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You would almost think blogging was dead, the way headlines are dominated by Twitter, Facebook, and social media in general. I’ve always considered blogging to be a part of social media anyway, as the commenting factor lends to engagement between author and user.
But blogging is so five years ago right? It’s all about microblogging and status updates now isn’t it? If you think that’s the case, think again, because blogs can still drive big-time traffic to websites. An example of this has been illustrated by the launch of e-commerce site Alice.com.
How much traffic are you getting from blogs? Let us know.
If you are not familiar with Alice.com, it is a site where consumers can buy everyday household items like toothpaste, toilet paper, laundry detergent, diapers, etc., right from the manufacturers, rather than through middleman retailers. It launched in June, and by July it had doubled its traffic to 387,000 unique visitors, according to Compete.
Guess where the majority of that traffic came from. According to Compete, it came from word-of-mouth from blogs. In fact, its number one traffic source was Blogger.com. Not Twitter. Not Facebook. Not search. Although each of these no doubt played valuable roles as well., Blogger.com has been the biggest factor in driving traffic for this site, and from the looks of things, that traffic is showing no signs of slowing down.
Blogger accounted for 18% of Alice.com’s referral traffic in July, and obviously there are plenty of blogs out there that aren’t hosted at Blogger.com. On top of that, Compete says Alice’s conversion rate jumped to 3.5% in July as well.
Of course, you have to give bloggers something to talk about to get valuable blog traffic. It’s no different than getting people to talk about you on social networks or through any other form of word-of-mouth marketing. It starts with your product. Clearly Alice.com, has something that many people find worth talking about.
"Anyone who has previously shopped online for household products knows that prices are generally higher (sometimes considerably) than those found in stores," Compete’s Matt Pace says of Alice.com. "By selling directly to consumers, manufacturers are able to price their products below those found on most online retailers and more competitively to those found in stores."
Clearly this is a void in the lives of consumers that Alice is attempting to fill. It’s still early to tell if this site will remain a success. As long as it keeps the bloggers (consumers) happy, it could enjoy a long life. Because one thing to remember about word-of-mouth is that it works both ways. Reputations can quickly move in different directions online. So can traffic.
Do you see more traffic from blogs or from social networks? Comment here.
Very interesting indeed. Our blog makes up for a decent portion of our visitors, but the majority enter through our home page from google. Our blog viewings have been increasing though.
Thanks for the article, Chris. Here at Alice we worked hard to outreach to a great list of bloggers prior to our launch, but even we were surprised how the WOM spread! Blogs are definitely an integral part of our communications and marketing strategy.
Reaching out to bloggers is a good tip that I probably should’ve mentioned in the article, but that’s why we have these comment sections.
Out of curiosity, how does your blog traffic compare to Facebook/Twitter traffic?
Your article points out how blogs are still underestimated on the value scale. I’ve found only a small percentage understand what it means to take the power of a blog and expand it by using the same blog software for one’s entire primary website. Put the traffic generator “inbound” together with blog software power “outbound” and you’ve got a whole lot of magic at your fingertips that isn’t going away soon.
Blogs are definately not dead but those who don’t use them correctly are dying fast. As a communication tool they are excellent. I create Case Studies for specialty contractors around the country. The results are a phenomenon. The Case Studies convert the uneducated consumer into a highly educated quality customer and eliminate the tire kickers. That’s a business changer for those with a defined business strategy. The newly educated consumer apparently likes to impress their friends with their knowledge. Word of mouth marketing is the result. Blogs can help you develop a huge network of people selling your service or product. Just ask Alice.
Thanks for the post!
Add possibility to the people to conduct the negotiations between themselves according to ftp:// and then the level of the contact of people acquires the business form.
The article is interesting and it’s also one for driving traffic and SEO.
Thanks so much.
http://www.5dfly.com
Dear Chris, Blogging are always great things to do, I starting my blogsite since 2008 without worrying about traffic, I always believed that sharing our knowledge with others will give beauty feedback for my successful of doing anything.. And that’s happen now.
Today my blogsite ranks perfectly and traffic is fantastic! I did nothing more than always share my own opinion and writing. For social sites, just feed it with my blog RSS and it gains more traffic too…
Hope you success.
Regards,
Donna
I did away with my websites years ago and replaced them with blogs. One is a normal looking blog, the other is a blog with a static front page which looks like a traditional website.
Real Estate does not generate the traffic that other industries do, but it can deliver some outstanding statistics when handled well. Our consumer shops when they are looking to buy, they are not constant. On average they are on our sites for about 3 to 6 months in this market, in varying stages of being ready to go. Recently some have been on the sites for 12 to 18 months. Once they buy or sell they are done.
I receive thousands of hits per day on the sites which is absolutely amazing for niche specific real estate sites. Compete says I get about 9,000 uniques per month. SEMrush says we get over 35,000 uniques per month. Go figure! Our site statistics show well over 100,000 direct hits from the search engines for the last 30 days, that does not include spider hits or hits from rss feeds, just from keyword results.
We had a struggle for the last year because our site provider went out of business and we had to switch our sites to a new provider, it didn’t go well. We are just recovering now. It pays to have multiple sites in the event of a disaster.
Thank you so much for the suggestion, as we’ve spent money on a website that’s going nowhere. We have a few vacation condos in Panama City Beach that we rent, but never thought of blogging. I’m very opinionated anyway, so blogging may just help my family cope with me.
I run 2 blogs for my company, http://www.ebnsoftware.com/blog for SEO and Website Marketing and http://www.ebn.com.mt/blog on website design, the latest being a very recent addition.
I also write for a number of other blogs for my clients and find blogs the best source of lead generation after e-mail marketing.
Social marketing like ‘twitter’ and ‘facebook’ are not realy business generators unless you sell/promote an event or an open day! These are more activity related results. Other business models get far more results from a good blog.
Happy Blogging to all from Malta (Europe)!
I very agree with your article. That blog is a source of strength to bring quality traffic product to conversion. true not only traffic from facebook, twitter and search engine alone, there are many other ways that can be taken. But many it difficult to find a large traffic from blogs. example for my blog, average visitors per day only 10 people.
Niche blogging is for wimps – so says a website I visited recently. Well I’m a blogger and I’m no wimp. As an author my interests are broad and when I began my blog just over a year ago I knew that I didn’t want to limit myself simply to writing about my profession. True, my blogs on creative writing bring in the majority of my traffic, but my blogs on relationships, stepfamilies and bereavement do pretty well, too.
I like Twitter (better than Facebook) but I use it primarily to relate to people and secondly to promote my blog. The traffic I get via Twitter is only a fraction of my total traffic – but that may be because I do it all manually and I probably don’t Tweet often enough to be really effective.
Thanks for the article and for confirming that the writing I love doing is worth doing.
Mel Menzies, author of the novel A Painful Post Mortem
Blog is a good way to drive traffic. Our blog bring more traffics than the regular website, either the traffics from Google or from referring sites.
Our blog is http://www.blog.cheaphostingchoice.com
Hi there:
I have found that I do get alot of traffic from my http://www.heavenpeturns.net blog than any other source and it gives me a chance to talk more about our quality pet cremation urns, to concentrate on one pet urn qualities and characteristics at a time.
So Blogs are useful and get traffic
Visit us at http://www.heavenpeturns.com for quality pet cremation urns, pet garden grave markers, dog urns, cat urns, pet cremation keepsake jewelry and more. We care about pet owners.
Just to put some figures on this, between 6-10% of traffic is currently generated by Twitter. Nice, but not ground-breaking. However, the visits are far more targeted.
6-10% is a good size slice.
Adrian nailed it in a post above:
“Social marketing like ‘twitter’ and ‘facebook’ are not realy business generators unless you sell/promote an event or an open day! These are more activity related results. Other business models get far more results from a good blog.”
Couldn’t agree more. You can Twitter and FB until you’re blue in the face, but unless you are promoting a special or an event, your bottom line will see a very small jump – compared to an informative, well written blog post.
We all have bloggers we trust, and when one of them has something valuable to say everyone who is following his/her thread reacts. A social network such as http://fabulously40.com has many women bloggers, their followers are loyal because they share a lot in common and want to hear what other women have to say. It’s not the same on Facebook or Tweeter, some people have so many followers, no one is really paying attention to what anyone is saying.
Our comments on blogs and twitter both help us to secure over 18-20% of our traffic as well as keeping in touch with our custoimers. People tend to buy tickets from brokers they have had a previous good experience from in the past. So the moral is “treat the customer right the first time and you get to have them a second”
Mary
I completely agree with you. To me blogs are also more static conversation whereas Twitter is more fluid. You can’t do too much SEO with Twitter or Facebook, but you can certainly do it with blogging. When people say that blogging is done, that’s when I realize I have a lot to teach them.
According to my point of view blogging is one of the best ways to drive traffic. I will always use blogs to share my views and will keep it updated frequently. It helps to gain more traffic.
Yes! I was told a long time ago (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) “If you have a business, you have to have a blog. I’m not good at writing to my blog: http://adstand.blogspot.com/ but use it to promote my email advertising business http://www.TheAdStand.com
With twitter, facebook etc. you should should always converse linking! Linking to what? Your blog of course!
The article is right on the money. While Twitter and Facebook are grabbing all the headlines, blogging is alive and well as are community forums. The best results are gained when a variety of online tools are leveraged as part of an integrated marketing strategy.
We still blog to get traffic to our main site, now the other side to this coin is converting the client, and thats where blogging really helps with the conversion.
I totally agree – we have 2 websites and we have approched marketing totally differently with each one.
Our oldest site: http://www.9-MonthsLater.com has no blog just search and advertising traffic our new site – only 2 months old : http://www.VIPGiftsandBaskets.com has a couple of blogs and facebook and twitter – Blogging by far surpasses the others in bringing us traffic. It pays to network with “chatting” people and sharing updates and new products.
Yes. It is correct. Through Blogger also, websites can get Traffic much.
We have been blogging for over a year and have never had a single enquiry from it. Perhaps it is because our business, Septic Tank Supply is a niche market, I don’t know, but we will keep trying.
I find most of my traffic comes from search engines. I always considered a blog as an easy way to add content to a site… I guess things change if you have 1000′s of followers on blogger.com etc.
I am still trying and learning how to get traffic, men it is hard work. I get traffic mostly from flier posters I distribute in my niche market.
Blogging emm no but keep doing it.
I took this also as my blog.
Listed are all my hot sites:
@ http://www.diasporans.com
@ http://www.african-tube.com
@ http://www.ethiofacebook.net coming soon
Thanks
Chris, you rightly said that blogs are still fetching traffic. Here in India, Hindi blogs are more popular than english blogs. Even India’s leading English newspapers talk about hindi blogging. I know this through my hindi blog (http://hindivani.blogspot.com). Several big Indian journalist are running their own hindi blog.
Excuse Me… I Just want to blogroll…. Thank You.
I sell real estate and have been blogging for 3 years now. Only recently have I seen the value of linking to other bloggers, to my IDX, or anywhere that will yield more visitors. I blog routinely about featured neighborhoods and market reports in the Charlotte, NC area. True, many of my readers may only be browsing, but it seems that my traffic has increased due to the increased exposure. One tip that I would pass along: be sure to Ping (Ping-o-matic.com) your blog when you publish a new post. Some blog hosts, like WordPress, do that automatically, but you need to do it anyway to let the search engines know that new material has been added to your site.
My blog is http://charlotterealtor.wordpress.com
In my opinion best traffic quality with best goal conversion results can come from search engines only; but since there is no room for all of us on Google’s first SERP’s, additional traffic sources come in handy.
For bloggers to drive good traffic to a website, the first required condition would be HIGH website quality. Nobody will write an article about a low quality site. However, since there are more and more bloggers, and the sources of inspiration for an article seem to be shrinking for some, any new subject might proove like a good subject.
In conclusion best SEO and highest SERP’s are still the key to high traffic.