Category Archives: Traffic Generation

The Secret Power of Viral Videos, You’ve been Rick Rolled

Rick Rolled
photo by Jason McArthur

So admit it you’ve either heard about or have been Rick Rolled. If not, where have you been, Antarctica?

For those who have managed to avoid the Internet over the past 3 months, One video has been causing quite a storm, unusually a music video of

Rick Astley performing “Never Gonna Give You Up” from 1987 the year I was born incidentally.

What happened was a prank, people who clicked on links expecting one thing were suddenly Continue reading The Secret Power of Viral Videos, You’ve been Rick Rolled

The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Product!

Marketing Mix
photo by TooFarNorth

Following on from my first post in this series on the marketing mix, I would like to introduce the first ‘P’ of the 4 P’s.

Product

Traditionally this refers to a product or service provided by a business.

Relating this to a blog or website is quite easy. Your blog (website) provides a service in that it educates, informs or entertains visitors. If it does not do this for your visitors from your target market, it may fail to achieve any notable growth or maintain existing readers.

Remember content is key, therefore has to be created with your target audience in mind. Failure to do so, is likely to not generate repeat visits. This being crucial inorder to obtain a loyal (and growing number of) visitors.

Trying not to go off topic to is often the best bet, your readers are probably only interested in your main topics, so writing off topic can put people off. A little variety to spice things up, can’t be condemmed, just do it sparingly.

Another point worth considering is to make your blog differentiated from the many ‘me-to’ blogs in your niche. Building a brand or unique identity differentiates you, therefore making your blog more memorable to visitors. Allowing you to stand out in a crowd.

This can be achieved in several ways or by a combination. Some of the most important include using a unique design to your blog, e.g customise your theme, by changing colors or the header, or for the more advanced/adventurous try building your own theme/site from scratch. Also you could try writing in an interesting writing style, although just being yourself can lead to a writing style that is unique. They are just a couple of ideas for now.

Ultimately remember your content must fulfill the wants and needs of your visitors; research, find out what they are, investigate how competing blogs target your niche. Find weaknesses and try and fill the gap.

Finally remember, Product is only one of the 4 P’s, the other 3 (Price, Promotion, Place) will follow later in this series. Product is an essential ingredient but it must also be blended with the 3 other P’s in order to gain the maximum effect.

Best of luck,

Martyn.

Connect with the World

Gain links
photo by Mel B.

Exchanging links, can and is one of the best ways to get a new blog (or website) off the ground.

Potential visitors are highly unlikely to accidentally stumble on to your site unless they are led there from a link. But gaining those initial links can be difficult, top bloggers are not going to link to you, unless you have stunning content. So gaining traffic sources to a new blog will need a proactive attitude.

But who to exchange with and why? Well the general rule is, for bloggers targeting a certain niche, will need to get bloggers from within their niche to link to them. This is mainly because Uncle Google wants you to do this as links from similar sites help Googles crawlers as well as tells Google that your site is important to that niche. In other words it’s like a recommendation to them. Whereas links from sites that are not similar or beneficial to visitors gets marked down by Google.

You may now be wondering why I’m writing this, well I’m looking to exchange links with other bloggers who think that they have content that may be interesting/beneficial to my readers. I’m still new around the blogosphere so exchanging links seems a natural way to make those so important initial connections.

So if your interested I’m going to be actively seeking 5 link exchanges with blogs that are either ‘student’ or ‘make money’ related over the coming two weeks.

If your interested, drop me an email with a link to your blog, see the contact page to find out how.

I can’t guarantee I will take up everyone who asks, but I look forward to any offers.

Cheers,

Martyn