Daily Cup of Tech

Nicu Zara of Windvis.com recently e-mailed me with a question about how to generate traffic for his website. Nicu writes:

May I just ask what you think is the best way of attracting new visitors to my website? I think that what you have achieved on DCoT is fantastic and would love to go some way towards emulating your success.

Thanks, Nicu.  As I am just a small time blogger, I’m not certain that I know a lot about driving traffic but here are some of the ideas that I use to keep DCoT flowing:

1. Be creative. Offer new and interesting ideas and content.
2. Be controversial. Everyone likes to express their opinions.
3. Be giving. This can be good content for free or even a contest.
4. Be fresh. New content is key. Several times a day if possible, at least several times a week.
5. Be original. Original content is difficult and time consuming but it attract more people (and links).
6. Be social. Use sites like Reddit, del.icio.us, and Digg to get the word out.
7. Be engaging. Produce information that will get people to write comments and then respond to these comments as much as possible.
8. Be thinking. The next article or post might be around corner. Always ask yourself, “Could I write about this?”.
9. Be promoting. Make up business cards. Put a link to your website in your e-mail signature. Talk to people about your website.
10. Be active. Participate with other websites that have information related to your website and contribute to them. What goes around comes around.

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9 Responses to “The 10 “Be’s” of Generating Traffic”

1. Rob Dunn Says:
   June 5th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

   You are absolutely right about “what comes around, goes around”. Not only will it help you bring traffic to your blog, but you will meet some really cool people!

2. Trey Crowe Says:
   June 8th, 2007 at 9:13 am

   The hardest one on your list is “Be original”. Just when I think I have come up with a really cleaver post or at least a spin on a subject no one else has done, a quick google search dashes all my hopes.

3. Tim Fehlman Says:
   June 8th, 2007 at 9:34 am

   Trey Crowe,

   I agree that the “be original” part is difficult but it can be accomplished when you consider three factors:

   1) Your opinions are always original. When you talk about and comment on a new gadget, technology, solution, etc., these are your unique opinions. Nobody else has them and nobody else can express them the way you do. Only you have the sum total of your life experience and this provides you the opportunity to come up with original opinions.

   2) Your body of work is original as a whole. I think that everyone would agree that Lifehacker is a very unique blog. But, if you dig deeper into the actual content of the blog, most of the posts are simply saying, “Hey! I found this on the Internet! It’s pretty cool! Check it out here!” To be honest, this is not very original. What does make it original is that they (by writing the post in the first place) give their opinion and they associate it with other experiences in the past.

   3) Improvements are original. Just because someone else has written about a topic does not mean that you can’t make it your own. For example, I wrote a very popular post about upgrading Ubuntu. I very clearly stated in the beginning of the post that my post was a rewriting of a different post. I simply put the other post into my own words, added some much needed screen shots, included my opinions and I was done. The whole post took me about 15 minutes and I still get hits to it to this day!

   I hope that helps to encourage you to give this a go!

   Tim

4. The Geek Says:
   June 12th, 2007 at 8:29 pm

   Quality content and patience will make it happen, no need to spend much time promoting.

   Nick is a great writer, I’m sure he’ll have no trouble.

5. The Geek Says:
   June 12th, 2007 at 8:31 pm

   Oh, and one other note….

   Never, ever submit your own content to Digg or Reddit. They will find out, and you will be buried. Let somebody else find it and submit it.

6. Tim Fehlman Says:
   June 12th, 2007 at 8:48 pm

   The Geek,

   I can attest to your Digg and Reddit comment. I learned that lesson the hard way. Ouch!! That still stings!

   Tim

7. Trey Crowe Says:
   June 14th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

   I can’t even figure out how to get the dang digg button on my pages in the first place. I have coding experience but I can’t figure out the instructions out there for the life of me.

8. Tim Fehlman Says:
   June 14th, 2007 at 1:21 pm

   Trey Crowe,

   Check out Add A Digg Badge To A Webpage. It was a quick write so that you would not have to wait for it but I think it gets the idea across.

   Tim

9. Trey Crowe Says:
   June 18th, 2007 at 2:52 pm

   I feel kind of silly. I actually answered my own question while browsing Digg. http://digg.com/tools/integrate teaches you all about how to integrate Digg on your blog. I use word press for my blog and just putting the code directly into a post works perfectly. Thanks for all the help.

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