Traffic driver with results – commenting on posts

I have been trialling a few things to help drive traffic to my blog over the weekends. There is normally a dramatic drop to around 20 – 30 views for one day of the weekend, see graph below. This weekend, I tried something new and commented on a number of blogs talking about Dell, retail email marketing and digital training. Even though a lot of the posts were from late September – early October – not always the latest posts on the blogs – it drove an increase in the amount of traffic to my blog

Blog traffic to Dominique Hind

QUICK UPDATE

As at 9.30am on Tuesday, 14 October the traffic to my blog yesterday was 214, which is a dramatic difference from previous weeks where the average was around 85 per day. This is the third highest trafficked day. This shows that commenting on other peoples posts really does help to drive traffic to your site. I am just disappointed that my two week holiday interrupts the momentum I have gained on the blog (well not really disappointed – I’m so excited about my holiday).

Blog traffic to this blog - 14 October 2008

BLOG ACTIONS

1. Do a search using Google Blog search for terms that you have blogged about (ie for me, my most popular topics are Dell, retailers emails and digital training for agencies)
2. Open what you think are relevant blogs and read through posts
3. Make comments on the posts and direct people back through to your blog posts and the blog URL
4. Record all blogs that you have made comments on and put them on your blogroll

SOCIAL MARKETING

In addition to commenting on blogs, last weekend I joined a lot of new social marketing platforms. These sites have captured some of my comments on blogs and are driving a few people a day through to my blog. Below are the top referring sites to my blog.

Referring traffic to Dominique Hind

Referring traffic to Dominique Hind

SOCIAL MARKETING ACTIONS

1. Subscribe to all new social networks (StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, MeeID, LinkedIn, Backlink, Tumblr, Popego)
2. Include your blog URL in all profiles you set up
3. Add all of your new posts to your pages and direct traffic through to your posts

LEARNINGS

Like everything digital, this needs to be nurtured. Any time you upload a new post, you need to promote it. Therefore you need to make sure that you do the above actions either immediately or in the following week.

RELATED POSTS

• Driving traffic to your blog – what works?
• PR vs email – what drives more traffic?