Traffic Growth #7 – Social Network For Me

Survived a long flight, recovering from jet-lag, but reasonably pleased at the way that traffic numbers have held up. It’s clear that content remains king when it comes to blogging. That audience, even if small, can keep things ticking over even when I’m not actively social networking myself.

An established audience of regulars, even if small, means that you can get away with inactivity beyond blog content. So long as there are regular new articles they in-effect are your social networking activity.

Independent recommendation boosts traffic

When you actively network, by commenting on other blogs or submitting articles, you’re in effect recommending yourself. That recommendation is not a case of “my site is great great”, but your activity acts as a “look at me” signpost.

But as in many walks of life, receiving a recommendation from someone else motivates people to take a little longer to assess the product. Fog of Eternity has been more reliant on such recommendations this week, because I haven’t been commenting on blogs, active on Twitter, etc. Traffic that’s come from such recommendations has tended to be of higher quality – with lower bounce rates and longer spent on the site overall.

FriendFeed as a traffic generator

I’ve been using FriendFeed on and off over the last few weeks, largely through the Alert Thingy application. I’m not the most active, though increasingly appreciative of the power of the app.

That appreciation has increased this week. I’ve noticed that it’s starting to develop decent and valuable traffic to the site. The numbers are still reasonably small at this stage, but growing. What’s important here is the way that FriendFeed allows for articles to be tagged as “liked”, and so again it’s demonstrating independent recommendation that’s more powerful than a simple submission to something like StumbleUpon.

Beneficial, but not enough by itself

This week my audience have been my social networking. It’s led to reduced bounce rates and more valuable traffic. But it’s also led to reduced traffic. Visitor numbers dipped below 1,000 a week for the first time in May. That traffic was of better value, but the loyal audience for Fog of Eternity isn’t big enough to really sustain a “nothing but content” approach.

As with most things, putting all your eggs in one basket limits your options. It’s been useful as an exercise this week because it’s demonstrated the value of underlying blog content. But its benefit is a result of previous social networking that’s helped me develop the readership in the first place. It’s a virtuous circle – the more you social network yourself the more that you also get people to network on your behalf. That’s probably the real definition of “viral” that I highlighted in the very first traffic growth article.