mass, think about who you want to attract and devise a strategy for meeting them. We recently dropped a programme sending us around 1,000 visitors a month because those people were sticking around for 11 seconds on average. And who wants that rubbish? Don’t go for a quick win: devise a strategy that will give you a balance of social media, word of mouth and Search Engine traffic plus looking for places that will give you the specific traffic your site will find valuable.

Craig Martin, Indie Travel Podcast

7. Engage other people and be accessible; whether you’re just starting out or have been blogging for years.

Anil Polat, foXnoMad

8. Create content worth reading and sharing. You need to have a hook, something that makes your stuff different from others in your niche, otherwise you won’t give readers a reason to choose your site over anyone else’s in the same niche. The other thing you can do is to create your own blogging mastermind group – with other bloggers at a similar stage in the game as you are, or even slightly ahead. Even better if your masterminders are in different but somewhat-related niches since you’ll then be reaching out to a much wider audience outside your direct niche.

Lea Woodward, Location Independent

9. Are you using your Twitter account effectively and maximising traffic generation?

Do you think about when you post links, how often and day of the week? I didn’t think so. One of the optimum times to post links to your own content is 5pm GMT. This is when the UK and Europe are on the way back from home, East Coast USA is on lunch and West Coast USA are on their way to work. I’ve found the best time to post on twitter in any country is 9am, 1pm, 5pm and 9pm. Don’t worry about feeling you are spamming people by posting the same link four times in a day. Twitter users tend to be creatures of habit and check their feed at certain times anyway. You can’t always be available at these times so use a website that schedules tweets for you at certain dates and times. I use Social 0mph personally. Also, the likelihood of a tweet getting re-tweeted grows from Monday onwards and tails off Saturday and Sunday. Perhaps people get that Friday feeling which is why there are more re-tweets on Friday then any other day of the week.

Finally, for a healthy Twitter experience keep a balance between general tweets, posting your own links and retweeting others. Get involved in #TNI and #TravelTuesday and you’ll see click throughs, followers and re-tweets increase.

Amar Hussain, Gap Year Escape

10. The most influential and significant segment of the Internet is social media. If we expect to do business on the web without harnessing the power of social media your chances of failure will have increased substantially.  Our audience wants their information consolidated and fed to the applications they are using to view, and more importantly, share media with.  Our blog’s design and Twitter backgrounds and becoming less important.  What is important is understanding that social media utilization is just as important as content creation.  A relaxed strategy of, “If you build it, they will come,” will only make success a lot more difficult.  In the vast complex world of the Internet you need to be aggressive and go get ‘em!

Jason Castellani, TwoBackpackers

11. I think the key to building traffic to your site is to first of all have great content. You have to find a way to stand out from the hordes of other people. Really let your personality and what is unique about you and your experiences stand out.

I think the best strategy to get them to your blog to read your content, is to start guest posting. Find out who are the best bloggers in your industry and contact them in regards to publishing a post on their site. Don’t be afraid, bloggers love taking on guest posts and make it your best work. Guest blogging exposes you to a different audience, gives you more credibility and grants you those link backs we are all after.

Craig and Caz Makepeace, Y Travel Blog

12. Join a few forums and comment as much as possible on other blogs. Simply letting people know your name and how you think will start building traffic for you. One great site for promoting yourself and other is Yankezie.com for personal finance and lifestyle bloggers [psst, Todd here, I’m a member over at Yankezie and highly recommend it, also, don’t forget about the Forums here on TBC…yes, shameless promotion].

Crystal, Budgeting in the Fun Stuff

13. Build traffic by taking up a challenge and getting readers to visit your site daily to view your progress. The challenge could be some major lifestyle change and how it affects your life for better or worse.

Mark Riddix, Buy Like Buffet

14. Many national newspaper websites will allow anyone to start up a blog and post whatever they want. Because there are literally thousands upon thousands of readers, your blog will likely create a much larger readership then a private blog you start on your own. You can start up a private blog, like I have done with that is parallel to the blog at the newspaper (I actually use most of the same content on both sites) but funnel some of your newspaper traffic to to your private blog in order to increase traffic, and down the road, revenue. Here is my newspaper blog: Frugal Confessions.

Amanda Grossman, Frugal Confessions

15. When we started our blog we commented on popular blogs regularly and tweeted other people’s posts religiously. We engaged in conversations with the top bloggers and eventually they sent a retweet our way and stopped by our blog for a visit. We wrote for places like BootsnAll and Matador Network to drive traffic to our site and we wrote guest posts for as many people as we could.  As more people saw our name around the Internet, more people visited our website.

Our advice, join people’s facebook groups, follow them on twitter, leave comments and write guest posts. But most of all, find your unique voice and post regularly. Once people do start taking notice, you want them to have something new and interesting to read to keep them coming back.

Dave and Deb, The Planet D

Do you have any traffic building tips? Let them out in the comment section below! Don’t be selfish :)

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