Traffic is a major importance for a website or a blog, you need traffic to get exposure. The more traffic you get the better right? Not necessarily - it depends on what kind of traffic you are trying to acquire. Traffic vs Targeted Traffic are 2 similar but different types of traffic. More traffic does not mean more money. John Chow explains this very well. But where can you get traffic, what are the best forms of traffic. There are traffic exchanges, link exchanges, social networks, etc.
I believe traffic from the top marketers are better than any type of SEO, Paid, Exchange, etc traffic. The reason is because they are considered influencer. They influence their readers, readers look up to the big guys for help and advice. When a new product comes out or service and a top blogger or website author writes about it, there is a chain reaction that happens. One HUGE blogger talks about it followed by another and another and another - then filters out to the other writers. This is very viral, the top guy influences so many other that they need to write about it.
Below is a snapshot of my traffic source for two days from the day I guest posted on Shoemoney into the next. These are my top 10 sources of traffic. From the screen shot you can easily see 4 top bloggers. Each of them has a vast majority of an audience or reader base which they influence on a day to day basis.
As you can see Mark from 45n5.com, Jeremy from ShoeMoney, Brian Gardner of the Revolution Themes, and Darren from ProBlogger have provided me with good useful and targeted traffic. You can even say DigitalPoint can be an influencer, but that is a community of readers and participants. The 4 authors are big money making 'gurus'/authors and have a big part of talking or mentioning a specific topic or services. When they do talk about a topic or service, their readers start to take their opinion as facts. Another concept is "If they are mentioning this, it must be good" or "These guys are using it, maybe I should as well."
This is true, for example why do you think John Chow bloggers copied his old template? It is making him money right? So others do what the big guys are doing, trying to imitate and copy. John Chow was the first of my big hitters, letting him post about me gave me a big jump in traffic. I posted a nice and clever viral video - my first attempt of using video for traffic and blogging. This caught John's attention and he posted about it on his blog! His readers viewed the video and gave me 'props' for doing such a great tactic. Since Chow mentioned my name he linked to my website, giving me the opportunity to grab his readers' attention to my blog.
Traffic from the big guys are great because they would be directly associated with you and your blog. It is already targeted traffic which can be easily converted into RSS readers or loyal readers, maybe even into buyers. Any author that mentions you or your website within a post creates that sense of curiosity for the reader. That curiosity is what brings the traffic to your website/blog. Once that curiosity lands on your website you better have great content for others to read. Since what is the use of traffic if that traffic leaves, waste of time and lost the potential of readers.
From the above screen shot, you can see readers stayed on my blog for close to 2 minutes and even more. This is great because that tells me they are reading my content or navigating through the blog. It also tells me 'hey, I have good content for readers to read.' That means I was able to capture most if not all of the readers attention and curiosity to stay on my page longer than 30 seconds.
How to Acquire Influenced Traffic
These are the things I have done to grab attention or even network with the big guys.
- Create a Video about the 'Big Guy'
- Guest Post for the 'Big Guy'
- Participate within the Blog - contest etc
- Participate in controversial discussions
- Provide help and ideas to the 'Big Guys' - No One is Perfect
I think these are what helped me gain popularity with the big gurus in blogging and marketing. I have made videos of opinionated and comedic gestures and I guest post for the big guys with good information. Guest Posting is not just posting content; the author should like and learn from it as well. Users tend to write guest post that is very simple so they can appear on a big guys website/blog. What is the point if the information is crap - no discussions, no participation, you are poorly leveraging the use of traffic from the big bloggers. Guest post should help readers as well as the author, you want to provide that help to others outside of the 'gurus' circle, they are always busy you know.
I believe traffic from the big guys are far greater than any SEO and exchanges, it creates that viral reaction and influences their reader base. Filtering all that traffic can give you big advantages just make sure you use the power careful, since it is a good leverage to use.
