Last year, the promoters behind the award-winning film Prince Among Slaves tried to hire freelancers to Digg their movie to the front page of Digg.com. You can read about it here. And yes, this story is from January ‘08, but this backwards mentality still persists. Online marketers are still trying to pay for mass traffic – whether it’s hiring diggers, paying for links or even opting in for reverse pay-for-view schemes.

Too bad that’s never going to work.

You Have to Be Genuine
Not only will tales of paid-for-traffic haunt your business and your reputation, it’s ineffective and a waste of money. In the new Web 2.0 world, traffic has to be earned, not purchased. You need to attract visitors with genuine interaction and content that’s both valuable and sincere. And yes, you can outsource some of the content, but work with them closely and be sure that what gets published is real.

It’s not about paying for hits, hiring diggers or spamming – it’s about being transparent and genuine and really engaging the viewer.

So, how do you do it?

Stop Thinking About Demographics
If you’re running a blog for your business, stop thinking about demographics. Put away your assumptions that everyone who visits your site is 40-65 and female. Remember, iVillage’s visitors are 44 percent male while AskMen.com’s visitors are almost 25 percent female.

Instead, group your communities by interest, encourage their feedback and use that information to really build your micro-niches.

Let Your Readers/Users Inspire You
If you’re posting press releases or product information on your business blog, do you really know if it’s working? What’s actually driving users to your site and why? To find out, use a tool like Google Analytics to tell you not only how many people came to your site, but why they came, how they found you and what they were searching for.

By understanding what types of content actually work, you’ll be better equipped to build on the content that’s actually generating results.

For example, if most of your Facebook visitors are coming because of a particular product or topic, then give them more. Create series on the topic or engage in more conversations about that topic on your social networking sites.

Be Flexible
Not every post or tweet has to be about your product or business, in fact I guarantee that will turn customers off. So, stay flexible and let your posts or interactions go with the flow. Yes, you want your blog posts to stay on message, but you also want to sincerely address your audience’s concerns and interests.

Remember, be real and the relationships will follow.

Mike Seidle

Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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Yes, there are always massive discrepancies in analytics between platforms. It’s because each system measures things in different ways.

Ever wondered what what the difference was between ad servers, log analyzers & javascript based analytics tools like Google Analytics? And which one you should be using? Here is a brief primer to help you understand.

Ad Servers
An ad server reports clicks that result in a redirect to a web page. There’s no guarantee the visitor made it to the page or wasn’t further redirected.

These stats can be affected by hijacking (toolbars that redirect traffic), bots, the end user, and in some cases, performance of the ad server (I clicked and it timed out!).

Bottom Line: Ad servers accurately measure ad displays and clicks. They are not so accurate at telling you how many people visited a website.

Log Analyzers
A log analyzer report on pages served by a web server. It does not see pages served from caching proxies used by ISPs and does not see pages served from a browser’s cache.

Bottom Line: Log analyzers accurately report server activity and nothing else.

Javascript Based Metrics
All java based metrics (like Google Analytics) will report web site activity accurately if the end user has javascript and no software that blocks your tracker (7-15% of your visitor’s computers have this depending on who’s metrics you are using).

Bottom Line: Javascript based metrics tell you within 7-15% what pages have been viewed.

So, since the best we can do is within 7-15% accuracy anyway it’s best to measure actual ROI with javascript based metrics. In other words, measure the success of each campaign by the number of sales made vs. the amount of money spent to get the traffic to that particular campaign.

Do this and you are sure to get your metrics right.

Mike Seidle

Mike Seidle is currently the CTO of Virtual Payment Systems, Inc, and is a one of the founders of Professional Blog Service. Mike currently serves on Professional Blog Service’s board of directors.

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