My goal is to provide you enough detail to easily implement the tactics you have not already put into practice. Every tactic is something we’ve tried to get traffic. We’re only sharing what has worked for us.<\/p>\n
<\/span>7 Proven Strategies<\/em>\u00a0We\u00a0Use to Get Traffic to our Blog<\/span><\/h2>\n\n- Write irrefutable headlines<\/strong> (backed by data)<\/li>\n
- Use smart automation<\/strong> to scale social media<\/li>\n
- Measure Dark Social<\/strong> with Google Analytics<\/li>\n
- Create a healthy email newsletter<\/strong><\/li>\n
- Create a Quora growth machine<\/strong><\/li>\n
- Ping 1000’s of blog directories<\/strong> in one click<\/li>\n
- Turn blog post to slides and share on Slideshare<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
***This post is part 2 of the Ultimate Playbook for Growing Your Blog Traffic<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\nAndy Merchant, Co-founder of Bloggers Required<\/a>, inspired this series. He created an impressive list of 35 ways<\/a>\u00a0to get traffic to your blog. After reading through his list, I was compelled to do a follow-up post that shows you how to get traffic to your blog or website\u00a0by implementing many of his great ideas. We won\u2019t cover all 35 \u2013 some don\u2019t require much explaining. However, others require a few steps and for that reason, I\u2019ll expand upon Andy\u2019s ideas over several blog posts.<\/p>\n<\/span>Get Traffic Tip 1 – Use Exciting and Engaging Headlines\u00a0for your Blog Posts<\/span><\/h2>\nAndy Merchant: Your readers are most likely to judge your content by their titles. Titles with numbers, data, breaking news or funny twists will attract readers to your blog.<\/em><\/p>\nThe tsunami of social media updates has turned us into skimmers, scanners, and browsers. Facebook alone sees 2.4M updates every minute<\/a> while 400M updates flow through Twitter pipes every day.<\/p>\nAs if we were treading water keeping ourselves from drowning in a pool of updates, we spend nanoseconds frantically swiping, scrolling and thumbing through social media streams trying to find \u201cthe perfect one”. Whether it is smart, funny, or informative, something jumped out of the stream and demanded our attention as if it had superpowers. We click, and so begins our journey.<\/p>\n
I am talking about the headline. As the creator, you achieved your first goal. You moved us from browsing to reading.<\/p>\n
\n- According to copyblogger.com<\/a>, 80% of readers won\u2019t make it past the headline.<\/strong> Maybe you do possess a superpower. However, your challenge now is backing the promise of the headline with substance, which pulls us into the article. (We\u2019ll save that discussion for another day.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Your blog content lives and dies by the headline.<\/strong> The headline has always been important but more so today. Competition for attention is at an all-time high. Anyone can create content. Your competitor is just a thumb swipe away. Over 50% of content consumption happens on a handheld device. These real-estate starved devices lack the space for anything more than a headline showing in your stream. It is more important than any other time since the Gutenberg Press that we perfect the art of headline writing to get traffic to your blog.<\/p>\nFor example,\u00a0Upworthy.com<\/a>\u00a0gets serious about headlines. They brainstorm up to 25 headlines for each piece of content. Their time is well invested. The perfect headline can get\u00a0traffic to your blog by a\u00a0whopping 500%<\/a> according to their analytics.<\/p>\nDavid Ogilvy, hailed as \u201cThe Father of Advertising\u201d, said this about headlines:<\/strong><\/p>\n\nOn average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The headline must awaken a curiosity and create a hunger for new information<\/strong>. There are many different styles of headlines (intrigue, suspense, informative). Google is full of hundreds of how-to articles on writing compelling headlines<\/a>.<\/p>\nI wanted proof. What really\u00a0works?<\/p>\n
<\/span>What headline type will get traffic to your blog?<\/span><\/h2>\n-> STOP using you, your, you\u2019re, must or need<\/span> or risk a 20%+ drop in clicks according to Outbrain.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n![\"How](\"http:\/\/blog.dlvr.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Outbrain_Pushy_headlines-1024x799.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u2013> Use testimonials. LKR Social Media<\/a> improved conversion by 24.31% using this technique.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/dlvrit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/use_testimonials_in_headlines.png\")
<\/p>\n
\u2013> The \u201ctop x of something\u201d headline format will get traffic to your blog, period.\u00a0(e.g., 9 Irrefutable Laws for Writing Irresistible Headlines).<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n- Headlines that contained odd numbers had a 20% higher click-through rate than headlines with even numbers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/dlvrit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/conductor_overall_headline_preferences.png\")
<\/p>\n
\u2013> Size matters. If you\u2019re optimizing for SEO, keep the headline at 65 characters max. Google shows only the first 65 characters of a title. According to Outbrain blog headlines containing 60-100 characters perform the best.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n- To get traffic most efficiently, research from the direct mail industry shows headlines should be eight words or less. Magazine copywriters have to write tight headlines due to space concerns, just like Twitter users.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/dlvrit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/English-Headline-Length-Words-1024x397.png\")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2013> Be extremely modest or overzealous. Avoid the middle ground.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/dlvrit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/conductor_using_superlatives.png\")
<\/p>\n
\u2013> Readers prefer headlines written in sentence case.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n- Nine irrefutable laws for writing irresistible headlines – backed by data (Lowercase)<\/li>\n
- 9 IRREFUTABLE LAWS FOR WRITING IRRESISTIBLE HEADLINES – BACKED BY DATA (Capitals)<\/li>\n
- 9 Irrefutable Laws for Writing Irresistible Headlines – Backed by Data (Sentence Case)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/dlvrit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/conductor_sentence_case.png\")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2013> Tell readers exactly what they are about to read. Descriptive headlines get readers to click.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/dlvrit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/conductor_headline_clarity.png\")
<\/p>\n
<\/h3>\n\u2013>The use of verbs works to get traffic according to Dan Zarrella, Social Media Scientist at Hubspot.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/dlvrit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/use_verbs_in_headlines.png\")
<\/h3>\n<\/h3>\n\u2013> A colon or hyphen in the headline \u2014 indicating a subtitle \u2014 performed 9% better than headlines without. (source<\/a>)<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/span>Get Traffic Tip\u00a02 – Post Blog Content on Social Media<\/span><\/h2>\nAndrew Merchant: Your current social media followers may be interested in your blog\u2019s content. Therefore, as soon as you post something on your blog, share it on your social media channels so that your current followers can start reading your blog. In fact, they may also share the content and help to get\u00a0traffic to your blog.<\/em><\/p>\nI don’t think I need to convince you to share blog content on your social media profiles. What I will explain is how to use Smart Automation to get traffic. In this case: RSS, to significantly reduce the time it takes to do repetitive tasks like posting to numerous social networks.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\nThe clinical definition of RSS from Wikipedia reads like a textbook (I won’t feel bad if you skip this part): The acronym \u201cRSS\u201d stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication<\/strong>. RSS uses a family of standard web feed<\/a> formats to publish frequently updated information: e.g., blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video. An RSS document (called “feed: “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, and metadata<\/a>, like publishing date and author’s name. (Blah, blah…)<\/p>\nSmall Business Trends<\/a> explains what RSS is in “layman” terms<\/strong> and why it is necessary for your small business. We prefer to explain it this way:<\/p>\n\n- RSS feeds give readers a method to keep up with their favorite blogs, news sites, and other websites. Anyone can choose the sites they wish to subscribe to, and then get updates in one centralized location.<\/li>\n
- In essence, RSS allows the content to come to you<\/strong>. That means you do not have to go to each blog or website individually when you want to view new updates they\u2019ve published.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Is RSS dead? Is RSS still an important Marketing tool\u00a0to get traffic?<\/strong><\/h3>\nThe answer to the first question is No! Despite Google’s decision to shut down its popular Google Reader service, RSS is not dead.<\/p>\n
It may be true that end users are not subscribing to RSS feeds in feed readers as much these days. But it\u2019s also true that RSS is everywhere whether people realize it or not.<\/p>\n
One way to think of RSS is like plumbing. It works behind the scenes to get traffic. It\u2019s the pipes that make content portable on the Web. RSS is still a key way that content published on one site can be seen<\/strong> (either in full or perhaps with just a headline and short snippet) in other places. For instance, RSS is how a lot of content gets fed to social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn in the first place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe answer to the second question is Yes! For bloggers and website owners, RSS is a great Web marketing tool to get traffic.<\/p>\n
\n- It is a means to create a loyal repeat following.<\/li>\n
- It helps you get traffic by keeping you top of mind with your readers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
As a blog owner or website owner, it\u2019s up to you to create and publicize your RSS feed. Most blogging software platforms make this easy because the software automatically creates RSS feeds. WordPress, for example, is one content management system that automatically creates an RSS feed for the site.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/span>Ultimate Guide to RSS to Social – The Master List<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/dlvrit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/RSS-Icon.jpg\")
The following are expert RSS to social media solutions to enable you to get\u00a0traffic, increase views, grow reach, share your photo’s and video and ultimately, boost sales across social media.<\/p>\n
Use these links to find the social network for which you are looking for up-to-date RSS tips, tools, and advice:<\/p>\n
\n- eBay<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Email & MailChimp<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Etsy<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Facebook<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Flickr<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Flipboard<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Instagram<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Medium<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Periscope<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Pinterest<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Quora<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Reddit<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Tumblr<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Twitter<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Slack<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- YouTube<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Vine<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- WordPress<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Other RSS solutions:<\/p>\n
\n- Automated Photo Posting from RSS Feeds<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Photo Posting from Instagram, Pinterest, and RSS to Twitter, Facebook, and More<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- RSS Graffiti Alternative<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Share GoPro Videos Across Social Media<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
- Yahoo! Pipes Alternative<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/span>Get Traffic Tip\u00a03- Use Google Analytics to Measure Success<\/span><\/h2>\nAndrew Merchant: Google Analytics will help you to keep track of your site\u2019s traffic while allowing you to know how each section of your site is performing. Master how to interpret the software, it will help you a great deal.<\/em><\/p>\nHere’s another case where you likely already know your way around Google Analytics. However, are you measuring Dark Social?<\/strong><\/p>\nWith limited time and resources, it’s crucial to know what social media marketing tactics will get traffic. What have you missed – any untraceable links or lost referrer data hiding in a corner?<\/p>\n
According to the website analytics provider Chartbeat<\/a>, nearly 70% of ‘social’ sharing goes untracked while only 25% of sharing occurs on Facebook and Twitter – combined. The term to describe this is Dark Social.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/span>What is Dark Social?<\/span><\/h2>\nHave you ever copied and pasted a link into email? If you have, you just participated in Dark Social. Dark Social is the blind spot in website analytics. In many cases, you can tell which sites people were on before coming to your site. This information is helpful in determining where to spend your time and marketing money.<\/p>\n
Dark Social refers to traffic not attributed to a source. It’s hard to measure because it happens when users copy, paste, and then share a link through email, apps, bookmarks or on chat<\/strong>. It’s outside the basic core of the social media ecosystem. This “void” means a huge goldmine of valuable traffic and customer data remains untapped and bypasses traditional analytic systems. Alexis C. Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic<\/a><\/em>, coined the term Dark Social.<\/em><\/p>\n\nSharing activity through email, instant messaging and forum posts, aka Dark Social, is three times larger than the sharing activity on Facebook, globally. 69% of all sharing activity takes place via Dark Social globally versus 23% via Facebook – RadiumOne<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/dlvrit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/How-Big-Is-Dark-Social.jpg\")
Most analytic systems report Dark Social as either unknown or direct traffic. The ‘direct traffic’ category implies that someone typed in your URL directly. That might not be the case. The truth of the matter is that the information we get from web analytics tools is limited. The vast majority of social traffic may be invisible to most analytics programs. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/span>Quantifying Dark Social Traffic<\/span><\/h2>\nCredit to Chartbeat for this tip. Dark Social is all those visitors who don’t have a referring site but excluding those people who arrived at the home page.<\/p>\n
Using Google Analytics as an example, the left image below shows the ranking of our “Direct” traffic for a given period. Clicking on the link displays the landing pages in which the direct traffic entered the site (see image on the right). If we assume direct traffic to mean someone directly typing in one of our URL’s, that would mean a visitor would have to know the exact URL of one of our articles on the blog which is not likely.<\/p>\n
What is more likely the case, this traffic represents visitors originating from a Dark Social source – email, apps, pasted links or on chat. On the right image below at number two, the slash (\/) you see is traffic that is more likely ‘direct’ – people typing in dlvrit.com\/blog (as well as other links pointing directly to our blog homepage).<\/p>\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/dlvrit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Google-Analytics-Direct-Traffic-Example.png\")
<\/p>\n
According to RadiumOne, 93% of consumers share content via Dark Social.<\/strong> This iceberg under the water is an incomplete picture and can cause marketers to dump resources into the wrong channels. However, is it realistic to identify all this hidden sharing activity and the users behind it? <\/strong>The short answer is no. However, you can create a bit more of an aggressive plan to classify the unknown or direct traffic.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/span>How to Decrease Dark Social<\/span><\/h2>\nHere are three low-tech ways to gain a clearer picture of the source of Dark Social traffic.
\nStep 1. <\/strong>Add trackable codes to URL’s shared on social<\/p>\nThe most common referral tag is the UTM Code<\/a>. Using UTM parameters is a way to track the performance of a custom campaign from the origination point (tweet, email or website). A link with a UTM parameter looks like this:<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/yourdomain.com\/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=SPRINGPROMOTION.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nOf course, this relies on a reader to copy and paste the entire link.<\/p>\n
Learn how dlvr.it automates the process of adding UTM parameters<\/a> to ALL the links you share across social media.<\/p>\nStep 2. <\/strong>Create shortened URL’s<\/p>\nWhen sharing content outside your site, mask the link with a shortened URL<\/a>. When combining trackable codes (from step 1 above) and a short URL, you will have a barrier of protection. The short URL is short enough to paste into email, chat, and text. When clicked, you will know where the link originated from because you have the UTM parameter enabled. This code will then register with your analytics program.<\/p>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/dlvrit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/11-Ways-to-Use-Short-URLs.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Step 3. <\/strong>Track the Copy and Paste Activity<\/p>\nA significant portion of Dark Social traffic comes from readers copying and pasting content from your website. Services like Tynt <\/a>have been trying to solve the copy and paste tracking issue for some time. Tynt is a code you can add to a website, and their\u00a0WordPress plugin makes installation easier.<\/a><\/p>\nWithout copy and paste tracking, when a reader copies a portion of a page, the text alone is pasted into the destination. No other metadata is attached. With Tynt installed, now when the user copies a portion of a page, the copied content is automatically wrapped with a URL.<\/p>\n
Below is an example of how a piece of copied content would appear. I copied product information from Tynt’s site. You can see the added information (URL with trackable code plus ‘Follow us’:)<\/p>\n
==========<\/p>\n
Get credit for your content<\/h3>\n\n- 33Across powered by Tynt ensures your brand travels with your content wherever it is pasted<\/li>\n
- Encourages users to source your content when sharing via copy & paste<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nRead more: http:\/\/www.tynt.com\/product_copypaste#ixzz3UIqoB2zr<\/a>
\nFollow us: @tynt on Twitter<\/a><\/div>\n==========<\/p>\n
Nothing is full proof, but you can make great headway in classifying traffic correctly in your analytics program. Dark Social is a big enough piece of the pie that taking the time to quantify and identify the source is worth the extra effort.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Get Traffic Tip\u00a04 – Never Forget Email Marketing<\/span><\/h2>\nAndy Merchant: Email marketing is a powerful tool for building a steady audience for your blog. Start building your email list as soon as possible.<\/em><\/p>\n
***This post is part 2 of the Ultimate Playbook for Growing Your Blog Traffic<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Andy Merchant, Co-founder of Bloggers Required<\/a>, inspired this series. He created an impressive list of 35 ways<\/a>\u00a0to get traffic to your blog. After reading through his list, I was compelled to do a follow-up post that shows you how to get traffic to your blog or website\u00a0by implementing many of his great ideas. We won\u2019t cover all 35 \u2013 some don\u2019t require much explaining. However, others require a few steps and for that reason, I\u2019ll expand upon Andy\u2019s ideas over several blog posts.<\/p>\n Andy Merchant: Your readers are most likely to judge your content by their titles. Titles with numbers, data, breaking news or funny twists will attract readers to your blog.<\/em><\/p>\n The tsunami of social media updates has turned us into skimmers, scanners, and browsers. Facebook alone sees 2.4M updates every minute<\/a> while 400M updates flow through Twitter pipes every day.<\/p>\n As if we were treading water keeping ourselves from drowning in a pool of updates, we spend nanoseconds frantically swiping, scrolling and thumbing through social media streams trying to find \u201cthe perfect one”. Whether it is smart, funny, or informative, something jumped out of the stream and demanded our attention as if it had superpowers. We click, and so begins our journey.<\/p>\n I am talking about the headline. As the creator, you achieved your first goal. You moved us from browsing to reading.<\/p>\n Your blog content lives and dies by the headline.<\/strong> The headline has always been important but more so today. Competition for attention is at an all-time high. Anyone can create content. Your competitor is just a thumb swipe away. Over 50% of content consumption happens on a handheld device. These real-estate starved devices lack the space for anything more than a headline showing in your stream. It is more important than any other time since the Gutenberg Press that we perfect the art of headline writing to get traffic to your blog.<\/p>\n For example,\u00a0Upworthy.com<\/a>\u00a0gets serious about headlines. They brainstorm up to 25 headlines for each piece of content. Their time is well invested. The perfect headline can get\u00a0traffic to your blog by a\u00a0whopping 500%<\/a> according to their analytics.<\/p>\n David Ogilvy, hailed as \u201cThe Father of Advertising\u201d, said this about headlines:<\/strong><\/p>\n On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The headline must awaken a curiosity and create a hunger for new information<\/strong>. There are many different styles of headlines (intrigue, suspense, informative). Google is full of hundreds of how-to articles on writing compelling headlines<\/a>.<\/p>\n I wanted proof. What really\u00a0works?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Andrew Merchant: Your current social media followers may be interested in your blog\u2019s content. Therefore, as soon as you post something on your blog, share it on your social media channels so that your current followers can start reading your blog. In fact, they may also share the content and help to get\u00a0traffic to your blog.<\/em><\/p>\n I don’t think I need to convince you to share blog content on your social media profiles. What I will explain is how to use Smart Automation to get traffic. In this case: RSS, to significantly reduce the time it takes to do repetitive tasks like posting to numerous social networks. The clinical definition of RSS from Wikipedia reads like a textbook (I won’t feel bad if you skip this part): The acronym \u201cRSS\u201d stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication<\/strong>. RSS uses a family of standard web feed<\/a> formats to publish frequently updated information: e.g., blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video. An RSS document (called “feed: “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, and metadata<\/a>, like publishing date and author’s name. (Blah, blah…)<\/p>\n Small Business Trends<\/a> explains what RSS is in “layman” terms<\/strong> and why it is necessary for your small business. We prefer to explain it this way:<\/p>\n The answer to the first question is No! Despite Google’s decision to shut down its popular Google Reader service, RSS is not dead.<\/p>\n It may be true that end users are not subscribing to RSS feeds in feed readers as much these days. But it\u2019s also true that RSS is everywhere whether people realize it or not.<\/p>\n One way to think of RSS is like plumbing. It works behind the scenes to get traffic. It\u2019s the pipes that make content portable on the Web. RSS is still a key way that content published on one site can be seen<\/strong> (either in full or perhaps with just a headline and short snippet) in other places. For instance, RSS is how a lot of content gets fed to social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn in the first place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The answer to the second question is Yes! For bloggers and website owners, RSS is a great Web marketing tool to get traffic.<\/p>\n As a blog owner or website owner, it\u2019s up to you to create and publicize your RSS feed. Most blogging software platforms make this easy because the software automatically creates RSS feeds. WordPress, for example, is one content management system that automatically creates an RSS feed for the site. Use these links to find the social network for which you are looking for up-to-date RSS tips, tools, and advice:<\/p>\n Other RSS solutions:<\/p>\n Andrew Merchant: Google Analytics will help you to keep track of your site\u2019s traffic while allowing you to know how each section of your site is performing. Master how to interpret the software, it will help you a great deal.<\/em><\/p>\n Here’s another case where you likely already know your way around Google Analytics. However, are you measuring Dark Social?<\/strong><\/p>\n With limited time and resources, it’s crucial to know what social media marketing tactics will get traffic. What have you missed – any untraceable links or lost referrer data hiding in a corner?<\/p>\n According to the website analytics provider Chartbeat<\/a>, nearly 70% of ‘social’ sharing goes untracked while only 25% of sharing occurs on Facebook and Twitter – combined. The term to describe this is Dark Social.<\/strong><\/p>\n Have you ever copied and pasted a link into email? If you have, you just participated in Dark Social. Dark Social is the blind spot in website analytics. In many cases, you can tell which sites people were on before coming to your site. This information is helpful in determining where to spend your time and marketing money.<\/p>\n Dark Social refers to traffic not attributed to a source. It’s hard to measure because it happens when users copy, paste, and then share a link through email, apps, bookmarks or on chat<\/strong>. It’s outside the basic core of the social media ecosystem. This “void” means a huge goldmine of valuable traffic and customer data remains untapped and bypasses traditional analytic systems. Alexis C. Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic<\/a><\/em>, coined the term Dark Social.<\/em><\/p>\n Credit to Chartbeat for this tip. Dark Social is all those visitors who don’t have a referring site but excluding those people who arrived at the home page.<\/p>\n Using Google Analytics as an example, the left image below shows the ranking of our “Direct” traffic for a given period. Clicking on the link displays the landing pages in which the direct traffic entered the site (see image on the right). If we assume direct traffic to mean someone directly typing in one of our URL’s, that would mean a visitor would have to know the exact URL of one of our articles on the blog which is not likely.<\/p>\n What is more likely the case, this traffic represents visitors originating from a Dark Social source – email, apps, pasted links or on chat. On the right image below at number two, the slash (\/) you see is traffic that is more likely ‘direct’ – people typing in dlvrit.com\/blog (as well as other links pointing directly to our blog homepage).<\/p>\n According to RadiumOne, 93% of consumers share content via Dark Social.<\/strong> This iceberg under the water is an incomplete picture and can cause marketers to dump resources into the wrong channels. However, is it realistic to identify all this hidden sharing activity and the users behind it? <\/strong>The short answer is no. However, you can create a bit more of an aggressive plan to classify the unknown or direct traffic. Here are three low-tech ways to gain a clearer picture of the source of Dark Social traffic. The most common referral tag is the UTM Code<\/a>. Using UTM parameters is a way to track the performance of a custom campaign from the origination point (tweet, email or website). A link with a UTM parameter looks like this:<\/p>\n http:\/\/yourdomain.com\/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=SPRINGPROMOTION.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Of course, this relies on a reader to copy and paste the entire link.<\/p>\n Learn how dlvr.it automates the process of adding UTM parameters<\/a> to ALL the links you share across social media.<\/p>\n Step 2. <\/strong>Create shortened URL’s<\/p>\n When sharing content outside your site, mask the link with a shortened URL<\/a>. When combining trackable codes (from step 1 above) and a short URL, you will have a barrier of protection. The short URL is short enough to paste into email, chat, and text. When clicked, you will know where the link originated from because you have the UTM parameter enabled. This code will then register with your analytics program.<\/p>\n Step 3. <\/strong>Track the Copy and Paste Activity<\/p>\n A significant portion of Dark Social traffic comes from readers copying and pasting content from your website. Services like Tynt <\/a>have been trying to solve the copy and paste tracking issue for some time. Tynt is a code you can add to a website, and their\u00a0WordPress plugin makes installation easier.<\/a><\/p>\n Without copy and paste tracking, when a reader copies a portion of a page, the text alone is pasted into the destination. No other metadata is attached. With Tynt installed, now when the user copies a portion of a page, the copied content is automatically wrapped with a URL.<\/p>\n Below is an example of how a piece of copied content would appear. I copied product information from Tynt’s site. You can see the added information (URL with trackable code plus ‘Follow us’:)<\/p>\n ==========<\/p>\n ==========<\/p>\n Nothing is full proof, but you can make great headway in classifying traffic correctly in your analytics program. Dark Social is a big enough piece of the pie that taking the time to quantify and identify the source is worth the extra effort.<\/p>\n Andy Merchant: Email marketing is a powerful tool for building a steady audience for your blog. Start building your email list as soon as possible.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>Get Traffic Tip 1 – Use Exciting and Engaging Headlines\u00a0for your Blog Posts<\/span><\/h2>\n
\n
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<\/span>What headline type will get traffic to your blog?<\/span><\/h2>\n
-> STOP using you, your, you\u2019re, must or need<\/span> or risk a 20%+ drop in clicks according to Outbrain.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n\u2013> Use testimonials. LKR Social Media<\/a> improved conversion by 24.31% using this technique.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n\u2013> The \u201ctop x of something\u201d headline format will get traffic to your blog, period.\u00a0(e.g., 9 Irrefutable Laws for Writing Irresistible Headlines).<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\u2013> Size matters. If you\u2019re optimizing for SEO, keep the headline at 65 characters max. Google shows only the first 65 characters of a title. According to Outbrain blog headlines containing 60-100 characters perform the best.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\u2013> Be extremely modest or overzealous. Avoid the middle ground.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n\u2013> Readers prefer headlines written in sentence case.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\u2013> Tell readers exactly what they are about to read. Descriptive headlines get readers to click.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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\u2013>The use of verbs works to get traffic according to Dan Zarrella, Social Media Scientist at Hubspot.<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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\u2013> A colon or hyphen in the headline \u2014 indicating a subtitle \u2014 performed 9% better than headlines without. (source<\/a>)<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/span>Get Traffic Tip\u00a02 – Post Blog Content on Social Media<\/span><\/h2>\n
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Is RSS dead? Is RSS still an important Marketing tool\u00a0to get traffic?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/span>Ultimate Guide to RSS to Social – The Master List<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
The following are expert RSS to social media solutions to enable you to get\u00a0traffic, increase views, grow reach, share your photo’s and video and ultimately, boost sales across social media.<\/p>\n\n
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<\/span>Get Traffic Tip\u00a03- Use Google Analytics to Measure Success<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/span>What is Dark Social?<\/span><\/h2>\n
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Most analytic systems report Dark Social as either unknown or direct traffic. The ‘direct traffic’ category implies that someone typed in your URL directly. That might not be the case. The truth of the matter is that the information we get from web analytics tools is limited. The vast majority of social traffic may be invisible to most analytics programs. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/span>Quantifying Dark Social Traffic<\/span><\/h2>\n
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\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/span>How to Decrease Dark Social<\/span><\/h2>\n
\nStep 1. <\/strong>Add trackable codes to URL’s shared on social<\/p>\n<\/p>\nGet credit for your content<\/h3>\n
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\nFollow us: @tynt on Twitter<\/a><\/div>\n<\/span>Get Traffic Tip\u00a04 – Never Forget Email Marketing<\/span><\/h2>\n