Every journey begins with a single step…

New business launch
It was fun – writing the first post for my new personal blog and reading all the comments people were leaving on these pages. Oh, sorry – I’m jumping the gun here… πŸ™‚ OK, so I have a new blog and I wrote the first chapter of my story. Now what? Well, obviously it’s not enough putting yourself out there – you need to actually have people visiting the blog and reading the posts. In “web jargon” we call this traffic. There are millions of people surfing the web at any given moment but none of them will be visiting your site unless they know about it and are curious to see it. New business launchBasically, there are two ways of letting people know about your site: paid methods (paid advertising) and free methods (free advertising). Paid advertising is an excellent way of getting large amount of traffic (and targeted traffic, if you do it right) but it is also a great way to spend a lot of money, fast. At the beginning of our journey, it’s best to avoid paid traffic and concentrate on free traffic methods. It maybe slower to get it started but it is a lot cheaper and safer. Generating free traffic to your site can be further divided into 2 general categories: direct (invitation traffic) and indirect. With direct methods of generating traffic you simply invite everyone you know to come and visit your new site. I have some email subscribers so I sent them an invitation. some of them have already got to know, like and trust me so they stopped by to see what my new site is all about. More significant for me was my social media connections, namely: Twitter, Facebook, Empire Avenue and others (like Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Linkedin, etc.) I sent invitations or posted about the site, as appropriate, on all those channels. Reading the comments I got to my first post you can see those efforts were fruitful. Next I’m working on some indirect methods of generating free traffic to my site. There are many methods at my disposal, among them are: Blog commenting – I have a great advantage being part of the community built around Dean Holland’s Quick Start Challenge, where we all support each other’s blog. You can look for blogs in your niche (or area of expertise), join and participate as a valuable member. Forum posting – where you contribute as a community member by participating in discussions both on other people posts and by starting your own threads. By adding the URL of my blog in my signature, I make it visible to all that read my posts. If they like what I have to say, they may find it interesting visiting my blog. Other content distribution methods (such as articles, reports, presentations, videos, etc.) are also great ways of showcasing your strength and getting people to be interested in what you have to say. Those methods require a little bit more skills, knowledge and effort but are great for the long term. Adding the blog URL to everything you do – add it to your social profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc. Adding your blog URL to your email signature is another simple but effective method. I’m sure you are getting the idea – associate your blog address with you and whatever it is you are doing on and off line. Using the domain of your blog in other activities. If you have other online activities that involve setting up web pages, use the same domain for hosting these pages (in a sub-directory). This will help spread awareness to your domain and if that domain is your name the effect will even be stronger. People are curios and some may just go and check the main domain when they see a webpage under an interesting domain. Traffic growthAs an initial goal I’m looking to getting around 100 new visitors to my blog every day. This brings me to another important issue you need to take care of and that is tracking. How would I know I’m getting 100 new visitors to my site if I’m not tracking my site’s traffic? the same principal is valid for all your business activities: track it so you’ll know what’s working and what’s not. That way you know where to focus your efforts, where you need to improve and what venues to abandon. The most commonly used tracking service out there has to be Google Analytics. I’m not going to go into the debate of whether it’s good or not to give all your information to Google. That fact of the matter is, this service work and works well. This post is already rather long as it is so I’ll leave the discussion on Google Analytics to another post. Thanks again for visiting my blog and reading my posts πŸ™‚ See you soon!

18 Replies to “Every journey begins with a single step…”

  1. Hi Eli,
    Just jumped to see your new post.
    I am one of these follower through Facebook and when you get a new post I enjoy reading it πŸ˜‰
    I think that an extra point I would make about free traffic is that you have to do it constantly and than it just grows over time.
    Great post, Thanks for sharing
    Udi

    1. Thanks Udi,
      Glad to see you here again and appreciate the encouraging words.
      I totally agree with your added observation – I was (am) going to talk about it on the next post πŸ™‚
      Thanks again,
      Ely

    1. Thank you Aviva!
      Great to have you here πŸ™‚ I’m glad you liked the content (I hope the writing was pleasant as well) and will do my best to keep it up.
      Have a great week!
      Ely

    1. Thanks for visiting Leo. I’m glad to hear you found value here πŸ™‚ I hope you’ll be coming back for some more…

  2. Hi,

    I really like your post. I posted another comment to Facebook with some links you may be interested in. I usually don’t put other links in a post, but I know for a fact that these links will help any blogger or website improve. Hope to read more of your blog in the future. Sally

    1. Thanks Sally. Yes, I saw the other comment and did not remove it… Just glad you did not try to disguise the affiliate part of the links πŸ™‚
      Oh… and thanks for liking my post!

  3. Hi Ely,

    You have some really good ideas of getting traffic. I can’t believe you are already getting some much traffic from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. Your post is also very informative too. Keep it up.

    Zhenwei

    1. Thank you Zhenwei!
      Yes, I am getting some traffic (and I should, with that number of followers, friends, connections) from social media sites but I’d like to get even more πŸ™‚
      Thanks for liking my post and I hope you’ll visit again!

    1. Thanks Janie!
      Yes, I know consistency is a key and that is what I’m “struggling” with πŸ™‚
      Do come again!

  4. Hi Ely
    I enjoyed reading your blog and the tips you have, thank you for the opportunity to visit.
    What I love about Deans course is that it is easy to digest and doesnt do my head in!
    Just have to do the work now πŸ˜‰
    Good luck with the course
    Linda

  5. Hi Ely,

    A fellow QSC student here and I wanted to drop by and say hello. I laughed at myself when I read you wanted to obtain 100 new visitors daily. I was hoping to get 100 unique visitors by the end of this week’s challenge. I guess I have to start somewhere, right? Best wishes to you and your success.

    Rich

    1. Hi Rich,
      Yes, I have a slight advantage with the social presence that I already have. If you’ve seen my next post, you can see the response got there was disappointing so I am not near my goal yet πŸ™‚

  6. Well done Ely. These are some very solid, elementary pointers for the beginning blogger. Every small business blogger (as well as others) should know these basic steps.

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