Online Communities - Pt 3 of Tips to Increase Traffic
If you've actually been reading other blogs lately, you'll know that online communities are hot. Human beings have always been social creatures, for the most part, and always align themselves to some group or other. While such a group might typically be kinfolk, in the blogosphere, it's often one of the many online communities and social networking sites.
Online communities offer something to everyone involved:
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but a French statistician by the name of Rappaport once said that he could mathematically prove that the universe functions best when situations are win-win-win, but that most human beings work on a win-lose premise. That is, everyone involved has to benefit from any transaction to propagate further beneficial actions.
If I recall properly, Rappaport particularly singled out Americans as violating this rule. But please don't mistake me as doing the same thing. The first two "wins" refer to both participants in a transaction. The third "win" refers to the rest of the world. Everyone has to benefit in some way.
Bloggers are starting to realize that online communities are quite likely the closest implemenation of a website to support Rappaport's win-win-win scenario. The first "win" is then the owner of the site. The second "win" are readers. The third "win" would then either be anyone searching for related content, and possibily some community feedback, and/or advertisers wanting to advertise on high-traffic, topical sites.
The only major con in building an online community is that it's likely difficult to monetize if the ad revenue is all going to you. You will have to consider revenue sharing with other members that are blogging on your site (point 4 above). Alternately, you may want to consider not having member blogs, but keeping comments enabled and having discussion forums.
If you cannot, for whatever reason, set up an online community, consider at least having your comments enabled. (My apologies, but mine are disabled for technical reasons, which I am trying to work out.) The value of comments is multi-fold:
Let's do some math here. These are made up numbers to illustrate a point. Suppose that you manage to post at least 1000 entries per year (3 per day) to your collection of blogs. Further suppose that you've built up enough trust with your readers that you receive at least 3 comments per post. That's 3000 comments. (Hey, I know that some blogs may get 100 comments for a single post. But I'm writing for you, the newbie blogger. That's a goal to work towards.)
Some of the commenters will be the same, so you may only have, say, 1000 unique commenters in a given year. If a quarter of them link back to you, that's 250 backlinks. That's gold, if each one sends even one new visitor per day, some of whom may become regulars. And the cycle will continue, with new regulars linking back, etc., thus eventually generating exponential traffic growth.
Similarly, you should start an ongoing campaign to comment (intelligently) on the sites and blogs that you read daily, thereby producing links back to your own site. Say you read 10 blogs daily, and comment on 3 posts daily. In one year, that's about 1000 backlinks to you, assuming that each blog/ site allows you to enter your URL.
Each comment backlink will not necessarily be as valuable over time as a blog post backlink (from someone else's blog), but you'll continue to get some traffic from visitors referred by search engines. What's more, if you are commenting on blogs with high Google PR (PageRank), some of that will eventually rub off on your blogs. (I've tested this theory organically, so I have proof.)
(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
Technorati Tags: blogspinner, web traffic, online communities
Online communities offer something to everyone involved:
- A chance for readers to comment on posts.
- A chance for readers to refute or support another reader's comments.
- A chance for bloggers to interact with readers.
- A chance for readers to also blog on your site.
- Forums for topical discussions.
- Regular fresh text content for the owner of the online community.
- A synergy that a single blogger cannot achieve by him or herself.
- Links from the blogs of the community members.
- Members that have reached a comfort level with select members may team up to start other online communities, which will no doubt have links back to your community.
- Resulting traffic because of all of the above reasons, for various reasons.
- Higher traffic for advertisers.
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but a French statistician by the name of Rappaport once said that he could mathematically prove that the universe functions best when situations are win-win-win, but that most human beings work on a win-lose premise. That is, everyone involved has to benefit from any transaction to propagate further beneficial actions.
If I recall properly, Rappaport particularly singled out Americans as violating this rule. But please don't mistake me as doing the same thing. The first two "wins" refer to both participants in a transaction. The third "win" refers to the rest of the world. Everyone has to benefit in some way.
Bloggers are starting to realize that online communities are quite likely the closest implemenation of a website to support Rappaport's win-win-win scenario. The first "win" is then the owner of the site. The second "win" are readers. The third "win" would then either be anyone searching for related content, and possibily some community feedback, and/or advertisers wanting to advertise on high-traffic, topical sites.
The only major con in building an online community is that it's likely difficult to monetize if the ad revenue is all going to you. You will have to consider revenue sharing with other members that are blogging on your site (point 4 above). Alternately, you may want to consider not having member blogs, but keeping comments enabled and having discussion forums.
If you cannot, for whatever reason, set up an online community, consider at least having your comments enabled. (My apologies, but mine are disabled for technical reasons, which I am trying to work out.) The value of comments is multi-fold:
- The text of comments, typically topical and keyword-rich, may likely boost your Search Engine rankings, and thus your traffic, over time.
- Being able to comment gives readers a reason to return and see if anyone responded to their comment. It's a very common human trait to see if others share your opinions and feelings. If this weren't true, all the social networking sites would cease to exist.
- If you allow commenters to enter their URL as part of their comment, they get some link love, which more than likely will be reciprocated.
Let's do some math here. These are made up numbers to illustrate a point. Suppose that you manage to post at least 1000 entries per year (3 per day) to your collection of blogs. Further suppose that you've built up enough trust with your readers that you receive at least 3 comments per post. That's 3000 comments. (Hey, I know that some blogs may get 100 comments for a single post. But I'm writing for you, the newbie blogger. That's a goal to work towards.)
Some of the commenters will be the same, so you may only have, say, 1000 unique commenters in a given year. If a quarter of them link back to you, that's 250 backlinks. That's gold, if each one sends even one new visitor per day, some of whom may become regulars. And the cycle will continue, with new regulars linking back, etc., thus eventually generating exponential traffic growth.
Similarly, you should start an ongoing campaign to comment (intelligently) on the sites and blogs that you read daily, thereby producing links back to your own site. Say you read 10 blogs daily, and comment on 3 posts daily. In one year, that's about 1000 backlinks to you, assuming that each blog/ site allows you to enter your URL.
Each comment backlink will not necessarily be as valuable over time as a blog post backlink (from someone else's blog), but you'll continue to get some traffic from visitors referred by search engines. What's more, if you are commenting on blogs with high Google PR (PageRank), some of that will eventually rub off on your blogs. (I've tested this theory organically, so I have proof.)
(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
Technorati Tags: blogspinner, web traffic, online communities
