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Boast Your Blog Traffic using Social Web Tools

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Social Web Tools

Social web is the new cool way to communicate and interact on the World Wide Web. Not too long ago, blogging was considered the coolest new way to communicate, it is still cool but with so much buzz going around the social web, people are relying more on their social networks for the content than their blog reading list. Blogging is not dying, it is still alive and doing very well but blogs are becoming social applications themselves. These days it is almost essential for bloggers to integrate social tools on their blogs to bring more visitors and staying in touch with already established readership.

Find Your Social Networks

Twitter and Facebook dominate the social web scene today, but please remember these are not the only social platforms. There are many small social networking sites and if your blog is focused on a particular topic or niche then it would be very useful if you find a social network built around this topic. Even Facebook has many groups and pages built around specific topics and they can provide a good start to your social networking activities. Join these networks to find new contacts, readers and content for your blog.

Integrate Social Widgets

People visiting your blog are already on social web and they might want to share your links with their friends and followers. As a social media ready blog, you should provide them with the tools that make it easier for them to share your content. Most blogs have share this widgets installed just below their blog posts. Some use Facebook’s Like buttons, others prominently highlight the retweet buttons. You need to find out what works best for your blog.

Also add your social network profiles to your sidebar. These are the buttons that allow your visitors to join you and your blog on social media websites. Most social media websites already provide you HTML code to display badges on your sidebar as widgets. You can obtain “Follow me on Twitter” or “Find us on Facebook” buttons and add them to your sidebar.

Better Web Design

Blogs are more casual and sometimes personal publishing platforms. This does not mean that they cannot have better web design. There are thousands of readymade blog templates available on the web. But if you want your blog to stand out among thousands of other blogs then you should consider hiring a professional web design service to create a custom blog theme or template for you. A professionally designed blog theme would make it easier for you to integrate social media tools on your blog and would also encourage visitors to share your content. Free blog themes are usually not ready for many such things, they might have spots available for social widgets but usually one needs to configure these spots and sometimes the actual design gets twisted and your blog looks untidy.

Interact with Your Readers on Social Web

Once you have found your social networks, integrated social tools, and have a better blog design, the next steps are to blog and interact with your readers. Once you publish something new on your blog go ahead and share it with your contacts on the social web, tweet it, share it, post it, digg and stumble upon on your own content. It is not bad to share your own content, but don’t just share content. You need to interact with people on the social web. Social media is not that complicated and with simple steps you can become a social media guru yourself.

About

Ben Johnson is the Alliance Manager at Logoinn, a logo design company. He writes about the effect of design on marketing and brand identity and helps small businesses find design solutions for effective marketing.

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{ 34 Responses }

  1. John Mack says:
    Very insightful blog. Always nice to find information that is really useful and not useless. Take a look here for good info thedirectword.blogspot.com
  2. Antonio Rhodas says:
    Awesome Blog! I found it more useful and informative. I've been looking for a great way on increasing traffic on my blog. Finally, I came across on reading your blog and I learn a lot of new informative stuff. Actually, I'm thankful that I got the Best Internet Marketing Tools. It helps me a lot too.
  3. Gibson Goff says:
    Great article, Ben. Twitter currently accounts for the vast majority of my traffic, with personal friends from FB next in line. I'm one of those people that interact a lot on Twitter, and I've built some great alliances. Comments on the blogs from people I regularly interact on Twitter gives me visibility to my non-immediate Twitter followers. It's absolutely great for my visibility. Other than my friends, FB has done little for me. And I don't mind, it's where I personally interact with my friends. Twitter is friends/business associates. Keeping a specific arena for both of them works best for me. Again, great article, Ben! Thanks!
  4. Alexandra says:
    Great post.Social web is the new cool way to communicate and interact on the World Wide Web.and it give advantage to your site ranking and traffic and boost your buisness as well through social network sites.
  5. Michael Pehl says:
    Hm, I'm not doin' much with facebook tbh. My posts get tweeted... that's it... basically. They are very technically, I think that's why I do not have much traffic. But soon all people need to use these techniques.
  6. Usama says:
    I agree. People follow you more, and not just on twitter, when you communicate with them. Its not like you are talking face to face but its the closest it can get. Good advice. Thanks.
  7. cam says:
    Social network has really helped blogging take off to a different level. I have even read that many college students believe that email is archaic now and would rather be texted or tweeted.
  8. chandan says:
    Social media is helpful for SEO. Recently I have read that website that is performing well in social media then also perform better in search engine.
  9. Julius says:
    I believe it's very important to interact with people on social networks. Yet I can't get around to doing it. It's not that I don't like the idea of contacting people or helping them via these networks. It's just that I don't use these networks in the first place. I rather contact people and help them by commenting. So I guess you really do have to find your own way and just find the thing you are most comfortable with.
  10. prajeesh says:
    Dude, This is awesome. social networking sites like facebook is rocking in bloggers world. Lively they can update about their blog or about an article. Social media is playing a vital role to develop a blog. we can made more than 1000 people to view our blog through this social media.
  11. Pritam says:
    From my experience Facebook is the only major player in getting traffic to your blog. Its hard to promote through other social media sites.
  12. Daniel Sharkov says:
    Instead of going with as many social media platforms as I can get my hands on, I have chosen to use three or four at the moment. In my opinion concentrating on few websites and spending more time with them individually is better than staying for two minutes on each of the 100 social medias one is registered to. At least this proved to be my true over the last few months.
  13. Tixy says:
    Interesting resoults (http://bit.ly/aJ5GSn): "More than half of respondents to this week’s RBJ Daily Report Snap Poll say social media sites are not important to their work or professionally. Only 15 percent say social media sites are a very important component to their work or professional life." "Which social media site do you find most useful in your work or professionally? None: 43% LinkedIn: 37% Facebook: 11% Twitter: 5% YouTube: 3% Other: 1% " So, it seems social media sites are not so important...
    • Ben Johnson says:
      Nice research Tixy, but I don't know how people evaluate the different social media communities, but as a social media professional I can say that, I generate more than 30% of traffic from facebook and Twitter then 20% from my blog posts and guest posts, 40% from Google(S.E.O) and rest of the 10% traffic is from other social media sites and it varies on different cases for different contents, it all depends on the followers and the niche you have created. Few people get their more than 70% of traffic from Twitter and Digg, It really doesn't matter from where you are getting businesses or traffic the thing you need to focus is your targeted niche specially when it comes to a business website, you can even create it on any low ranked social media website as well, like someone told me that he only work on Gather.com and getting extra ordinary business from there. Facebook and LinkedIn is a very useful tool to explore the targeted audience so most of the professionals use these. Social Media Sites can give you business but the main feature and the purpose of keeping a social media profile or fan pages is developing the brand awareness and identity, simultaneously you get the conversions.
  14. TJ McDowell says:
    Do any of you guys have blogs with different audiences? We have one blog for photography customers and one for photography education. Should we have 2 different Facebook pages too?
  15. Kimi says:
    Not a new tip, but great post still! About the "web design" point, to me, i would choose the minimalis, simple, free-w3c error, and of course SEO optimized as well, the look can be the last in my list. Thanks for sharing Ben, nice to meet you in famousbloggers.net ;)
  16. Swamykant says:
    It is very important to find the Right Social Network for our Blog.. The Facebook may be good for site of blog but it may not suit for other.. Nice Post
  17. Tej Kohli says:
    Social media is indeed the next bog thing in internet marketing and online communication! Now how we capitalize this useful tool is entirely on us.
  18. W.C. Murphree says:
    Social media defiantly has come to dominate the media industry these days.
  19. Anne M says:
    You've pretty much covered the basics. And I tend to agree, it would make you as much of a social media guru as most of the other self-proclaimed gurus out there.
  20. Andreas says:
    It is also important to send your message across all social networking platforms at once, so that it reaches all friends and followers on the different sites. I use ping.fm to update all my social media profiles when sending a message.
    • Ben Johnson says:
      @Andreas I will recommend that start practicing by sharing your posts one by one, like for Tweeting go to your Twitter's profile and sign in properly then tweet your post, use same strategy for your rest of the bookmarking profiles, you can use the integrated share widgets(as I mentioned in the article as well) of your posts or pages only for showing popularity of your post by there number of votes or tweets. Sharing your posts on some automated profile like friendfeed or ping.fm works well but doesn't sound professional. It looks that even the writer of the post didn't put his efforts and time to share the post, so it can't be valuable stuff or content. I might be wrong here, but this is my own perception.
  21. Lennart Heleander says:
    Good and interesting article Ben, the social network is very important to work with today, both to find new clients, for the SEO to your main page and get traffic to your business site or blog page. For me is only to 100% for the Search engine optimization and with a very good result.
  22. Ben Johnson says:
    @Slava I did not say that having accounts on Twitter or somewhere else will make you a Social Media Guru. I said by follow few easy steps you can be a Social Media Guru or Expert.
  23. Aaron says:
    Thanks Ben. A good part of conversion rates is due to a good web design. Good call to action buttons and text are also very valuable at boosting traffic to a business page or boosting readership and subscribers on a blog. Good tips.
  24. Slava says:
    Awesome tips! Although I really dislike the term "social network guru", it seems like everybody who has FaceBook and Twitter account is a guru.
  25. Tinh says:
    The last point is the most important but many bloggers missed it out :-)
  26. Jeevan Jacob John says:
    I agree with all your points, Ben. Social Networking really helps when it comes to blogging. Social Media is the biggest thing in the world of Promotion. Widgets and Profile in your blog really does help when it comes to sharing your article with the world. I also agree with you that interacting with your readers is an important thing. But I don't think that Blog design is a big factor. Thanks for the article, Ben !
  27. Rev says:
    I think the most important part of building social traffic is to have an active profile on social sites, such as StumbleUpon and Twitter, and then to not share all your posts, but to mix it up with quality stuff from your niche.
  28. James Spinosa says:
    One additional tip is that all of these things are compounding, for instance many people won't be the first one to tweet your story for you using the widgets, but if they see there are already a couple of ReTweets then they will be more inclined to tweet your story for you. Also when people see your story on a medium such as Digg, they will be more likely to Digg it as well if they see the icons.
  29. Harriet says:
    Hello again! Thanks for these great tips, I'm finding your blogs very useful in thinking about setting up my own blog, thanks!