Yesterday I added Sitemeter’s stat counter to this blog to see where traffic is coming.  This what done more out of curiousity as opposed to a need for deep analysis vis-à-vis the homepage.

Technorati Tags: sitemeter, web traffic

Social networking for the traveler [via BankersBall]

The importance of succession planning [BlackEnterprise]

Technorati Tags: social networking

Check out this interactive ad for Norelco’s Body Groom shaver.  Will I go out tomorrow and by one? No but it sure is memorable and funny to someone like me, who probably falls into the demographic the ad is designed to appeal to .  It surely is benefitting from viral marketing given I saw the link on a website that posted it months ago and now you’re seeing it here.

Technorati Tags: advertising, viral marketing, interactive ad

For the second time in as many months my web host has had issues(read: not working) which is beyond frustating.  Previously it would be little “time-outs” in the 10-20 minute range.  This one was well over 5 hours. I will be monitoring the situation more closely and may start looking at hosting alternatives if there seem to be serious reliability issues lurking beneath.  Time to make a full back up of the site!

Goof off at work, get a bonus

Get more customers to respond

Technorati Tags: online advertising, employee bonus, online marketing, internet games

This is how NOT to improve improve your search ranking and drive traffic to your website.

Link via Aggressive Internet Marketing.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, seo, google, website traffic

Put the URL on all marketing collateral

• Business cards
• Letterhead
• Envelopes
• Invoices
• Promotion Items (I like using calendars as they are actually useful unlike many promo items which get tossed in the trash and they will be looked at every week if not every day.)
• Flyers

I make sure anything “public” has the URL on it.

Tell everyone you know and remind them regularly 

Sending the link to my friends and colleagues and asking them to forward it is not enough.  Nothing beats face to face interaction where I can explain to people what the website is about and why they should visit it.  And this why I am so big on attending networking events, especially if the other attendees fit this website’s demographic.  I get the opportunity to talk about the site to a good number of people in a short amount of time for little to no money.

One of my worst fears is for this site to become a “faceless” site where it’s nice to look at but there’s no personal connection.  It’s JUS (just another site).  That’s why I try to attend one or two networking events a month, not including the E & E Club mixers.  My belief is that the more people get to know me, the better the chances they will become repeat visitors and will help in the all-important word of mouth advertising.  And that is priceless.

Since there are so many articles on driving traffic to your website floating around, I’ve linked up a few rather than recreating the wheel. The focus is using online tools. Next time, I’ll talk about offline tools I use.
Help - I Need Traffic To My Website

Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days

How Do I Get Traffic To My Website?

How Do I Get More Traffic to My Site?

Technorati Tags: Web site traffic, seo

The answer is ______ . Amazingly there are many small businesses (and larger ones) who do not have a clue about the most basic of web statistics. Hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars poured into developing the website, more money poured into maintaining the website yet no time spent on figuring out what are the site’s numbers.

Here is a short list of things to know:

Visits

How many visits a day your site gets. This number can vary depending upon what traffic software you use but any one is better than none. For BostonOffline.com, Sitemeter(free) is used along with Webalizer which is built into the hosting program.

Referrals

Where is your traffic coming from? Direct requests (someone types in www.yoursite.com into the address bar)? Google or Yahoo searches? Links from other sites (especially important if measuring the effectiveness of link exchanges or how popular your site is becoming)?

Stickiness

How long are people staying on your website? Sitemeter does a good job of logging every visitors total time spent on the site (non-identifiably of course). Read more on how to improve stickiness from About.com’s web design guide.
Knowledge of these three simple aspects of your website will help in knowing where you stand on the web. In the next post I’ll talk about different ways I drive traffic to this site.