This guest post is by David Alford Griffin   

It’s hardly surprising that new bloggers are not having much idea about what is the social value of your blog. It’s a complex equation, with a two-way street between every blog post and the social accounts, and the question of which social networks you want to focus on.

It might surprise you to know that the social network which sends the most traffic to blogs is not Facebook, but StumbleUpon.

According to Statcounter, StumbleUpon all by itself accounts for 50.27% of all referrals to blogs from the top 10 social sites.

Facebook is a distant second with 38.9% of the traffic, and Twitter, Youtube and Reddit each send less than 4%.

So, now you know which social networks will send you more traffic. But the how part is a bit more complex. Adding social value to your blog is a bit of a bootstrap operation, where visitors Like, Tweet and Stumble your blog posts while social networks in return sends traffic to your blog.

If your blog already has significant value on the social networks, then every post goes viral on the networks as soon as it is published. An example of this can be TechCrunch or Mashable posts, each of which gets hundreds of tweets, re-tweets and likes. These blogs have made it easy for visitors to do this by adding social media sharing buttons on the blog template.

Those who do have the value will need to work for it. Write posts with the potential to go viral, and promote it aggressively using your own social media accounts and prominent sharing buttons on the blog, such as Sharethis or Sociable.

But networks like StumbleUpon and Digg are different creatures. The bulk of the traffic comes from networking on StumbleUpon and building a large network who will give your posts the initial push needed. Even so, StumbleUpon users tend to promote a specific type of post, such as top 10 lists with large pictures for each item on the list. They like record breaking stuff, like fast cars or tall buildings and bridges.

Since this is where the bulk of social media traffic is going to come from, you cannot afford to ignore it. Join StumbleUpon and start stumbling pages and making friends. You can send people in your StumbleUpon network links, and ask them to stumble these pages. It’s not easy, but even one post that goes viral on StumbleUpon will be enough to make your traffic stats jump through the roof.

This guest post is by Darren Dias.

I thought I’d share my blogging resolutions for New Year 2012, because it seems to be the popular thing to do.

Therein lies the seed for the first resolution, which is to write about things which are popular instead of sharing fascinating pictures of my cat snoozing all day long. Unless, of course, the blog is about cats.

That’s the second resolution – no matter what subject your blog is about, be on topic. There’s a difference between resolutions one and two, because you can be on topic and yet write about something incredibly boring that no one wants to read.

Put together 1 & 2, and write interesting posts related to the subject of your blog. This can be breaking news, top 5 or 10 lists, or an analysis of some hot trend or topic that everyone wants to talk about – like smart phones, social media, election coverage, celebrities, etc.

Remember that you still need to be on-topic, but there are plenty of ways to plug in these trends into something related to the blog’s subject. For example, former Gov. Mitt Romney just won the Iowacaucus. A financial blog could focus on what would policies he would enact if Mitt Romney went on to win the GOP nomination and then became President.

If you don’t do things like this, your blog will soon be among the 95 percent of blogs that are discarded by their owners within 3 months of launching, if not the 60 to 80 percent who do so after a month.

That brings us to Resolution No.3, which is to use facts, names, places and specific things that people can connect with. A blog post blathering on in general without any supporting facts and statistics or discussion about specifics isn’t going to be very interesting.

Speaking of interesting, Resolution No.4 is to make sure to include pictures and videos in each post. No matter how interesting or exclusive your text content may be, it just doesn’t attract attention if there’s no image or video.

It’s not so hard to find images under the creative commons license that you can use without paying for them. Flickr has over 6 billion images, Wikimedia has another 12 million or so, and 3 billion YouTube videos get viewed each day.

Lastly, resolution No.5 is to publish at least one post every single day. The point is to keep visitors and the search bots coming in every day to read new content. That’s what builds loyalty, and you really cannot expect a reader to come back unless they’re sure there’s going to be something new to read or talk about.

Traffic Professor Teaching Blog as a Platform for Writers

Blogging is the platform of choice for writers/authors.

Even if I do say so myself, I made that point quite clear when I spoke to the High Desert Branch of the California Writers Club this past weekend (October 8th.)

How to Get Good Web Traffic in the High Desert

and a link to the audio part 1 and part 2.

The participation was great. There was quite a buzz after I was finished as the 70-some authors and writers learned what it would take to make a blog their platform of choice to get more readers, to get an agent, to get published, to get paid to write.

They learned why a blog is the social media of choice, why a blog trumps Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter.

We covered a LOT of ground in the 75 minute lecture and 25 minutes of Q&A.

All 20 books I carried with me disappeared in a matter of minutes. Thank goodness I got paid for them, too! That does NOT always happen. I mean, people do NOT always pay for them.

Here is the link again to the power point presentation for those who attended.

How to Get Good Web Traffic in the High Desert

and a link to the audio part 1 and part 2.

Need more information?

Go to TheTrafficProfessor and buy my online course. It’s a small investment with HUGE possible returns. Really. It works.

The Traffic Professor will be speaking at the High Desert Branch of the California Writers Club (scroll down) on October 8th, 2011.

If you live in/near the area, please come out to meet me, ask questions, learn more about blogging, platform building or to just chill.

Traffic Professor at High Desert Valley

My topic is

Blogging as a platform for writers, still the king of Social Media

In this one hour presentation, including 15 mins for Q&A I will cover the following topics:

1. Four reasons why a blog is the social media platform of choice for writers.

2. Four biggest obstacles to getting a blog started.

3. Four key ingredients to attracting significant traffic to a blog/web site.

4. Four next steps every writer must take to bring attention to their work.

I have taken 10 different and unrelated blog topics to more than 1 million unique visitors each, and well over 50 million views overall.  I have two published books, and have addressed Mexico’s largest Writers’ Conference, Asia’s Largest Publishing Convention, and have spoken in Thailand, New York City, as well as to many of the California Writers Club branches.

The event will be held at the Apple Valley Branch Library at 10 a.m. on Saturday, October 8, 2011.

Call Carol Warren at (760)242-3367) or email to califcarol@verizon.net

President Bob Isbill at  (760)242-4148) or email to risbill@aol.com

20258 Hwy 18 Ste 430-PMB 281

Apple Valley, CA 92307

Doing the Bharata Natyam

Here’s a sneak peak of Wil.by in Thailand doing the Bharata Natyam.

Wil.by doing the Bharata Natyam

Uh, no. I won’t be doing the Bharata Natyam… I think I won’t be.

I am speaking at Asia’s largest print publishing convention in Bangkok next month.

Yeah, I get around a bit..stopping in Tokyo to meet up with a client on the way too and from as well. Also meeting some friends from when I lived in Japan. But that’s not the point of this post.

Benjamin Belew is the creator of Wil.by and the man who is able to put in character form the situations that I find myself in. He is also the one who dubbed his old man Wilby. And Thai Wilby is the latest.

When I get back from Thailand, I will share the final version. It is really cool.

Please book mark Wil.by or better yet subscribe to the feed and you’ll be notified.

Another option – please check out the Fan page for Wil.by at FaceBook. For those who Like it, there’s a freebie that comes with the push of the button.

Thanks for reading!

This is a very curious experiment of sorts for me and one that I am quite interested in giving that I am a Christian and have a fondness for the church.

On Sunday, June 19, I will be speaking at the Palo Alto Church of Christ on how the principles of growing a blog/web site might also be applied to helping a church grow.

PACC is small and has been struggling for some time.

Wilby blogging about church growth

I cannot pretend to predict what God will do, but I do know what kinds of things need to be done for something to (more…)

How do you get 2,000,000 page views in 42 days at one site?

The numbers are different but the question is the same.

How does anybody get more eyeballs to their site?

This is what I know how to do.

I started writing for NowPublic at the beginning of last month. 42 days later and we passed the 2,000,000 page views milestone.

This is just one site and the number does NOT reflect (more…)

I heard the phrase a while ago (and I believe it), any idiot can write a book, but it takes a genius to market it.

A corrollary to that, or at least a related thought… there are lots and lots of good products and business ideas…but what good are they if nobody knows about them?

Wilby creating a platform thru blogging

The number one reason why businesses fail - the people running the company don’t (more…)

Here it is …. a court sketch artist type showed up at the recent Meetup with Google AdSense and Blogger Team members.

Missed it? You can experience it via these graphic representations.

Were you there? You can experience it again by viewing these images…maybe even find yourself in them.

Unique to say the least. Fun, too.

A guy can hope, can’t he? That the Google teams will come back. They said they would….good news for those of you who could not make it. And in the evening, too! (more…)