Pro Business Tips

4 Proven Traffic Building Strategies with Social Media

Social is a cornerstone of any audience development and traffic-driving strategy. You can use it to build your business in a myriad of ways:

• Communicate site updates on Twitter and Facebook to encourage fans and followers to check out your site to see new product features and new content
• Drive traffic via calls to action, such as newsletter sign-ups, special offers, commenting, and contests
• Syndicate site content to social media venues like Twitter and Facebook
• Increase engagement time and site "stickiness" by adding Facebook commenting and other "social widgets"

Here are a couple of greats resources to get started:

http://developers.facebook.com

http://twitter.com/about/resources

8 Tips for Choosing a Winning Domain Name

For those of you interested in setting up a niche blog to make some cash, you need a winning domain name or it isn't worth the effort. So before you plunge into the world of blogging, I recommend registering a killer domain name. Here are my top 8 tips for getting there:

1. Keep it short and memorable. Pretty much all three, four, and even five-letter names are long gone but a couple of clever words strung together are always a good bet.
2. Consider type-in traffic. Don't make the name impossible to spell or remember.
3. Make your domain name consistent with your topic and better yet, make it the same as your company name. Once you register the domain as your company name, it's in effect copyrighted.
4. Try for .com. Nothing else is really worth it, with the possible exception of .net.
5. Secure other variations. Even though you should always go with the .com variant, make sure to lock up the .net and .org alternatives. There are others too but start with those first, as they are the oldest, most established, and most important.
6. Avoid trademarked names unless you enjoy getting threatening letters from lawyers and getting sued.
7. Do the friend test. Throw the name out to your trusted friends and families before locking it in.
8. Use a domain name generator to find name ideas for your blog business. A great one is MakeWords.com

Related Posts

• Blogging - Should You Host or Take a Pass?
• Widgets and Plug-ins for Your Blog
• My 9 Favorite Blogs for Making Money Online
• The 4 Most Important Types of Blog Posts
• Blogging and SEO
• Making Money Blogging

Making Money with Donations

Donations are good method for blogs starting up, especially if you can get some friends and family to chip in. One possible solution is to head over to Paypal and create a free "Donate" button which allows you to create the equivalent of a tip jar for your blog. It's free and easy to sign-up.

A counter-point to consider: A tip jar can also make you look like a beggar. This strategy tends to work better for a small-time blog with limited aspirations or a non-profit concern.

Building Blog Traffic with Google and Technorati Submissions

Technorati is the leading blog directory, sort of like the Google for blogs. It's very heavily trafficked and is a great resource. Make sure you get an account at Technorati so you can get it indexed in the directory. In Technorati parlance, this is called claiming your blog.

And of course, you want to make sure that Google indexes your blog as well. Google now has a special blog search engine, called Google Blog Search, and you want to go to it to submit your URL.

Building Traffic with Wikipedia

A free online user-edited encyclopedia, Wikipedia is one of the most trafficked websites in the world. Used as a reference by consumers, casual internet surfers, college students and hobbyists, Wikipedia is a massive online collaboration run by volunteers and enthusiasts.

Wikipedia dominates Google search results because of the presumed quality of its content. Search for almost anything and chances are that a Wikipedia entry will appear on the first page.  

How Wikipedia Can Monetize a Blog

1. Credibility from being listed in Wikipedia increases customer and visitor trust, which might lead to repeat visits, bookmarking and a bigger audience base. If you are pushing products on some other pages of your website, you might have a higher potential for affiliate conversions and product sales.
2. Wikipedia traffic is ultra-targeted. Visitors arrive through a keyword search onto a Wikipedia page and then onto your blog via a link.
3. Getting listed in Wikipedia has a direct correlation to any website’s long-term monetization strategy and should be considered a strategy to explore within any traffic building or marketing campaign.

But, before you get too enthusiastic... Keep reading to find out what to watch for before you sign-up and start using Wikipedia to market your brand.

Advertorial Blogging

A few years ago when I worked at one major media company, there was a lot of internal debate between business development and editorial when a Volvo advertorial appeared on the network of sites. Why? The advertorial was so subtle it was indistinguishable from content, with the sole exception of a virtually invisible 7-point disclaimer buried in grey text at the footer of the piece.

These days, a more extreme example is raging in the blogging community. Several sites, including Blogsvertise, PayPerPost.com, ReviewMe, and SponsoredReviews.com are paying bloggers to review sites and products for advertisers, as well as link to their sites to increase SEO.

To many bloggers, this is a sell-out and naked shilling. But other bloggers say that as long as they maintain editorial discretion, why shouldn’t they be able to make some money through reviews.

If you can live with the ethical gray boundaries, it's another way to make cash. But you have to balance that against the integrity of your content and what sort of relationship you want to build with your users.

What do you think of advertorial blogging? Would you do it?