Buzzmaker

Now you have started a blog but for different reasons people are not getting to your site. What are the 10 things that will drive traffic to your site?
1.Great Title. Whatever the post is about you should look for catchy titles. Most of the viewers will read your post only if the first thing they read makes them click your post. In most cases we decide what is interesting and what’s not in a matter of seconds (less than 10 seconds) and the only thing we can read in this short time is the title of the post so have a great title and you will increase your chances of having me reading the rest of your post. If you are reading this post means that the title I’ve chosen made you click on it.
2, Great Content. In real estate there is a saying that there are 3 things that are important to make profit and these are: location, location and location. That means that if your property is in a good location then you sure can make money from it.
For your blog if you have good content you will get noticed and your blog will get big numbers of visitors. If you have a good title but the content is not so good you will have traffic but of low quality and with increased bounce rate (the percentage of your visitors that leave your site in less than 10 seconds). What else can you do to drive traffic to your site?
3. Optimize your post for Search Engines. When you write a post be sure to complete all the meta fields such as description, keywords and so on (keywords are not used by Google but the other search engines may use them). Verify if your keywords appear in the body of your post frequently enough and get as many inbound links as possible. These will help the search engines to index your post and to rank better in the search results. You can have plugins that help you optimize your blog. I use All-In-One-SEO plugin for WordPress on this blog.
4. Social bookmarking sites. Submit your post to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon. One very important thing for getting found is the number and quality of links to your blog and your post from other sites. By submitting your post to social bookmarking sites you can get quickly some links to your post. You can use plugins on you site so that people that liked your post can bookmark your post.
5. Social Media. Promote your post through social media. Write a tweet, update your status in LinkedIn or Facebook. Your followers, friends or connections will be the first to visit your article and comment on it. From my experience, depending on the moment I tweet about more than half of my twitter followers are clicking on the link to my post. If you have huge number of followers this is a great way of driving traffic.
6. Newsletters. This is a classic one, if you have a newsletter you can advertise your post there.
7. Blog comments and Forums. By posting relevant comments on other blogs you benefit of the traffic of the other site and drive traffic to yours. In most of the cases you will not get SEO credit for the links posted in the comments (while the comments may be set not to be followed by search engines) but you may get real visitors. Forums are another grate way of posting links to you article. You can answer to a user question and just ad “by the way, I’ve wrote a post on this topic and here’s the link”.
8. Pitch other bloggers to link to your post. I do this mostly offline when somebody is asking for my support, I give him my advice and then tell: “by the way, I’ve written a post on this subject, If you are interested in more details here is the link”.
9. E-mail signature. You interact daily via e-mail with people. Buy writing a link to your post in your signature will make these people aware of your post. Remember that people that know you, that trust your opinion are more likely to read and comment your post than perfect strangers.
10. Directories. Depending on your post you can submit your article to different sites that let you post news with links to your article. I use the Inbound Marketing site for submitting my stories related with inbound marketing. You can search for similar hubs in your niche.
These are the ways I promote my posts. Do you use the same? Do you have some other? What are your best practices? Share them bellow.

The second session of IMU trainings has ended. Besides the great program and the famous speakers here are my 5 takeaways from the Inbound Marketing University:
1. New friends. If you enroll in an offline training you sure will get new friends. But what about an online course? The ways of making friends are somehow different. You cannot get out for a drink with them because they may be on the other side of the world but you still chat with them and you can find a lot of people with the same interests. And yes, I got some new great friends from IMU.
2. New community. For this all the kudos go to Hubspot. They created a cross platform way of interaction that is very efficient and keeps the community growing. You can contribute on forums, write new stories, give a hand to other IMU coleagues or ask for help and get the best advice available in the field.
3. New business ideas. The presentations generated some new business ideas. A few of the IMU graduates started their own business while others are making plans for a new launch. And if you plan to start on your own  IMU is a good place to start.
4. Unlimited learning resources. Once you start learning new things you should never stop at least because things are changing quickly in the Inbound Marketing field. IMU and Hubspot are not only offering great learning stuff but they continue to create new webinars, tools andcase studies so you can be on top all the time.
5. A real-life case study. The IMU case study and experiment is not over yet but it already showed a lot of proven ways to market on the web. This is the best lesson one can have.

What were your takeaways from the IMU? Just place a comment below.

When you start blogging many people do  not know how much of the information they have to share. The main fear is that people that read that blog, using the information provided can do what the owning company is providing.

In my opinion this is a false problem. There is a lot of information over the internet regarding SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and still a lot of companies have enough market to grow. Also the information regarding the diagnosis of specific diseases and their treatment is available on the web, but still you hardly find patients that are putting their diagnostic and treat themselves based on that information.

Here are my 5 reasons to share all your knowledge:

1. The more you share the more you will be seen as an expert and when I have a problem I will ask an expert to solve it for me

2. By sharing more information you will build a tribe of followers that may refer you as an expert in that particular field resulting in increased sales

3. If more people are following you and training in your subject area of expertise you can extend your business to training those people meaning again more sales

4. Not everyone has the resources and want to invest in learning from the information you share. Sufficient people will not have the time or the will to learn and they are your target clients

5. By opening discussions you open yourself to new points of view that may enable you to innovate the domain in which you have expertise. In this way you will maintain your competitive edge.

Dan Ronken elaborated more on these reasons and got to the following reasons:

1. Unselfishness attracts future customers

2. Building community

3. Helping others succeed. The old adage, “Give a man a fish feed him for a day, teach him how to fish, feed him for a lifetime.”

4. Hence a foundation of capitalism, right? Specialization.

5. Open mindedness

What do you think? Are these reasons enough for you or you want to add some more?

After more than 10 years on the traditional marketing I am back to school. I have chosen a new type of learning and I have enrolled to IMU aka Inbound Marketing University. What is IMU? It is a free program offered by world class gurus in the online marketing, social media marketing and many more. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to join such a select reunion and for me (coming from Eastern Europe) it is something that some 20 years ago I could not even dream about.

What is my feedback so far? I had some interesting classes today and for sure they will help me increase the trafic on this blog and on the other sites I have already started. And if you follow this blog I hope that you will notice the results.