4 Unique Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

Traffic is the currency of the web. Not just any traffic, but high quality traffic.

If you’ve been reading any marketing blog for anything more than a week now you would have come across an article or two giving you tips on how to drive traffic to your blog. Many of these articles talk about various common means to generate traffic, and some of them can be as long or short as possible. There are even articles that list as much as 101 ways to generate traffic. The problem with many of these articles is that due to the fact that the tips in these articles are starting to become very common, a lot of new bloggers want more unique ways to drive traffic to their blogs. Mind you, I’m not saying the tactics listed in any of these kind of articles don’t work; in most cases, they do! If you’re looking for more unique ways to drive traffic to your blog this article will be giving you 4 unique ways to drive traffic to your blog. Some of them you might not have heard, and some of them you might be familiar with, but these tactics are yet to be blogged to death, and by implementing them you can easily get some cool results for your blog.

One of the most common ways to drive traffic to your blog is by making use of blogger groups or tribes. In most cases, these tribes consist of a group of bloggers with the same goal, interested in sharing their audience to help each other get better results. In other words, if there are 100 people in a group with 900 Twitter followers each, every member will share the post of each other with their followers, and combined, that means the message of a single member will be able to reach up to 90,000 Twitter followers. There are a lot of groups online where this is done manually, but one great website that has automated this, and that has a great user base already, is Triberr.

Another way you can get traffic to your blog is by making use of social blogmarking sites. The word “blogmarking” might be new to you, but it’s just like another form of social bookmarking site, just that this time, the site focuses on blogs only instead of general websites. There are a lot of social blogmarking sites online with great support for bloggers, and the two popular ones I can recommend is Blokube (which I’m a moderator of) and Blog Engage.

You can also get traffic to your blog by making use of blogging aggregators. Most of these aggregators try to be the best source of information online on any subject. While they don’t provide detailed articles on any subject, they link to the latest, or the best, articles on the blogs in their index. In most cases, your blog needs to meet their criteria to be accepted, but if you are, they can be a cool source of traffic to you.

Two great examples of blog aggregators are Alltop and Before Its News.

One thing about the internet is that there are so many big and highly respected sites that are focused on providing quality information to their users on various subjects. In most cases, some of these sites allow their users to contribute or edit information on them, and they also require the person contributing or editing the articles to include a link to the source of their information. There are a lot of these kind of websites online that we ignore. For example, take a look at Wikipedia or Yahoo Answers. You can easily contribute to any of these sites, and if necessary, include a link to an highly informative page on your blog that verifies your information in the reference section.

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Money Secrets of the Amish: Finding True Abundance in Simplicity, Sharing, and Saving

Discover the money-saving and wealth-building secrets of America's thriftiest people, the Amish.

Author and journalist Lorilee Craker was just like the rest of us, feeling the pinch from the financial fallout of 2008. As a freelancer, her income was going the way of the dodo-family dollars seemed like an extinct myth, the bank account some archeological evidence of past prosperity.

Then, inspired by a news segment covering the Amish and how they emerged from the economic crisis unscathed, she realized it was time to learn a thing or two about their time-tested approach to personal finances. While the middle-class was wringing its hands over the family budget and the wealthy were weeping over their slashed portfolios, the Amish were content as always, spared from the cares of the world and worldliness. They not only had financial health to support their lives, they exuded a wholeness that eludes so many when the financial bottom drops out.

In Money Secrets of the Amish, readers go on an "Amish money makeover," learning the choices, secrets, and disciplines that safeguarded the contentment and the coffers of America's favorite plain folk by spending less, saving more, and getting happier doing it.

Endorsements:

Packed with practical, simple, and smart money saving ideas and teeming with great insight into the sensible Amish ways, Money Secrets of the Amishwill entertain you with stories and retrain your brain to be the savvy money saver you always dreamed you could be.  --Beth Wiseman, best-selling author of Plain Promise and Seek Me With All Your Heart

Sometimes touching, sometimes humorous and always helpful, author Lorilee Craker pulls us into the family rooms of the Amish and shows us how they make ends meet. Story after story illustrates savvy money management: trading for goods and services, shopping for bargains, living with less, avoiding debt, curbing the desire to impress others. And Craker's journalistic bent provides plenty of takeaway value for the non-Amish. A very worthwhile read whether your bank account is bursting or busting.  --Suzanne Woods Fisher, author of Amish Peace: Simple Wisdom for a Complicated World and Lancaster County Secrets (Revell)

This book is like an Amish basement shelf loaded with Mason jars full of Plain money wisdom.  Self-confessed "Fancy" gal Lorilee Craker rolls up her sleeves and cracks them open one-by-one, figuring out how to fit Amish principles to a non-Amish life.  She succeeds, and so can you-read Money Secrets of the Amish and add weight to your wallet.  --Erik Wesner, amishamerica.com; author ofSuccess Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive

Money Secrets of the Amish is a practical, doable guide, and it's such fun to read.  Lorilee's voice is as engaging and lively as ever, and the wisdom she shares from the Amish community is both inspiring and instructive. I just finished the last page, and my mind is buzzing with all sorts of ways to waste less, want less, and spend less.  --Shauna Niequist, author of Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet

Lorilee inspires and impacts your everyday life with this marvelous little read. From buttons to bakery you suddenly realize this conversation is not about just pinching a few pennies but about transforming how we view our everyday lives. I applaud Lorilee for asking the hard questions and pressing in to find honest answers. Forget the mall, kick back and soak up the delicious wisdom of a life well lived. Thank you Lorilee for shaping my everyday!  --Tracey Bianchi, author of Green Mama

Money Secrets of the Amish isn't so much about making money; it's about family, discipline, and redefining what wealthy means. This is a great read that helps us all to see more clearly what's really valuable in our lives.  --Jeff McMahon, award-nominated musician and national director/runner with the Team McGraw endurance program

Price: $15.99

Click here to buy from Amazon

Bad Content Finding Its Way Into Mobile Apps and RIM Owes Big

There’s always a good side to things and a bad side and that includes the ever-expanding world of mobile apps. A recent news article in the Washington Post talks about inappropriate content finding its way into mobile apps that are geared towards children. Violent and suggestive content are the culprits here and parents are complaining they don’t have any real way to monitor what their kids are exposed to.

The Federal Communications Commission keeps an eye on more traditional forms of media but as far as mobile apps are concerned, developers are still in charge of giving themselves ratings. More fodder for those who say it’s the parent’s responsibility to stay on top of what their children see and do.

As you might expect, recent reports are saying that RIM could owe tons of cash to right the fallout from their recent outages. The recent numbers are $100 million US in lost revenues and there’s more to it than that, none of which is good for the Canadian company that was the biggest hope that country had since the Avro Arrow.

Making the problem worse for RIM is the fact that wireless carriers worldwide have promised to compensate their users for the downtime. The whole mess couldn’t have come at a worse time for the beleaguered company and worst case scenarios for the estimated 70 million users worldwide put refunds to 35 million as the number bantered.

The whole Blackberry mess has some interesting spinoffs when it comes to how people deal with even the temporary loss of this kind of technology. Consider a recent article from a New Jersey professional who writes that people should know someone they can call in their office to check emails on their computer there when the BlackBerry network goes down. The article goes on to point out the obvious fact that you can send a text, but I think something even more relevant is being missed here.

Maybe the whole idea of having a Blackberry is overkill and being constantly hooked up to emails 24/7 from a device that you carry around with you is a case of too much technology. I mean, how many people can really do anything about even the most urgent email until they get back to the office anyway? I’m not talking out of school here because I have one and I find myself constantly looking for the little red light that tells me I’ve got mail like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I have to admit too, I did get a little nervous when my emails weren’t getting through regularly but I’ve still got to wonder if we all don’t need some kind of safe zone away from all of these things once in a while.

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