Even though it is very obvious that Social Media is extremely powerful many of you guys weren’t convinced. After I created the twitter category and started suggesting all of you to join twitter, I was getting emails asking is twitter really useful. Those of you who never had any social media experience have many doubts in the power of social media. So therefore I decided to conduct this study to reveal the power of Social Media with Proof to my new users and those who still doubt it.

In the past every social media network I tried, I was trying them one by one. I never combined them due to lack of time. So when I recently started being active on twitter, I saw the true power of all Social Media combined. Things fly out from one place to another in a matter of seconds. That is when I decided to take on this secret mission. The mission to dominate every social media and examine the power of social media when it comes to traffic, advertising, increasing subscribers, and increasing popularity. In this study, I will show you exactly what type of results you get when you combine the power of all social media networks. And what you really have to do.

To spice it up for you and get you excited the results that I got looked something like this for 3 days:

68,038 Unique Visitors

122,469 Total Visits

653,984 Pageviews

5.36 Million Hits (5,362,635)

RSS Subscriber Count Increased by 1734 making my total count to 5321.

Literally, I doubled my stats from my whole last month in a matter of 3 days. Now seriously and truly, do you want to do this? Well then prepare for your ultimate guide which is this post.

Before I start, I will say that this article does not guarantee the same results because there are too many factors that go into it which I will mention. But what I can guarantee you is that you will see an increase. Maybe a little less than this, or a whole lot more than this.

So You might be wondering at this point how did I do this? Where was my traffic coming from? Obviously this is a blog, I must have written a killer article. Which I did. You can find the article here: 55+ Extremely Useful Online Generators for Designers.

And what got me the traffic was bunch of different social media networks and websites. The list includes: Twitter, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Delicious, Digg, tweetmeme, twitturl, and countless others.

I got 5 Stars in Stumbleupon

Frontpage on Reddit

Delicious Popular over 1400+ Bookmarks

Ofcourse you can see that the post retweeted on twitter over 400 times and by some of the most popular celebrities on twitter. But I will go on to say that none of the above was possible if it was not for twitter. Twitter is a place where the celebrities from all other social media networks interact. So if you convince the audience of this network, the other networks will be a peice of cake.

So JOIN Twitter. I have asked a few of my friends who also have a good influence in social media networks and they run quality websites. Here is what one of them say:

“Focus on twitter first, build a good reputation then after that you can invite them to follow you on other social media sites.” @naldzgraphics

So guys twitter is essential. But once you join what exactly do you do? Well the first thing you should do is follow me @syedbalkhi. Ah ok well here is what you should do according to Patrick:

“Be friendly and helpful to all and other Social Media members will pick up on that and start helping you as well.” – @Jenocide312

Follow his advice, and then read my article that lists 25 Tips to Increase Your Influence and Gain Followers on Twitter.

Now you should know somewhat of what you are doing on twitter. Your goal is to get as many people to know about your new article. Well then you should Retweet or as it is known on twitter as RT. Basically when you tweet make sure it is something interesting. That means write exceptionally great content that your audience will love. Having that said, it means not everypost deserves to be heavily promoted. Pick your best ones otherwise your friends will think you are spamming them. Before you ask anyone to Retweet anything for you, or do you a favor make sure you know them at least. Or as my good friend Tal Siach says:

“Get to know your friends and treat them the same as you would want to be treated” – Talsiach

Just follow the Ultimate Guide to Retweet and you should be set.

You need to make connections. When I started twitter, I had alot due to my experience in this industry, but you can do it as well. Provide quality tweets, and believe me others will follow you. You should search for users who are at the top in other social media networks such as Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and others. And follow them. So once you have the connections with all of the top users from multiple networks, then kindly present them your article and ask for a Retweet. If you get it, then you are all set.

So the whole idea is you need to show them that you exist. You can do it by Retweeting them, replying to their tweets, their sites, and so on. Well that is what I did and I got some of the top users on twitter such as Darren Rowse (@problogger), Calvin Lee (@mayhemstudious), Cheth (@cheth) to tweet that post for me.

Ofcourse alot of my friends and followers tweeted it, but followers of these users also retweeted. So you combine just the followers of these three and you have almost 100,000 people. That can definitely create a buzz on twitter. Note while you are creating a buzz on twitter, services like tweetmeme and twitturls are reporting the most tweeted urls on twitter recently. So if yours is one of them, then you are also being featured on these websites that also recieve alot of views from tons of good users.

Since you have friends in other social media networks as well, I am sure out of many a few got to be special ones. You can ask one of those to submit this into another social media, or you can just let it happen naturally.

All I did was ask a good friend on digg Bart Gatsby to submit it on digg for me. This article got over 170 diggs, even though it didn’t hit Frontpage, but I got the attention of these 170 people. If you look at them, alot of these users have very nice reputation in other social media networks.

Next thing I know is that I am on delicious most popular page at the top. Reddit’s front page, Stumbleupon 5 star popular post. And I am loaded with traffic.

So once again who said Quality Content can’t get you anywhere? Let me write a new formula for you:

Quality Content + Good Twitter Friends = Success in Social Media

Now making connections, posting good content, being the king of social media must take alot of time huh? Well it really depends on who you ask. Some says Yes it requires alot of time while others say it doesn’t.

“Get ready to spend some long addictive hours communicating with some of the nicest people online.” – @DinOthman

“Don’t think that you have to online 24/7 to be considered a solid contributor” – @bullfrogmedia

I am most likely to agree with the second one. You don’t have to spend alot of time to be a solid contributer. All you have to do is stay updated and share interesting stories. Now it gets addicting and you might end up spending alot of time, but in reality you don’t need to be online 24/7.

Well so are you ready to get the same results as me? Well then rock on the bandwagon of Twitter.

What is Authority Status?

Authority Status is just a term given by webmasters to those sites which have obtained site-links in google. Sites get this status because they have received a significant amount of natural backlinks, total number of daily searches, and link backs from high quality websites (that often have higher Pagerank), over a long period of time. If you notice that Balkhis is about to be one year old in 4 days, so it does take time to prove to google that you are a credible source and an authority figure for the designated keyword.

Authority listings appear as the first for the keyword. It also have other important links to your website which makes navigation easy for users.

What are the requirements to be an authority status?

This is a highly debated question in the webmaster world. Google have never shared their algorithm or methods they use to avoid manipulation. I have found a few things common in all websites that have received sitelinks or authority status.

• Site ranks first for the keyword(s) that generate the Sitelinks listing
• Structured navigation making it easily spiderable.
• High natural search traffic
• High click through rates from the search results page
• Natural/Useful outbound links
• Inbound links from high quality sites
• Site age is several years or older

Now these methods might not be the exact ones that google use, but these are few things that are common in most sites that achieve this status.

What can you do to improve your chances?

• Improve your on page SEO by refining your Web Semantics. Make sure you use good titles for your post, and useful meta description. Don’t try to spam your description or title with keywords. Put the keywords in it, but put them moderately. Use Search Engine Friendly URLS for wordpress because they are easy to follow and makes your site more spiderable.
• Structure your site – Make sure that users can get around the site well. A good way of that would be having a path. I discussed how this plugin helped me increase my search engine traffic by 258% in a month. You can see this plugin in use below my post titles on post page and it shows you which category this post is from and so on. It is caleld Breadcrumb NAVXT. Downlaod it and use it. I think this would help your ranking. Keep your navigation simple. Don’t crowd too many links on the homepage.
• Brand the site – I am always for brandable domains rather than keywords stuffed domain. The reason for that is keyword stuffed domains have a real hard time ranking for the top. You must be freaking good and established well before everyone else in the industry to achieve this status. I used Balkhis because I am the only one. Maybe there are a few others, but I am the one who is dominant apparently. So it was easier for me to rank for this keyword and therefore get sitelinks. It is important for a business to do this because it increase your credibility. So try to start business on brandable names rather than keywords.
• Write useful content – I can’t emphasize this point anymore. If you don’t write good content, you won’t get natural backlinks. You won’t get links from high quality websites either, so your chances are doomed. Improve your content quality and you are good.

What does this mean for the future?

Reputation is everything in an online business. Authority status in google increase your credibility. Now my new users who find me through some community, and they search my name. They would most likely join me on my blog and subscribe. Same with any other person who wants to check my credibility in the industry. The next thing it means that another person who wants to rank high for Balkhis would have a really hard time doing so now.

So prior to the past week, I was getting an average or 1100 unique visitors a day to Balkhis. Then last week my traffic went to an average of 3600 uniques a day for the 5 days starting Nov. 11 – Nov 15 2008. Now this was not pure luck! So How did I do it?

Step 1: Planning

I started this week with a planned post for each day. I looked up my stats for the past two months because my stumbleupon traffic was high. I looked for each keyword and analyzed what I had to write about. So I carefully picked out the articles that I wanted to write about. While most articles weren’t that spectacular. They were above average except for my 1800 subscriber post. I consider that one excellent. But the other ones were just above average. I worked really hard on the titles. I looked at the titles that make Digg’s Homepage. I looked at my other posts that got me a lot of traffic. Then I carefully chose the titles. I wrote articles that were useful to my readers. That was the planning that I did.

Step 2: Action

Now that I wrote the posts. I scheduled them to be posted on each day. But I posted them on different times which I experienced in the past to work best with social media. First was 7:30a.m EST. There was another one around 8:40 a.m EST. Then there were 10:20 a.m EST. I posted in between these times. Once the posts were up, I sent a message out on Plurk asking my friends to digg/stumble the post for me.

Step 3: Results

I have the traffic increase. Pretty simple eh.

Ah you guys don’t want to know what I did because I didn’t reveal much. Lets hear some of the dirty secrets that I used. The truth is there were none. I just wrote good titles. If you can work on anything, work on your titles. The next thing you need to worry about is content. Once you are done with writing your posts. Then go back to your titles and see if you can make it better by editing it.

I ran a lot of experiments on which posts work better on Balkhis. Here is a Case Study for That.

Now just search digg’s homepage and see which ones work better and the titles. Now the trick with stumble is you need to get about 5 – 10 stumbles. You can get it naturally, or you can buy it. I suggest you don’t go to people who say 5000 stumbles for $5 because those are crap. But if you know some people in communities, you can just have them stumble for just a few pennies.

I am willing to answer all questions that you might have. I will answer them, so feel free to post them in the comments. If it is something general, I will add them in the post

Set a Goal

Set yearly goals, or quarterly goals. Don’t make your goals seem unrealistic. Make it seem some what realistic. So My goal was by the end of the year of 2008, I want to have 2000+ subscribers. Which I think is possible. You need a goal in order to be motivated and inspired. And I believe motivation plays a big role in your writing style.

Write Quality Content

Have you noticed, everyone say that. Even people who just start their blog and have no idea what is going on in the industry. Self-proclaimed experts tell you to write quality content. But what the heck is quality content. In my eyes, Quality content is resourceful content. Content that helps your user. Content that attract your users. So every time you write a post think twice before you write it. Think how your users will find this article helpful. That is all I am going to say about quality content.

Care About Users

Caring about your users always help you get more subscribers. I get crazy amount of emails. I know that I might not be able to reply to all, but I try to reply to as many as I can. I try to help the users if they have questions on one of the tutorials that I posted. So how did I show that I care about my users?

• I reply to as many emails as I can – Now if you get insane amount of emails, it is hard to reply to all, but I try to reply to as many as I can.
• I reply to comments – People post comments on my posts, and often they refer to me by asking me a question, or something personal. I try to reply to all of those comments. So I am going to recommend you all to get (Brian’s Threaded Comments).
• I reward my Top Commentators – Simply install a top commentator plugins, it shows your readers that you care about them and their comments.
• Welcome Email – When a user comments on your site, you send them a welcome email. Make it sound personal. A lot of people who join this blog and comment for the first time, get that email and they ask me how did I do that. It is a free plugin called Comment Relish.
• Link Love – Reward them for being a reader by checking out their sites and linking to them.

Comment Subscription

Have you ever noticed below when you comment there is a check box that says Subscribe to comments. Well if it is a really hot topic a lot of people subscribe to the comments. What happens exactly is that once someone else comments, they get an email, and people come back to to your site. The more often they come back, the more chances is that they subscribe to your site. A plugin that you need is right here called Subscribe to Comments

Contests

Holding contests on your site is a big traffic attractor, but if you require your users to subscribe to your site to enter is a big plus. Because people would do that to enter the contest, and there you have it. One more subscriber. I have one on going contest Pimp My Blog, and more to come soon I have noticed contest to work like a charm.

Placement of RSS/Email Subscription

The theory is the easier you make it for your users, the more likely it is that they will subscribe. The more visible you make it for your users, the more likely they are to subscribe. In my opinion the best place to put your rss button is in the top right hand corner. Most bloggers would agree with me on that one. Taking it one step forward, you can allow email subscription. Most people just add a text link which is making it hard for your user. Give them an input field where they can simply type the email and click to subscribe. If you don’t know how to here is a tutorial for you. Another place you can add the email subscriber option is right below your posts. Yan did a study on his blog and he increased 60 subscribers in 7 days. Check out his study.

Social Media and Advertising

Last week I wrote about How Social Media made me from a nobody to a somebody. I think everyone should at least try one of the social media networks. I will say lets start with Digg (Ultimate Guide to use Digg). There are a lot more that I have discussed in my post about 13 ways I used to promote my blog to success.

Stealing Subscribers

Tough section as I call it. I think when you are commenting on other blogs, you are not only adding value to their blog, but by doing so you are stealing their users. That is why I always recommend people to comment on bigger blogs. Even better comment on all size blogs. Because the more the users see you, the more they are likely to head over to your site. I did this a lot at one time when I was a top commentator at both Shoemoney, and John Chow along with tons of others. Now I am at a good stable number, that I am focusing on my content more. But I will assure you that everyone have to start at that point to get exposure unless you can afford thousands of dollars to spend and buy advertisement everywhere. Same thing I say about Guest Blog Posts, I wrote all together two guest blog posts. One was at John Chow’s blog and other one was at The University Kid. The total together brought me a little less than 300 subscribers. So lets say John have over 33k subscribers at the time that I wrote the post. So I only got about 0.9% of John’s Subscribers, but hey little bit helps.

Future Plans

I have a few plans that I want to start once Balkhis is one year old that will be the end of Jan 2009. Hopefully by then we will see another face lift of Balkhis with a combination of news letter and more which makes Balkhis a bigger platform for bloggers.

Why should you care?

Advertising is an important part of branding. The most important part of economics is allocating efficiency. You need to know which ad spots work best for you in order to get the most out of your money. So it is pretty simple why this study is important for you.

Why am I advertising?

You need to ask yourself this question. Many people have different reasons. Some just need a backlink increase while others want traffic increase. So you need to ask yourself what exactly do you want. Do you want to increase traffic, or do you want to increase techonrati rank, or backlinks and what not.

Type of Ads

Header Banner (728 x 90)
Web Banner (468 x 60)
Sidebar Button (125 x 125)
In Post Banner (300 x 250)
Sidebar Text links
Contextual Links
Designer Links / Sponsor Links
Peel Away Ad

Analysis

• Header Banner – These are the large banners usually displayed towards the top of the website with the dimensions of 728 x 90 pixels. Which takes up all the screen. If you want exposure for your brand or product and want people to notice you. This is the ad spot that you want. But usually this is one of the most expensive ad spots on a site, so might not work with people with a tight budget. Works best when it is not in rotation.
• Web Banner – These are the banner that is shown on top of balkhis next to the logo. The dimensions of this banner is 468 x 60 pixels. This is prominent towards the top. These ads work magic if they are in the header without any rotation. But most sites run it with rotation, so it is not as expensive as header banner. But from the experience, I have had, these banners are the ones that don’t have a high click through. This is more of branding, so if you want your name to be known. This is the way.
• Sidebar Button – Sidebar buttons are usually 125 x 125 pixels in dimension. This ad is usually affordable on most sites. They get good enough attention. Most sites don’t put these on rotation, so it is one of the best buys. Click through rate is not very high because you are next to most likely 6 or more ads, so your banner doesn’t stand out a lot.
• In Post Banner – These are the banners that are embedded in the post. These banners work the best if the content is related. This is the ones that attract serious buyers to your site. So this is the one that is likely to convert a lot, but this won’t get you a whole a lot of traffic. So your numbers might not look, but the one or two that you get will most likely convert. This banner is usually in the dimensions of 300 x 250 pixels.
• Sidebar Text links – These are not the best way to get a lot of traffic. These links are used to increase backlink count, and technorati rank. This is the way to show search engines that you are popular. But must remember google is cracking down on paid text links.
• Contextual Links – Contextual links convert well. And it only attracts serious buyers. These links in my opinion are worth a lot because these are mostly permanent links. Therefore most of the times bloggers or webmasters does not sell these links. These links are more like organic links, but if you can get these for a price, then you are on a golden route.
• Designer / Sponsor Links – There is a way to promote your site and that is by releasing free themes with backlinks. Webmasters buy links from the designer of the theme and release the theme for free. Sponsor links are not worth a lot compared to designer link. If you can get the designer link on the free theme, you will get more traffic. A smart designer will release themes saying “Courtesy of xxxx and xxxx” This way both links get more exposure.
• Peel Away Ad – This is a new concept that is coming in place. These ads are usually more expensive than the one in the sidebar. These are viewed a lot, but most are by accident. A lot of the users convert, but the percentage of viewing and converting is a bit low. I am not saying this is a bad spot because if you have 17,000 impressions and 252 clicks from which 125 converted this is a very good value. But in comparison, 252 clicks is not a big percent. This is the ad spot that works very well but usually is more expensive.

How to get the best results

The results will entirely depend on the way your banner looks and your landing page where the user lands, so you need to focus on the two before you advertise. So if you don’t get good results from one of the better spots I mentioned above, you know the reason why.

Bottom Line

I think peel away ad, 728 x 90, and 300 x 250 are the best ad spots if you want your product to convert. So if you are thinking of mass promotion, then these are the spots you need to buy.

Total Google Hits on Balkhis

Comparison of Image Search and Total

These traffic stats are from before and after the new design. Now you are probably wondering what changed in Balkhis. Well maybe Google just started loving me more because I was being a good kid writing quality content. Or maybe some of my tricks that I was trying worked.

Site load time was not the only issue with my previous design. There were a lot more to it that I changed. So hold tight while I cruise you through my journey.

Design Optimizations

In my previous designs, I was not using my heading tags very well. Content was not organized very well either. There was too much clutter in my header, so it took google bot a while to get to my content, therefore it couldn’t index everything like it was suppose to. So I cleared up the clutter in my header still a lot going on there right now, but there was a lot more before. Next thing I did was refined the use of my heading tags (<h2><h3>) through out the post titles, and inside the posts as well.

Before, my website didn’t look so good in google cached. What I mean was, it didn’t look like how it looks to users in main browsers. I don’t know how much of the effect that had, but I fixed that issue. I organized the content through out the site well. I also made image implementation in the content better than before.

Next thing that I did was I improved the navigation through out the site highlighting the important categories by putting them in the home page content area, where as others stayed in the sidebar. I also added one of the important things to my post and that was Bread Crumbs, so below each single post page, you should see a breadcrumb which gives you a path to where you are. I also added rel tags through out the site. Now what do I mean by rel tags? For example, in my profiles link I added rel=”me”. For Uzzz Production, I added rel=”designer”. We all know that there are rel=”nofollow” and such tags, but I got creative and made up my own tags. No where in an SEO book says that this type of creativity harms anything, but I said what the heck lets try it. It worked….

Lets move on towards how did I optimize my images.

Image Optimizations

I optimized my images. Jeez you all can see that through the page load time. No image size is not the only thing guys. I added alt tags through out the site. But you guys are wondering, I had those before too. Yes I did have them before, but before it was to satisfy w3 markup. So often, I left my alt tags blank. But this time, I can say that I have nice coders in the house We had a good talk about laziness, and avoiding those. So we took care of that problem. Another issue was that my last design wasn’t using name for images. I mean real names. Before it was names generated from Photoshop such as index_01 and so on. This time, I decided to change those to appropriate names such as logo, and each. Having a keyword name in the images, helped the ranking.

Next thing I did with images, that I started using images more often. Didn’t you notice that. Yes me too. One because my readers liked it. Two because google liked it. Hey if that kills two birds with one stone, I am all for it. By having more images, I increased my chances of getting indexed more.

Did I do any extra promotions? No, I didn’t. Actually I cut down my commenting on other blogs. Mainly because I was busy, but also it helped me because when I did reply I was posting even better comments. I focused on writing better content. Hence, I got more backlinks. But that is just normal as your blog grows and get more credibility you will get more backlinks, but the design changes are necessary.

So perhaps people who were thinking that design was not important in coding think again. By having such a great outcome, It increased my love toward magazine style themes even more. Heck I even wrote a post about What, When, Whys of magazine style themes at John Chow’s Blog.

I think that is where future of the blog is shifting towards and we will see more and more blogs turning that way as time progresses. If you want to switch to that direction and get an awesome SEO Friendly design for your blog. Contact Uzzz Productions. Or you can contact me through this blog.

So as I want my blog to grow just like the rest of us, I began to wonder what type of articles should I write? Well which ones get the most traffic. If I am getting traffic, it means I am getting linked from a lot of places. People are liking the post thats why they are mentioning it. So I started analyzing my stats and after doing my report these are my results.

List of Resources

After analyzing all the posts that I have written on Balkhis, List of resources seem to do very well. Resource lists are very general topic that you can write about that targets your audience as a whole rather than a niche (for example all webmasters rather than just bloggers). Now the biggest example of this can be seen at Smashing Magazine. I won’t link to any specific post because there are too many. But just because of their awesome resource lists and content, they have over 100k subscribers. But it is my case study, so here is the post on Balkhis that is a good example of Resource List.

Speed up your Designing with these 50 Awesome Shortcuts

An advantage of these type of resource posts are that they attract a lot of Social Media Love. Thats why, this post has received 15,725 views since the day it was posted.

Tips and Advices

Useful tips and advices are the second most popular in my category. Simply because your readers like to see what you are doing. Not just your readers, but a lot of other people as well. Why? Because these are very straight forward, so the reader know exactly what they are expecting from this article. I don’t know how many of you remember but I wrote a post on Balkhis:

13 ways I promoted my Blog to success

This post single handedly generated 34,517 views since it has been posted. Now this post is also a social media lover. Specially on forums. People really want to know what you are doing. Specially if you are sharing some of your insight secrets. They love it. Therefore posts like this were a killer success on Balkhis. Which explains Karma.. Be Nice to others and give them tips, you get lots of new subscribers and more traffic.

Anything that sounds good

These posts are very hard to come by and are solely dependent on what type of audience you have. Just have a killer headline. It is a gift that people have. Some can come up with these super fast while others have to brain storm for 15 minutes to 1 hour to come up with a decent title. But if you want any of the social media love, you need to have a decent title on your post. Something that people wants to know. Tell them that. An example of a killer title post on Balkhis would be

Killing a Giant Lion Turtle with your Site Load Time

This post above has received 7980 views since the day it was posted. Not that long ago. Anything that sounds really good will get tons of social media love from Digg, Stumbleupon and more.

Best of Lists

Best of Lists usually come toward the end of the year, but thats only if your category is by year. But the word Best attracts audience in the social media which is the main source of sudden high traffic. People want to know the BEST, so they will visit your site. They will either like it or not but you should let them decide it. Just put your 110% in the post. I made a post like this in early days of Balkhis which still generates me a good amount of traffic

Best Design Practices of RSS and Free Icon sets collection

This one was posted back in April, so I added up the views. It has received 43,032 views since the day it has been posted. Basically my point is that these type of posts will keep getting traffic even when they are outdated because it have the word Best in it.

Popular Point of View

People like to know what you think about an important issue. So those tend to grab attention of new readers from Social Media as well as search engines. This type of post grab both positive and negative attention. Some who support you will link to you in a good way. Or those who are against you will link you anyways.

Host Gator committing a federal offense?

Try to avoid this route because it can seriously take you down the whole unless you do it properly. I don’t like to flame people or companies, but this was just one of the times that I chose to do so because my client was the victim. Since Apr. 2 this post has generated 65,291 views.

That was result of my case study. Reference that I used was Balkhis.com You are very welcome to share your own ideas here.