There was a time when unsolicited email was considered spam. But with Social Networks all the rage now I guess that’s no longer considered true.

 For example, here’s a recent email that I received:

Message from Brian Lockrey:

I’d like to invite you to join the “Blogmedian” room on FriendFeed, a
place for us to share and discuss things. I hope you’ll join the
room. BlogMedian.com is a site that assists users with reading and posting
to blogs using smartphones and other wireless devices.

I get tons of emails like this daily, and not only just from FriendFeed. Now please correct me if I’m wrong, but is that not considered spam? Or is it just a sign of the times?

Yes, Social Networking means just that — i.e. it is designed to be social in nature. But when does socialness go too far and infringe on my privacy? 

Does joining a so-called Social Network mean I have automatically opted-out of my privacy? Just wondering.

We all know the real reason for most of these so-called “rooms” is to enlist more readers to visit our blogs and make money.

So my question is, are unsolicited emails from social network sites not also considered spam?

Or is the Social Network phenomina redefining what we’ve known as spam?

You tell me.

*An importance Notice from Blog Bloke: The address for this newsfeed has been changed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogbloke . Please make a note of it and re-subscribe today. Thank you for subscribing to Bloke Bloke.

Written by: Blog Bloke

Is Unsolicited Email from Social Networks Considered Spam?

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1. Entrecard: The concept is really simple. You sign up and upload a 125X125 banner to market your blog. You ‘drop’ your card on other blogs and earn entrecredits. Plus there is the added benefit of making your blog known to the hundreds of webmasters that have the entrecard widget installed. You can spend the entrecredits to advertise on other blogs within the network, thus exposing your website to potential readers.

Believe it or not, this method really works. Since signing up for the service and running a couple of campaigns, I’ve noticed a significant boost in my traffic, pulling in well-targeted quality visitors. I’ve also had many bloggers browsing my blog to drop their cards, and I’ve made a few friends along the way. If you haven’t signed up for the service yet, then I suggest you do so now at entrecard.com.

2. Yahoo! Answers: This is yet another traffic-grabber. While Yahoo specifically forbids gaming their system, I see no problem in leaving your web address at the end of each answer, especially if it’s relevant. This brings in highly targeted visitors clicking on the link to get more information on what you’ve just answered. You get additional traffic if your answer gets chosen as the best.

In the early days of my blog, this technique alone brought in about 60 visitors every day - I know that’s not much but it is really a motivation to keep building your blog, especially in the early stages. Overtime a handful of those visitors have turned into subscribers. Sign up at answers.yahoo.com.

3. Become a guest blogger: The reason why I’m writing this article and why countless others recommend this technique is because it works. If you post a quality article on a blog that’s popular, the readers are bound to visit your site looking for more and hopefully subscribe to your blog. Just go easy on the self-promotion.

4. Write a free e-book/make a video tutorial: This has the added benefit of a viral marketing effect, especially if your e-book is of high quality or your video tutorial solves a common problem easily. If readers really enjoy it, they are most likely to spread the word and bring in new visitors to your blog. You could also email a couple of bloggers in your niche, mentioning your work and they might even link to it. Just don’t spam them, write a personal and engaging email.

5. Introduce yourself to others: Often your biggest readers will be your rivals or other bloggers that are your peers. By peers, I mean that they are on the same level of traffic, content, etc. as you are. Just don’t shoot for the a-listers straight away. Email your peers to introduce yourself and mention that you subscribed to their blog and found the content interesting. Leave it at just that, and don’t ask for link exchanges or ask them to subscribe to your blog in return. But do leave a link to your blog at the end. That way they might visit your blog and subscribe, or even better write a short review of your site if they find it really worthwhile.

6. Submit your top articles: By this I don’t mean submitting your article to an article directory, because they never seem to bring in significant traffic. Submit your best articles (that are getting the most page views and comments) to Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and others. Don’t forget to include a ’submit this article’ button on your page to allow your readers to vote on the article. If you’re lucky you might even make it to the front page. One word of warning though - don’t submit every article you write because you run the risk of getting banned for spamming.

In my opinion, small blogs do not have the necessary reader-base to get to the front page. I’ve never had luck with Digg, getting 10-15 diggs at the very most. But I’ve heard small  blogs can make it big on StumbleUpon. If you run a video games/technology blog however, I recommend submitting to n4g.com. It’s very easy to get to the front page and I’ve had over 2000 unique visitors on the very first day.

7. Make your blog search engine friendly: Everyone is obsessed with search engine optimization because it’s the biggest source of free traffic. Just don’t over do it - the key to SEO is moderation. While I’m no SEO guru, a keyword rich title and URL, description and keyword tags does the trick for me. I don’t optimize my posts for keyword density and don’t even have the proper meta tags in place, yet most of my blog’s traffic (60.4%) comes from search engines. That’s because my articles rank high for longer phrases (3-4) words and it’s the easiest to rank on the #1 spot on those.

My suggestion for new bloggers is to target the 3-4 word phrases because it has the least competition and you have more chances of making it to the top.

8. Link out to other bloggers: This is the best way to gain the attention of your peers. I have found that many bloggers visit my article just out of curiosity, to see what I’ve written about them. If they love what they read, they write a short article and link back to me.  This sends back a nice trickle of traffic, and more if it is from a prominent blogger.

WHAT ABOUT COMMENTS AND FORUMS?

You might have noticed that I didn’t mention about leaving comments or participating in forums just to promote your blog because I believe that it’s not an effective marketing tool. You should be concerned in writing quality pillar articles in the early stages of your blog. But if you are compelled enough to leave a comment, then by all means do leave a link back to your blog.

Well that’s it! I hope these 8 killer tactics help your blog to gain new readers. Do you have any more “killer” ideas for bringing in traffic that you can share with the rest of us?

*Author’s Note: Mushfiqur Rahman is also the author of Gamer’s World.

Written by: Blog Bloke

8 Killer Ways To Get Free Traffic To Your Blog

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So I was thinking that it might be a good time to reassess the big move. This was the list of observations that I came up with. Who knows, maybe you can come up with more:

1. I’ve pretty much retained my blog rank (after the Google shakeup) like I had predicted thanks to htaccess redirects, although some individual post pages still need updating. That’s of course due to losing backlinks but curiously Google hasn’t yet caught up to all of my post redirects like it did to my domain. So what I’ve been doing is republishing some of my more popular posts for indexing and see if that will help. Only time will tell.

2. Do I get more post comments than before? Not really. One of my reasons for moving to Wordpress was because of Blogger’s annoying comments feature. Although I have not noticed any significant increase in comments on this blog, some Blokester’s comments like Kathy Frederick’s blog have gone through the roof. Go figure.

3. I’m definitely being indexed better with Google than I ever was on Blogger, although I still have some catching up to the copycats for keywords such as ”blog tips”.

4. It has taken me all this time to tweak the template and fix all of the bugs. Like housework it never seems get done. Just when I think I’m finished I find another problem or something that I need to change.

5. Regrets? Absolutely none. The blog definitely looks more professional, is more SEO friendly, stable, easier to modify and maintain, and there are so many more advanced features available thanks to Wordpress plugins.

Your thoughts?

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Written by: Blog Bloke

My Observations 6 Months After Moving from Blogger to Wordpress

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What was that movie called … oh yeah, “Grumpy Old Man, er Men”. 

While writing this I can’t help but appreciate the curmugeny irony as I hear wisps of Julie Andrews dancing through the mountains to a chorus of “My Favorite Things“.

Besides my pet peeves (Pro Sploggers and Microsoft) I was thinking it might be fun to make a list of some of the things that really bug me. This is not a definitive list by any stretch as it will no doubt be a work in progress much like my life is.

Although these are not necessarily blog related I’m sure that most of you can relate so here goes:

1. Staggering out of bed in the morning after an all-nighter blogging and discovering that I’m out of coffee. Shhhhh__!
2. Half asleep I step into a puddle of my dog’s pee on the floor. Hopping on one foot I find out the hard way that he also pooped. CRAP!
3. I need a shower in the worst way and my kids have used up all the hot water. STINK!
4. My day is completely booked and then my wife says “dear, I forgot to ask you to…”
5. I’m late for work and the car battery is dead because some idiot left the interior light on. (Did I just call myself an idiot).
6. I finally get our finances out of the red and my wife comes up with another way to spend it.
7. The friends that I thought I made at church no longer call me after I stopped going to church.
8. Panhandlers who are making more money than me.
9. Paying for parking at the hospital that has already been paid for with my hard-earned tax dollars.
10. Paying for parking - period!
11. Government agencies that ask me to write a “detailed” letter about a problem I’m having, and spend the rest of the time dodging me.
12. My wife seems to have a hearing problem so I have to keep repeating myself. After the third unsuccessful attempt I raise my voice and then she scolds me for shouting.

SIGH! I can’t win. 

Did I miss anything? What are your pet peeves? Keep whining because in the end that’s all we’ve got.

Written by: Blog Bloke

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things (NOT)

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Bill Gates will go down in history as the biggest conundrum in corporate history. How can someone become the world’s riches man by making the crappiest products? Not by being a nice guy that’s for sure.

Over the ensuing days you will be reading white-washed accolades about what a great guy Billy is. All I can say is don’t buy into it.

Gates has the reputation of being the most loathed man in the computer industry and it’s a legacy well earned. Case in point … here is a comment that I just read today:

This guy is nothing more than a thief, all his so called patents were created by a company that he first worked for (Apple). His dad (a lawyer) helped him obtain and submit the paper work for all his supposed creations. Now at a ripe old age he wants to give a large amount of his vast fortune to help the world. What a guy! Could it be he is trying to buy his way into heaven for all his evil doings here on earth?

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Fiercely loyal employees who profited from Microsoft like Robert Scoble will of course disagree with me, but the facts speak for itself.

The secret to Bill Gates success was that he perfected the art of predatory business tactics. In fact my first computer job in the 80s was one of his first victims. You can read more about it in my about page if you like.

Fact: Bill Gates sold IBM the DOS operating system before he even had it it. After getting the contract thanks to his Mommy’s contacts he bought the DOS operating system from someone else. And things have never changed since.

Fact: Gates stole code from Apple to create Windows when he was supposedly helping them work on the Mac operating system. 

Fact: Bill Gates never created, invented or innovated anything. He either bought the technology from someone else, squeezed out the competition or produced third-rate knockoffs.

Fact: Gates abused his monopoly with IBM PCs to squeeze out his competitors such as WordPerfect (remember them) by forcing the PC hardware manufacturers to sign contracts to not install competitive products on their computers. The list of casualties in the computer industry is (almost) as long as the digits in Billy’s bank account.

Fact: Remember the Justice Department’s subsequent investigations and court battles? Need I say any more?

Now he has the kahunas to play bigshot philanthropist with money that he unscrupulously obtained! Is it any wonder Windows is the most targeted software by virus makers?

Asta la vista Bill! Have a great retirement. Good riddance to bad rubbish indeed.

*An importance Notice from Blog Bloke: The address for this newsfeed has been changed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogbloke . Please make a note of it and re-subscribe today. Thank you for subscribing to Bloke Bloke.

Written by: Blog Bloke

Bill Gates Leaves Microsoft For Good: Woohoo!

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(Un) Equal Opportunity Bloggers

Jessica Guynn poses the question:

“Why is this supposedly democratic medium recreating real-world inequality? A blogarchy has emerged from the Internet equivalent of an “American Idol” popularity contest. This elite clique of bloggers — the so-called a-listerswho get checked out more often than Lindsay Lohan — attract the largest online audience. All those eyeballs can deliver cachet, cash and the coveted contract for a blook (a book based on a blog).”

Jessica goes on to discuss inequality in the blogosphere where it seems that 1% is getting 99% of the traffic. But she goes too far when she whines that most of the a-listers are men.

She seems to have forgotten that the Huffington Post, Ann Althouse, the Wonkette et al are blogs run by women a-listers. So I don’t want to turn this into a pissing match between the sexes.

Trust me when I say there are a whole lot of male bloggers that are in the same boat. No matter how hard they try and tweak their sites or write killer posts they just can’t seem to crack the barrier.

But the truth of the matter is there’s a disproportionate amount of traffic going to only a privileged few that have eked out their own network hierarchy within the blogosphere.

And so, a complex social phenomenon becomes purely mathematical: The more links pointing to you — especially from big-time bloggers — the more readers you will have (according to the method of judging blog popularity by number of links)… talk about creating a powerful, self-reinforcing and very exclusive network.

The Blogosphere is Rigged

Unfortunately this sort of BS becomes self-perpetuating when blog search sites such as the Truth Laid Bear, Technorati, and Sphere et al reinforce the a-list mentality with their stupid juvenile ratings. Even Google’s Blog Search has a “Sort by Relevance” filter which is the default setting.

The a-listers bank on the gullibility of blogging newbies who don’t know any better. After all, we just want to belong don’t we? So we hang around the a-lister’s like a pack of stray dogs at the corner store hoping they will throw us a bone or two (i.e. links).

Search Filters:

We can’t even install a news reader today without a ready-made a-list, and a perusal of the search engines (I call them search filters) will quickly point us in their direction.

So where does that leave the rest of the 99%? On the outside looking in that’s where. Like I said before, the Blogosphere has turned into one big frat party. And here I thought I left jerks like that back in school. What a crock. Feh!

More Signal, Less Noise:

These blogarchy types subscribe to the theory of “More Signal, Less Noise”. Meaning — YOU are the noise.

Sure, some of the blogarchy deserve to be there. There’s no questioning that. BUT I can find better blog writers any day of the week than most of these so-called a-listers.

So here is a dirty little secret for all of you not yet in the know. The blogosphere has been rigged. The majority of the a-listers only got where they are because they have high profile jobs, are members of elite blog networks they created, are better at gaming Google than the rest of us, or were linked to by other a-listers that they sucked up to.

It is a self-serving megalomaniac gang of social climbers that there ever was.

So what can you do about it?

Well for one thing you can stop blogrolling these a-list nincompoops. Don’t give them any of your link love. If you still have a morbid curiosity and want them within easy reach then just bookmark them. But whatever you do DO NOT give them a pagerank boost by linking to them in your blog.

Here’s one or two tricks for your consideration. If you feel that you absolutely must link to them, add the rel=”nofollow“ attribute to the link so that the search engines won’t rank it. If you subscribe to their newsfeed do NOT use their Feedburner link so they can show off their 1 million subscribers. Instead, use the feed links provided by their blog service — i.e. RSS or Atom.

Take the power back and deny their petty egos by starting your own blogroll with bloggers who are your friends or who share a similar focus. Visit them often and link to their posts. Comment on their blogs and create your own cosmos support group. That’s a good place to start.

Or better still, just suck up to them and hope you get linked. Just kidding of course (I think). Show me love.

Similar Reading:

How To Win Friends and Influence your PageRank

Getting More Traffic to Your Blog

The Blogosphere is becoming one big Frat Party, OR Revenge of the Nerds

*This article was recently updated since it’s first publishing 2005

Written by: Blog Bloke

The Blogosphere is Rigged

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Of course we would all like to believe that we’re above this sort of thing (the shrinks call it denial).

You already know about some of my online scraps so I was wondering … do you have any blog rivalry stories of your own to share?

This is your chance to show some of that blogging transparency that everyone talks about.

Come on, tell the truth. Confession is good for your soul.

Written by: Blog Bloke

Blog Rivalry

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A reader recently reminded me why it is to your advantage to leave comments on this blog. You actually have three ways you can improve your blog pagerank:

 1. First of all, when you leave a comment you have a chance to get a link in the top ten performer’s list. You will find it in the right-hand menu under the “Blokester Roll” menu. So the more comments you leave, the better your chances are for being listed.

2. Secondly, when you leave a link with your comment it will be followed by the search engines because I have removed the “nofollow” attribute imposed by Wordpress.

3.Thirdly, I use the plugin called CommentLuv which adds a link in your comment pointing to your most recent blog post. Now that is sweet!

You win big three ways!

Some might call it bribery but I prefer to think of it as a reward to you, my loyal readers. So comment away and watch your blog pagerank go ballistic!

I should also mention that if you link to Blog Bloke I will add you to my Blokester Network and feature you in a post (with another link of course).

WHOA!

How’s that for putting my link love where my mouth is?

Written by: Blog Bloke

Commenting @ Blog Bloke = Greater Page Rank

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So comScore [CNET] tells us Facebook surpassed MySpace in worldwide visitors for the first time. This shift evidently occurred sometime in the last few months, between March and May.

Yawn. Source

He also references GigiOm:

The fundamental nature (and utility) of social networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network hasn’t really changed. The platform-ization of social networks has led to the rise of social apps that are best described as time wasters. You can be fascinated by vampire bites and what not but in the end, there is a finite amount of time you can waste.

This is my comment:

Yawn is right. I’ve been saying for years now the so-called social networks are time wasters and misdirecting everyone away from developing their real blogs.

I compare the SN phenomena to bar-hopping. Today’s popular hangout will be yesterday’s flavour of the month.

Sooner or later the barflies are going to wake from their delerium and regret all those years wasted and realize their privacy has been raped and come back to haunt them.

Sad but true.

Whatever happened to common sense? Are the Social Networks Ready to Implode? What do you think?

*An importance Notice from Blog Bloke: The address for this newsfeed has been changed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogbloke . Please make a note of it and re-subscribe today. Thank you for subscribing to Bloke Bloke.

Written by: Blog Bloke

Are the Social Networks Ready to Implode?

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Power to the people!

Written by: Blog Bloke

Video: Social Media in Plain English

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“Blogging requires transparency. I believe the basic question of whether or not your corporation should blog (I call that ‘clogging’), is whether or not you wish to be transparent in your relationships with your clients and also to your competition.What I know to be true is that, if you do not blog transparently, you will be ignored and destroyed by the blogosphere. Insincerity is easy to observe. It’s most obvious during periods of poor performance with your company. The blog will amplify any behavior by your company. If you try to cover it up with some nice PR, be ready for the backlash. If you’re honest, be ready for the customer appreciation.”

In short, if you can not blog transparently, you’re better off not doing it at all! Source.

That’s kinda like saying it’s not worth leaving your house today because of the risk crossing the street. (I think the shrinks have a name for that).

There is of course risk in everything.

There is even risk in just starting up a business. Crikey, I’d better not try to be an entrepreneur because I might fail and that could really be disastrous to my self esteem. Give me a break.

After Enron and their ilk, today consumers are demanding “transparency” from companies, and hiding your head in the sand is counterproductive and going against the trend.

Consumers are fed up with sermons from the mount and want to have their say. Web 2.0 is all about interactivity and old static websites are going the way of the dinosaur. Business must either join the revolution or die.

He goes on to say:

There are two issues. Firstly, small businesses tend to have few marketing skills, little time but oodles of passion. So, if a small business does limited marketing, does investing time and effort in an emerging technology give them the best return? Unlikely.

…My advice is, don’t ignore the opportunity but don’t get sucked in. If blogs can’t support an existing communications strategy, don’t complicate things with an unproven tactic.

Really? And what investure in “time and effort” in “emerging technology” might that be? Is the investure any more difficult than with static websites?

The fact is blogs can be easier to set up and maintain than old school websites.

That is the beauty of blogs. They are completely template driven. It is a set and forget technology.

Once your site has been coded (or just choose an off-the-shelf template from the thousands that are available) your printing press is ready to go. Unlike standard websites that require constant geek support for even the smallest of changes.

I don’t believe the author really understands the technology. Case in point: A company has a new product they want to introduce to their website. They call up their webmaster and ask him or her to add some new text or graphics to the website.

Hence, they have to muck around with the code (HTML, XHTML, CSS, you name it) to add even the smallest amount of information. (Can you hear $$$ costs adding up)?

Alternatively, the boss tells his secretary to type a short blurb (i.e post) for the company blog. With the ease of using a word processor he or she can write it, hit the publish button and boom… it’s on the internet! Now what can be easier (and less costly) than that?

Please. Let’s keep our perspective about this.

Every business (big or small) has to do marketing. It is a necessary evil and what can be cheaper than a free or relatively inexpensive hosted blog. An entire year’s worth of hosting can cost less than the printing of just a few brochures or business cards.

Lorelle goes on to say:

Carr’s opinion is that small businesses face two issues. The lack of marketing skills but tons of passion, and the fact that “Web 2.0? online social networking and blogging is still new technology. These are very important points to consider when making the decision on whether or not your small business blogs.If you have the people who can blog, sharing their passion and talent for writing about your business and industry, then have a blog. If you don’t have the staff, expertise, or the money to hire them, then don’t blog. Get yourself a website with information on what you do, how you do it, why you do it, and why we should care, because that is part of today’s core marketing and advertising plan, but skip the blog.

Huh! Am I the only one that sees a contradiction here? In this day and age most everyone in an office can write and use a word processor. And if they can’t you might want to consider replacing them.

Don’t let just anyone within your organization have access to your company blog.

You don’t allow anyone to fiddle with your company website do you? You wouldn’t allow just anybody be your Public Relations spokesman would you?

Of course not. You would hire a pro like Steve Rubel to do it for you. So why should your company blog be any different?

Why not replace your webmaster and hire a professional blogger/consultant? (So call me ;-).

Accordingly, don’t allow just any employee have access to the company blog (that’s why it’s password protected). Hire somebody who is specifically trained for the job, and make certain they are fully apprised of the company blog policy (more about this later).

The bottom line is every business has (or should have) someone responsible for their marketing and PR. So if you don’t want to hire a professional blogger then utilize the talent that is already within your organization.

They can also take a lot of time. Blogs are consumers, taking energy away you may need to give to your growing business. They require food in the way of frequent posts and information. They also require some expertise on web standards and technology, though a simple blog can be produced without it, it sure helps to have it.

If you say so (notice the tongue in my cheek). Any marketing method takes effort and blogs are no exception.

Benefits of Blogs over Static Websites:

1. Blogs build regular readership traffic by linking together and forming their own web networks.

2. Free publicity and promotion for your blog from other bloggers that link to you.

3. RSS technology — instant publishing to the internet.

4. Blogs humanise the face of business. Consumers appreciate having a name behind the information they read and the ability to interact with your company.

5. Blogs get better pageranking with the search engines. Because blogs can be posted to so easily they have a tendency to be updated more often and are therefore given a higher pagerank over old school websites.

6. Blogs allow customers to provide input. Would you like to have a focus group/test audience for a new product idea but can’t afford to outsource it? Then just ask your readers.

You can communicate with your customers directly and faster.

And it’s not just a one-way conversation either. Think of it as your online billboard, customer relations and communications technology all wrapped into one package that you have complete control over.

There is only one drawback to blogging that I can see. There is always the possibility that some disgruntled employee could say something dumb or reveal a company secret.

Of course that could also happen just as easily via a quick telephone call to the local newspaper or by any other communications device, so it is not just specific to blogging technology.

There are always ways to mitigate your damages, and that goes for blogging as well.

It’s called damage control and being prepared with a plan of action.

Create a company policy manual stating unequivocally the do’s and don’ts of what can and cannot be said on the blog, and make your employees sign an agreement to abide by it. Don’t be a cowboy and let anything goes, especially in today’s environment where bloggers are being sued for online defamation.

So don’t poo-poo on a technology just because it is new or makes it easier to publish. Setting up a blogging policy for employees is the responsible thing to do to mitigate damages.

Alternatively, just as a company can easily make a mistake, blogs make it even easier (and faster) to correct that mistake. It’s called the edit button, and/or posting a quick response from the organization.

One more thing.

Newer blogs like Blogger Beta now offer a way of making your blog private. Think of it as a cheap company intranet on the internet. Now that is cool.

Need I say anymore? There is no reason for a business not to blog and everything to gain. So what are you waiting for? Get blogging.

*This post has been updated since it’s original posting 2006

Written by: Blog Bloke

Should Your Business be Blogging?

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Most of us want to see more traffic and comments on our blogs. All too often we are left scratching our heads and wondering if we’re just talking to ourselves into a closed microphone …

HELLO!  Is there anyone out there?

Sound familiar? That can be a lonely and frustrating experience, and a reason why so many of us end up abandoning our blogs.

There are exceptions of course, such as arrogant a-listers who intentionally turn comments off to shut out the noise (i.e. us) so they can hear themselves preach, but that’s another story.

For a long time I struggled with why at times traffic and comments can be so high that I can’t keep up with it, and then there are times when it’s almost non-existent.

At first I thought it was probably due to the popularity of a post. That made sense I guess … if the post sucks then why should they comment.

But then I looked at other blogs who sucked worse than mine and yet they were still getting comments (and traffic I assume). Hmm.

Then I noticed that despite some of my posts being Dugg or Stumbled, the number of comments were not commensurate with the number of hits I was getting. It just made me go hmm even more.

So then I thought it might have something to do with my style of writing that endears readers to leave comments (or not). But that didn’t make sense either because I’m still the same writer that I always was, or at least, I think I am…

Anyhow, I reasoned that it might help if I left open-ended questions at the end of my posts, and for the most part it does work, but again — not always.

So why the inconsistency? There had to be another reason that was escaping me. So I’ve been analyzing my blog statistics a little closer to see if there might be any trends that could help shed light on this perplexing dilemma.

After closer scrutiny I noticed some trends that could be affecting my blog traffic as well as the number of comments that I’m receiving. So I thought I would jot these trends down and share them with you:

1. I’ve noticed that traffic and commenting on this blog is slower on weekends. So I’m assuming that my readers are too busy going out for dinner, socializing and carrousing, spending time with family, or visiting the local pub (which also reminds me that I need to get a real life beyond my blog).

But I was doing it just the opposite. I was writing most of my posts on the weekend and very little during the weekdays.

Duh!

2. Alternatively, peak traffic and commenting seems to happen more on weekdays between Monday through Friday (with Saturdays being the slowest day). Again, that’s probably because of reasons mentioned above, and also because readers are blogging at work behind the boss’s back. 

Don’t worry I won’t tell ;-)

3. So given these observations, from now on I’m going to leave the weekends for tweaking the template or pruning my archives, and post mostly Monday through Friday.

You can of course still post on the weekends, but my advice is to keep the best ones for the weekdays when your traffic is at it’s peak.

4. The best time that I’ve found for publishing posts is in the morning hours Eastern Standard time U.S., when people are rising and going to work.

My largest demographic for traffic seems to be coming from the U.S., and the rest is a toss up between Canada, India, the UK, Netherlands and Scandinavia, Asia, Australia, Europe and South America.  

This won’t be easy for Blogger users who have no way of scheduling posting in advance like Wordpress can. (The rumour is that might change in the near future).

That totally sucks, and means that Blogger users will have to stay up later or get up earlier to hit the publish button. It’s also one more reason why I’ve moved over to Wordpress.

5. Of course your traffic stats may tell you a different story, so you will have to adjust your schedule accordingly.

6. So my advice is take a closer look at your traffic stats, and you should be publishing your best posts in the morning of your target demographic, and on the days when your traffic is busiest.

Makes sense don’t you think? After all, what have you got to lose?

Of course there are other things to consider like the quality of your content and your writing voice but that will be another post. 

* This post has been recently updated

Written by: Blog Bloke

Maximizing Your Blog Traffic