Fleeing The Social Scene

It’s simple, all signs point to a lack of traffic.

Fleeingthesocialscene has been live since the very end of March. Often you can find posts if you make it past “point x” it’s smooth sailing from there on out. Well maybe this site is a bad egg then? My opinion is that I was fairing ok till school got out in late April then I went a bit lax for a while. Even though in early June I did meet up with the ProBlogger, and even get a linkback out of it. Still not much came of it. Below is my feedburner stats to date.

After mid-April my subscribers took a dive. Hmm, could be any number of reasons, but what stumps me is there is no correlation between subscribers and traffic. At all. Throughout the history of this blog I’ve seen no real increase in traffic. It’s bee pretty much steady at best. For better or worse I’ve been around 400-500 uniques a month so far and that’s not bad but still I’m not at 100 pageviews a day which seems like a realistic goal.

So I’d say I’m not doing too bad, but also not too good. Definitely some room for improvement, and over the next few days I’ll take a look at how to improve my traffic. The information on building traffic is certainly out there, its only a matter of finding a few methods that work for me.

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Contests:

Everyone loves the chance to win at something. Blog contests have been the latest in a series of crazes to sweep the blogosphere lately. BlueFur.com even made a post about the trend of contests as a way to gain traffic not too long ago. While contests allow a reader a chance to win something, they also offer the writer(s) of the blog a chance to get a large amount of promotion for their blog, oh and also backlinks!

Derrich from Derrich.com did a few “blogger tournaments” during the month of March to parallel the March Madness NCAA Basketball Tournament. Somehow I was lucky enough to be chosen to take part. While I did end up coming in second, I know I made a few plugs for myself, and Derrich.com likewise. Now I may have been promoting people to vote for me, but everyone I wanted to vote for me also headed over to Derrich’s site.

So even if I didn’t end up winning, and the traffic may have not stayed around, but it still give Derrich quite the boost in traffic. Now Derrich’s first tournament helped him so much that he held a second tournament. I haven’t asked for numbers, but I think these tournaments helped solidify Derrich’s position as a credible and entertaining blogger.

Aside from Derrich, several other bloggers such as Darren Rowse, and John Chow also employ the use of the contest as a means for drawing traffic. (Not like the pros need to “draw traffic”.)

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Segmented Posts:

Look at my title, see the “Part 2″? That’s what this post is all about. Splitting topics and posts up into segmented parts to keep those readers coming back. Well this tactic can be used for a few reasons, most notably, either making posts smaller in length to break up a longer talk, or to group posts of the same or similar topics.

A while back while I was researching how to create a proxy site I literally StumbledUpon Dave Turnbull’s “Making A Successful Proxy” series. While the series had already been posted in length, I could easily go from one post to the next and follow the ideas. Adversely the individual posts allowed me to easily follow subtopics. Before you just look at my blog and say “Duh!” realize that the post would be quite long and time consuming to read if you were to try to take in all that information at once.

Matt Coddington also utilized the tactic of segmented posting on NetBusinessBlog.com when he covered the topic of “minisites.” While Matt’s use only covered the two posts, it easily linked the posts and continued the same idea, which he had broken up into 10 easy to follow steps. These posts for some reason reminded me of an episode of This Old House, in the way things were explained, but unlike This Old House, the concept of minisites is something which I was interested in and may potentially use while creating sites.

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So you start your new blog. You’ve got your theme, your plugins, and you start posting. I’ll say that a few weeks go by and you’ve got yourself a small cache of loyal readers. Some more time goes by and that cache has grown. Assuming that you’ve not lost anyone, has your readership grown by only a few numbers, or by leaps and bounds?

Now we all want to be able to say that our blogs have grown immensely since point in time “x”. I’ve done some thinking and a bit of research, and then a bit more thinking… and I think the following are a few ways that you can get a reader coming back. Hopefully that occasional reader will become a hooked loyal, and RSS subscribed reader.

• Segmented Posts - Come back tomorrow for Part 2, Part 3… etc.
• Contests - You don’t always need to win a prize to want to go back to that blog!
• Content alone - Wow that guy’s a great writer!

Over the next few days i’ll go over these tactics and hopefully show you how to get a few more readers, and how to keep your readers wanting to come back to your blog. Also maybe I can snag a few more returning browsers to this blog

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According to the current (as of 11:58pm EST on 5/1/07) wikipedia page HDDVD Night is “HD-DVD Night is an event on the website digg.com. It started when thousands of so-called “fans” of the site decided that the site should no longer be in existence. Why? Because they believe that protecting oneself from legal trouble infringed on their right to “free speech”. However, they failed to realize that digg.com can allow whatever the flip they want on their own site.”

Now what can any blogger or anyone who runs a site that wants decent traffic get from this ordeal? Lots!

The reader controls the content. If you post something and the reader doesn’t like changes you’ve made, or what you’ve posted, they can do something about it. Reader influence of sites particularly on Digg has ranged from the introduction of the “auto-bury” feature for sites which Digg users seemed to think were getting too many front page spots (I personally think it was BS) to tonight’s fiasco!

Moderating your content can backfire. Well Kevin, let’s look at it this way; you moderated your content to protect your investments. I can’t say I blame you. However your readers wanted this information. By taking it away from them only made them want it more. Now it’s everywhere! Protecting yourself from what your readers were Digging only seemed to come around and bite you in the ass, huh?

Lastly, content posted on the Internet is NEVER deleted. I’ve caught myself screwing up my own blogs with trying to delete posts that were either permalinked, or my RSS caught them. It is a mess, content is never gone. Well, Digg proved this little feature of the Internet tonight.

So readers of mine, i’m glad you’re here. Take in these little tid bits of information, keep them near and dear to your hearts. Remember, they may not always be important; but when they aren’t followed total mayhem may ensue.

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George C. over at BloggerLounge.net tagged me on the newest link train to hit the blogosphere, the MyBlogLog Linktrain. All aboard!

Here are the rules:

1) Write a short introduction about how you found this list and include a link back to that blog.

2) COPY the rules and ENTIRE list below and post it on your blog.

3) Take “My New Community Members” and move them into the “The Original Community Members” list.

4) Find 3 new blogs, join their MyBlogLog Community and add them to the “My New Community Members” section. Remember to also add the “Join the Community” link next to your new blogs. ( Example: http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/ReformatThis/ )

5) Join as a member to each Community listed here by clicking on “Join the Community”. The goal is that all of the new Members listed will join your community, and you should do the same!

My New Community Members
Lithman.net - Join The Community
BryanLe.net - Join The Community
EdEdition.com - Join Community

Since it looks like Ed has already had his time around the linktrain, i’ll name another person as well

blogtrepreneur.com - Join Community

Hope this one hasn’t been added yet.

The Original Community Members

Santoshp.com - Join the Community
FleeingtheSocialScene.com - Join the Community
theAdamBox.com - Join the Community

CourtneyTuttle.Com - Join the Community
SmarWealthyRich.com - Join the Community
BloggerLounge.net - Join the Community
The Thinking Blog - Join the Community
Blogging For Bills - Join the Community
Randa Clay Design - Join the Community
2Perfect - Join the Community
PureBlogging - Join the Community
Dietriffic - Join the Community
Shawn Knight - Join the Community
Reformat This - Join the Community
Kelly Cho - Join the Community
Ms. Danielle - Join the Community
The Man of Silver - Join the Community
Nate Whitehill - Join the Community
Leo Chiang - Join the Community
Garry Conn - Join the Community
Samanathon - Join the Community
Mr. Gary Lee - Join the Community
Feats of a Chilean Dot Com Entrepreneur - Join the Community
Jon Lee - Join the Community
Everyday Weekender - Join the Community
Bryan’s Rants - Join the Community

***End Copying Here***

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