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Earlier this week, I was brooding about increasing the profile and visibility of the latest MarketingProfs baby—this very blog....
Monday was a rainy, chilly morning in Boston; hoping for spring and hoping for traffic seemed equally fruitless exercises.
In fact, I've come to realize that the immediacy of blogging as a publishing tool can lead to frustration on the traffic side. In other words, you may deliver content to your audience more quickly, but the same old publishing rule of growing your audience one reader at a time still applies. It's not "just add water and stir" when it comes to conjuring up an audience.
Then I stumbled upon a doodle of Hugh Macleod's that seemed to sum up my predicament beautifully. See his drawing ("Your Traffic") here. As always, Hugh's "Gaping Void" commentary offers up much-needed perspective. So thanks, His Hughness.
By the way, I published this bit in the MarketingProfs Today newsletter this week. But I loved Hugh Macleod’s graphic so much that I’m sharing it here.
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Comments
Guy Kawasaki wrote a good piece about evangalizing a blog:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/04/the_120_day_won.html
If I ever write anything that I think is unique and "newsworthy" I tend to email it out to relevant blogs, and if it's interesting one or two will write about it.
IMHO incoming links are the lifeblood of a blog, if you have a blogroll it's important to "ask" for links.
Posted by: karl | 04.27.06
A friend, Xavier Casanova, over at Perenety, blogged about his own blog traffic soul searching here: http://www.coffeesuntechnology.com/web-analytics/216/.
Great graphs as well as a deeper story about how he used analytics to drive more traffic (he did found Fireclick, after all).
Posted by: Peter Kim | 04.27.06
Ann -
I agree that guy's evangelism article is good. But one thing that comes to mind is really the placement of your blog on your own, well traveled, site.
It's in the top banner bar, yes? I can't spot it elsewhere.. It could be there so I might be that I'm not reading well. But my point is that the top banner bar is typically been a place for ads that lead me to sites I have no interest in. I now consciously avoid anything in the top banner. I checked with some of my office mates today and they said the same thing. So a small sample, but could be something.
Also a good way to raise traffic is to link to other good marketing related sites, and then ask them to link back.
You are welcome to check out my blogroll and keep following the long thread of finding good people you want linked to you.
I'll add you to my blogroll, as a start.
Keep up the good work.
Nilofer
Posted by: Nilofer Merchant | 04.28.06
Nilofer -- Funny that you should mention that top navigation bar. Publisher Allen Weiss and I have gone back and forth on this issue with what to call this blog in that spot. Is is the "Daily Fix"? (Will readers know what that is?) Is it simply "Blog"? (Whose? And what's it about?) Is it "Daily Blog"? (Do readers even read blogs?) Is it "News and Commentary"? (Doesn't fit.)
We've have several iterations -- right now it's termed "The News" on the top navigation bar. BL Ochman just suggested to me yesterday that that word is not descriptive.
Anyway, thanks for the input...we definitely need to link better from the home page/newsletter of MarketingProfs itself to this blog. Thanks for the comment!
Posted by: Ann Handley | 04.29.06
Congratulations on the new blog. I think it looks great. I do agree with previous posters that the link on the MarketingProfs home page isn't very noticeable. In fact, it's almost invisible. Why not take advantage of the space you have on the home page to create a "window" into the new blog, accompanied by a description of the blog in a caption, that will allow MarketingProf site visitors to actually get an idea of what the blog is all about at a glance, rather than just a link that many visitors will probably not even notice?
Posted by: Michael Antman | 05.01.06