Traffic Growth #2 - Commenting Works, LinkedIn Doesn’t.
It’s Monday and time for a first update on the ‘How much traffic can I get through viral methods’ article I wrote last week. The viral method strategy for growing traffic to the site seems to be working, but in a way that’s difficult to analyse.
Overall traffic to the site has increased. Last week I said that traffic to Fog of Eternity was around the 15-30 a day mark. This week, with a post every day and more activity commenting on other blogs and on social networking sites, Monday to Friday saw traffic consistently around the 30 mark.
Saturday was much quieter, but checking back through the stats that seems a pretty consistent rule and may have something to do with the more professional nature of the site. Results on Sunday have been completely different for a very specific reason, of which more later.
A quick note on methodology. Rather than using Google Analytics as I said last week, I’ve been using Performancing Metrics to analyse traffic to the site. Performancing Metrics is designed for blogs and smaller websites and has a lot more information on individual visitors and their activity, which I’ve found useful.
Social Networking Sites
The direct impact of activity on StumbleUpon, Digg and LinkedIn seems to have been non-existent. Analysis of incoming links shows a big fat zero in terms of directly referred links from these sites to Fog of Eternity.
I’m not sure that these are the most effective sites to use. I enjoy using Stumbleupon and continue to use that, but I think in terms of traffic to Fog of Eternity it would be reliant on another user stumbling an article. I’ve seen the impact of StumbleUpon with a test stumble of an article on Babble and Stuff which brought in about 150 visitors in the space of five minutes, and no further traffic after that. But is that of real positive benefit of that is other than a boost to overall figures?
Digg seems to have a lot of trash on it these days, and a lot of users who friend hundreds of people and digg anything and everything. I don’t particularly enjoy using it and given the non-existent impact I’ll be moving away from it in future.
Being active on LinkedIn is worthwhile from a professional basis, and I can see that if a particular blog post was relevant to one of their popular Question & Answer threads then it might drive some traffic. But apart from that it’s more about developing a personal profile and network and doesn’t seem to be that relevant to any kind of traffic driving.
Blog Commenting
This appears to have been more successful, and will hopefully continue to be as I remain active on specific blogs. As a slow and consistent boost to traffic this seems to be the most positive measure I’ve taken in the last week. Further analysis of the statistics seems to suggest that this is higher quality traffic as well, more likely to spend time reading content and browsing the site.
Hacker News
As you can see from the screenshots from Performancing Metrics, traffic today was massively increased. I was pretty pleased with my first look at Evernote article and so posted it to Hacker News, a smaller reddit like site which I monitor regularly. It’s not a strategy I’d use on a regular basis, but the response was positive and I felt the article added value. And certainly it demonstrates that Hacker News is a genuine traffic driver.
Next Week’s Strategy
While the big spike on Sunday is great, the main idea here is to develop long term consistent traffic to the blog as a whole. I’m going to be concentrating on some different social networking tools:
I’ve also extended my blog subscriptions on Google Reader and am going to be trying out some of the advice in ‘Do You Have A Blog Commenting Strategy’ (particularly the section on Create a Hit List for Early Commenting. We’ll see if a more targeted commenting strategy continues the early success of this week.
Check back next Monday for a further update.
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April 14th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Fascinating Post. I am starting to dig into blogging more. I have a traditional print and direct mail ad agency and know I have to get my head into this space. I found the post helpful and you won’t be surprised - I found you through a comment you made on a post on another another blog.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Thanks for the comment, and good to hear that you tracked me back from elsewhere. I’m finding the whole concept interesting to analyse “from scratch” in this way, and it’s also made me realise just how many social networking sites with different niches there are out there.
I’m also going to be commenting more next week on RSS feed growth, as this is just as important (if not more so) in terms of measuring interest in a blog.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:42 am
Interesting article Robin, and indeed I came to your site after you commented on my blog. I’m interested to see your success with comments, because I’ve only ever seen minimal traffic numbers via this tactic. Here’s a few things I’ve found:
- Sphinn is your gold mine. It takes time and patience to build personal visibility, but this is where your high quality readership reside. Sphinn translates to subscribers. Form relationships in Sphinn and you’re on your way to success. In particular, if you become friendly with some high profile Sphinners, you’ll begin to see the benefits when they submit your work to Sphinn. A front page article on Sphinn won’t bring you the massive numbers of StumbleUpon, but it brings you traffic of the highest calibre. To help get you started I’ve submitted your traffic growth #2 article to Sphinn. And while it probably won’t reach the front age (due to my semi recognisable profile), it’s a start :) Feel free to add me as a friend once you sign up.
- After forming relationships with Sphinn members, search for them in StumbleUpon and other social media outlets. Practically all Sphinn members are power social media users. And practically all of them use it A LOT!
- While the quality of StumbleUpon traffic is low, it can still help bring some quality traffic if you befriend the right people. For example, Sphinn power users have hundreds of followers in StumbleUpon. Each time they Stumble an article, it becomes visible to their friends and can attract more like minded people. Generating 10+ Stumbles from Sphinn power users has helped to send 1,000 users to my site within 24 hours (which is still just the tip of StumbleUpon iceberg - I’ve heard people quote 25,000+).
These are not tactics that will deliver overnight success. It’s taken me months and I’m only just starting to see some real results. The Sphinn crowd can to difficult to penetrate. But persistence will bring real results.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Thanks for the kind words and advice John.
Particularly appreciate the point towards Sphinn, it’s re-motivated me because I’d initially been put off by not particularly liking the user interface and the site being a little less user-friendly than some other alternatives. But now that I’ve spent some time on the site I’m far more appreciative of the quality and the relevant nature of the posted articles, and am going to be spending a lot more time there.
I think (and I commented on DoshDosh recently along the same lines, that it’s important to settle down with the social networking sites that you’re comfortable with. One of the benefits of writing up this series of pieces, even at this early stage, is how it’s encouraged me to look far wider in terms of social networks I feel comfortable with and encouraged to contribute. I think that can only be to the long term benefit.