Blog Commenting for Traffic

A great way to get some extra traffic and backlinks to your site is through leaving comments on related blogs.  When you comment on a blog, there are usually three fields you need to fill out - name, URL, and comment.  In the name field, you should generally put the name of your site or some keyword anchor text, although some people say that’s rude and you should just use your name.  In the URL you can put the site you’d like traffic and backlinks to.  And then you should leave a comment that relates to the post you’re commenting on.  Please don’t leave generic comments like, “Nice post.”  or, “I agree.”  Actually READ the post and leave a thoughtful comment.  Not only will it help your comment stick, but you’ll be doing the right thing.

One thing to note: if you are commenting on blogs that have “nofollow” on comment links, you won’t be getting the full benefit of the link.  Sure, you may get some traffic straight from the link, but you won’t be getting any link juice.  If you want to maximize the benefit you get from your comment posting, you should try to locate “dofollow” blogs.

There is a dofollow blog directory here:  http://www.dofollowblogs.com/

There are other ways to find dofollow blogs.  If you search Google you’ll come up with a few.  While it’s certainly not necessary to post only on dofollow blogs, it certainly helps you get the most out of the time you spend commenting on blogs.

Also, don’t use those autoposters that post comments on blogs for you.  They can’t possibly match the comments up to the posts they are commenting on, and not only will your posts likely be deleted quickly, but you’ll be looked at as a spammer and people won’t be willing to visit your site.  If you post manually with a quality comment that is on topic and knowledgeable, you’ll be more likely to get actual visitors from your post and not just a backlink.

StumbleUpon, Digg, and Others

Social bookmarking started on very small sites several years ago, but they eventually took off when sites like Digg and StumbleUpon brought the technique to the mainstream internet.  These sites allow users to post links to sites they like, vote on sites that others post, and browse through the favorites of other people.  In essense, you’re sharing your favorite bookmarks with the world instead of just keeping them on your computer.

Because these sites allow practically indescriminate linking, you can add your own sites and vote for them - but there’s a catch.  Because sites are user-moderated, they’re going to get lost in the shuffle quickly if no one else votes for them.  It takes a pretty hefty number of votes to really get a site noticed, so if your site isn’t very interesting, it’s probably not going to get very many votes, which means it’s not going to get a lot of traffic.

One important aspect of marketing on social bookmarking sites is making friends.  Most social bookmarking sites let you have a small to moderate-sized list of friends whose links you can vote for.  If they see you voting for their links relatively often, they just might be willing to vote for yours.  Plus, if you manage to become friends with some “super users” - their votes count more than regular users.  (Note: this doesn’t apply to ALL social bookmarking sites, just some.)  Super users are basically regular users who have done a LOT of voting and have a good mix between their positive and negative votes.

One word of caution: don’t bookmark a ton of pages from the same site on the same account.  This can appear to be spammy to the sites and get you banned, and it’s also rumored to be problematic with regards to search engines who might also feel you are spamming.  Spread links out over multiple accounts, or just stick to bookmarking your very best articles and pages.

Twitter Commands

Twitter is an exceptional way of marketing to your target audience while creating awareness of your website or product through passive social marketing tactics.

One of the fundamental mistakes that new marketers, venturing into the world of Twitter often make, is the belief that the “more the merry”, and when it comes to sending out broadcasts (otherwise known as “tweets”) that is definitely not always the case. In fact, I know of many marketers and consumers will who remove someone who is sending out too many tweets. While it’s important to be consistent and active, it’s equally as important to balance out the number of tweets you send with the type of information being published.

For example, if you are interested in developing a reputation on Twitter as someone worth following, and you want to retain the interest of those on your list, you will want to do your best to provide entertaining, useful and informative tweets, rather than always sending out promotional ones.

People within social communities lose interest quickly, especially if they believe that those people on their own lists are only interested in marketing to them.  Keep in mind that many people join social communities for the joy of meeting similarly minded individuals to both network with and learn from, and if you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to take care of how frequent your messages are, as well as how often you are offering something of value.

Here are a few twitter commands that will help you begin utilizing the power of the Twitter community:

fav username

This will make the users last update as a favorite, and also save them for you under the “Favorites” link in your stats area on your main page.

If you wish to remove a stored favorite, just click on the “Favorites” link and you will see the tweet, along with the username of the person and a yellow star under their post.

@your-friend Hi, how are you doing? Long time, no talk!

The @ symbol is placed directly in front of the username of the person you are attempting to message.

d your-friends-username how are you doing?

The letter ‘d’ represents ‘Direct” and the message will be sent directly to the username I specify in my message.

Follow your-friends-username

Typing this into your Instant Messenger system will ensure that you receive updates and alerts from ‘your-friends-username’ (replace this with an actual username of someone on your list).

If you wish to disable receiving updates from a specific user you use the off ‘leave’ command like this:

leave your-friends-username

If you wanted to retrieve the profile information for a specific user on Twitter you use the WHOIS command:

whois your-friends-username

Information pertaining to this specific user will be displayed provided they have included a Twitter profile.

get your-friends-username

This command will load an info box with their current status message.

You nudge someone by typing in: nudge username

Marketing on Facebook

Facebook is a social network.  A social network is a website with various features that allow people to connect, network, and socialize.  Generally you get to have a profile, add photos, and chat with other users.  There may be additional features that let you create groups or clubs, manage events, and send messages to your friends.

Facebook is undoubtedly the best social network for marketers at the moment.  Facebook is much more lenient about marketing than other social networks, and if you are careful and you follow their rules, you can get a lot of quality traffic from them.  They have a massive number of users that is growing very rapidly, and the overall quality of the site and its visitors is quite high.

Marketing on Facebook (and other social networks) requires a lot of real interaction and socializing in order to be truly successful.  You can’t just make a huge friends list and spam the heck out of them and expect to see good results.  For one thing, you will probably get banned very quickly like this.  While Facebook is more friendly to marketers than other social networks, they can’t allow rampant, blatant spamming or no one would use their network!  For another thing, the best results come from people who actually trust you, because they will be much more likely to buy the things you recommend if they like you and they feel like they know you personally.

Groups are a very important part of marketing on Facebook.  You should join several groups in your niche, and ideally start one of your own.  While joining groups that already have a lot of members is great, nothing beats having the control of running your  own.  When you run your own group, no one can moderate you as long as you stick to Facebook’s rules, which means you can market in any way you choose.