It’s funny how you discover the most interesting things when you are consistent with your blogging.
One of these things happened yesterday, when, to my surprise, I checked my stats for April 30th, and saw that 2,370 people had visited my blog.
Now, for a top guru in our space, this number would be a yawn.
But take into consideration that…
1. This blog is only 94 posts old
2. I didn’t try any traffic generation methods for the first 2 weeks (and I’m a solo business owner) - Meaning I have no team of interns or employees who sit in cubicles and write articles, find ezine publishers, and post blog comments for me
3. I am completely unknown in the Internet Marketing world - So there’s no name value or branding going on here
4. I consistently got only 30-50 visitors before two days ago
And suddenly… 2,370 visitors.
In fact, the report was so lopsided that it had to measure the huge surge in traffic “by the 1000’s” - and displayed 2.37 instead of 2,370.
Weird.
Anyhow, enough suspense.
The reason why I got so much traffic is that a few days ago I posted an entry called:
Jim Carrey and the Power of Visualization
Now I don’t know why, but for some reason this set off an absolute explosion over at StumbleUpon.
Because according to my Google Analytics report, StumbleUpon is where almost all the traffic came from.
The interesting thing is, on April 29th, I got 410 visitors to my blog from StumbleUpon, all going to the same post. The Jim Carrey post.
And after that I thought the “sizzle” would wear off.
I made a joke about it on Keith Goodrum’s blog.
And even social media marketing expert (wow, that’s a mouthful) Rita Wilhelm commented that this particular phenomenon was interesting.
But it was more of a fluke to me at that point, simply because as direct marketers, we live and die by RESULTS.
And the results showed that even though 410 visitors viewed the Jim Carrey post, the majority only viewed that one entry (c’mon, my writing isn’t THAT bad, is it?), and NO ONE subscribed.
Cool. No problem.
That tells me that the traffic was definitely not targeted, and I was getting the kinds of people who were weren’t interested in what we do in this world.
And even though I started trying to figure out how to use this traffic surge in a way that WOULD attract targeted traffic (thoughts, anyone?) - the bottom line was, I was ready to let it go.
As I talked about in my last post, I’m doing fine with the traffic strategies I have in place, and am more interested in delivering good content and being around a long time, then focusing on getting large swarms of semi targeted traffic, then fizzling out.
But when I checked this morning I actually had a handful of new subscribers.
Which got me intrigued again.
There is no definite conclusion or lesson to this post. I can’t wrap it up with a nice ribbon and say, “Go do this, it’ll create a tidal wave of traffic to your blog.”
However, I HAVE come away with a few realizations.
1. Try putting a celebrity name into one of your blog posts. And let me know what happens to your traffic in the next few days. If Jim Carrey (who isn’t even hot right now) caused an explosion of traffic to my blog, think about what a name like Paris Hilton or Barack Obama (or both!) would do for your blog.
2. A spin on that… How about mixing a celebrity name with an Internet Marketing topic? I’m thinking something along the lines of What do Kobe Bryant and Traffic Generation Have in Common? (There is a real answer to that by the way, and you can find it here)
3. Social media marketing has some scary potential. I largely ignored it until now, but this influx of traffic has me thinking about what other Web 2.0 strategies can help us out
Of course, as I experiment with all this, you will all be the first to know.
-James D. Lee
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