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.

As I promised this post to you guys here it is. In this post I will show you how I increased my normal traffic from 1100 uniques to 3600 uniques visitors per day on my blog in just five days. Before I begin this post, I will say that this was done after trying and seeing stumble results on my blog for previous months.

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

This is a guest blog post by Dr. Teeth from Blogging Buzz

So you want to make money from your blog, well you are certainly not alone but you are probably finding that to make money, you need traffic and you are also not alone there either. Millions of bloggers want traffic but you need to learn how to get it to your blog and not it let pass you by.

One of the most important things to consider is your content. Your blog content needs to be quality content that is updated regularly. Creating your blog and then leaving it to fade into the background is certainly not going to bring you any traffic. Search engine crawlers are always looking for fresh, quality content. Keywords are important when writing content on your blog and so make sure that you are choosing the right content with the right keywords to attract those crawlers.

Not only will this attract the search engine crawlers to your blog, but it will also encourage your viewers and subscribers to return often to your site, boost your comments and get more referrals to your blog. Your readers want to see dedication to a blog that is regularly updated and is full of quality content.

Next, you need to tag it, make use of the tags on your blog and every time you write a new post remember to use your tags. You can do this manually in your blog or if you are using a platform such as Wordpress then make use of the plug-ins they have available, such as their SimpleTags plug-in. Make sure, that you tag every keyword in your post, by using tags effectively, you will see an increase in quality traffic, very quickly.

As with all things, if you want to make money with your blog and get traffic, you can not just sit back and wait for it to land on your lap, you need to get your blog out there.

Millions of bloggers are writing similar posts and creating similar blogs to yours and so use that to your advantage. Comment on their blog posts and leave a link to your blog, there is a massive community for bloggers and so you need to become a part of that. Not only add your link to other blogs, anywhere and everywhere you possibly can. Whether it is online around various forums or as a signature in your email, also do it offline especially if you have business cards, then add your blog address to them.

Another way to get traffic to your blog and a way that many bloggers are starting to jump on the band wagon with is pinging. Using pinging software such as Ping-O-Matic can benefit your blog no end when it comes to driving traffic to it, pinging is basically sending out a signal to search engines and weblog tracking sites that you have new content on your blog. So, every time you update your blog and add new content, ping it.

There are many other ways to drive traffic to your blog, such as adding your blog to traditional search engines, article directories and social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon are becoming a popular choice for bloggers to drive traffic to their blog.

You may come across offers and various types of software that can increase your traffic, there are many programs that people are offering bloggers at a cost, with a promise to increase their traffic with automated traffic generators. Though many of them can do this and no doubt work effectively for some bloggers, proceed with caution. There is really no need to be parting with your hard earned cash for a promise of traffic when with a little time and effort you can get your own traffic for free.

Thanks Dr. Teeth for providing this article to Balkhis users. Check out his site Blogging Buzz

I wrote a post in the past about Link-baiting but at that time I was still getting adjusted with the blog. After reviewing it, I decided to do a better version of that post. I think I didn’t explain everything correctly. Besides this article will be more in depth.

Definition

Link bait is a powerful technique which consist of having interesting content that attracts users to give you a back link, or as Matt Cutts defines link bait: “interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”

Image credits ToonRefugee – Copyright 2008 James Cook

Advantages of Linkbaiting

There are two major advantages of linkbait which can lead to alot more advantages.

Traffic – Traffic to the website increases tremendously due to linkbait. This traffic is insanely high during the early days of the content. Such as my post about 13 ways I promoted my blog to success recieved over 2500 visitors within the first 24 hours. The sudden rush of traffic means:

• Increase in New Subscribers and Readers.
• Increase in People bookmarking your sites because you got more readers now. (More mouth to mouth advertisement).
• Increase in revenue from advertisers.

Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERPs) – Linkbaiting is getting you alot of backlinks. And you should know by now that tons of backlinks mean higher SERPs and higher PR. Your blog pages will start ranking for long-tailed keywords. Which means more traffic to those pages and more traffic to your blog in general. Balkhis rank well for alot of competitive keywords in the industry (Which I can’t share for obvious reasons). But ranking good for some terms gets you alot of new readers. Also higher backlink count, higher pagerank, higher traffic means your site is now worth more, therefore you can charge more for private advertisement.

Linkbaiting Techniques

Linkbaiting is for people who have vivid imaginations. The techniques are unlimited. You just have to open your mind and see them. There are some that are very commonly used among the webmasters. Feel free to use any/all of them at your own discretion.

1. Contests / Giveaways – are one of the best linkbaiting techniques I have seen online. If you haven’t seen most contest ask users to write about the contest to get alot of entries in the drawing. I have seen almost all contests do that. Why? Because you are giving away a valuable prize people will write about it. *For instance if you are to give away a Macbook Air which cost $1800. You get 100 people to write about your contest (Permanent Backlinks). Then you get tons of traffic from social media and a big boost in your readers. You get well worth return for your investment*
2. Free Tools – Creative tools are always a good way to get alot of backlinks and exposure in the webworld. Take iWebtool for example. They got tons of exposure for their tools. People writing about them left and right. This is another good way of linkbaiting.
3. Lists – I have seen people who make lists also tend to get alot of backlinks and traffic. For example 45n5. He made a list of top make money online blogs and he gets tons of backlinks for it. Like this one. I was also speaking with Nabil from Enkay Blog who have a list of top 100 Female Bloggers which apparently gets alot of traffic. If you know of a female blogger nominate them at Nabil’s list.
4. Controversy / Attacks – Controversial posts tend to grab alot of attention toward the site. I wrote once about HostGator committing a federal offense which grabbed alot of attention (Sadly they still haven’t fixed it). Also attacking companies and other webmaster/bloggers can also get you alot of backlinks, but I would prefer not to take that route because you burn your bridges that way.
5. Be the First – I have mentioned it numerously that being first in a niche puts you at a big advantage. It also gives you a boost with linkbaiting also. Even if you are the first one to write about a new story, you will get the results. *For Instance if you are the first one to write about an event, most likely than not you will be the one mentioned at other places*
6. Usefulness / Good Content – Like always a useful post and good content will always grab readers. So if you are a blogger and you write a useful post than most likely than not you will get good traffic to your website or that article. Tutorial posts help alot in these sort of things. Such as my Vlogging 101 Guide.
7. Accomplishments – I have seen that listing about your accomplishment also plays a significant role. It will get you more backlinks and more exposure. Like when I was published in the newspaper or sharing the google PR, Alexa, subscriber count, revenue or any other accomplishment your blog made usually will get you backlinks.

My Opinion

Sometimes people ask me whether Linkbaiting is bad? My answer to them is YES and NO. Some techniques such as attacking others are BAD in my opinion. Whereas techniques such as useful content, contests, being first is not always bad. Linkbaiting can be a very effective promotion technique if used wisely. But abusing it can hurt your reputation.

I know I will get comments that will point out the negatives of linkbaiting, and all I will say to that is like everything there is a good use of linkbaiting and a bad use of linkbaiting.

Note: I have some what used all techniques listed above. They are not mentioned in any orderly fashion. Sometimes I have used the techniques just to gain backlinks other times, backlinks were not even my main concerns, it just kind of got the hit. No these are not the only 7 linkbaiting techniques. There are plenty more that are listed online, and more that comes with your imagination.

What do you think about Linkbaiting?
Do you think its good or bad?
Have you used any of the techniques above? If so share how it worked out for you?
Do you have any other technique which I didn’t list? If so share it with all of us.

Alright Balkhis users, this is the second last day of the contest. June 17th 2008. Tommorrow will be the day that contest ends, so make sure you have done all the clues listed on Balkhis ML Contest Official Post. Also to those email subscribers who have subscribed but have not verified their emails. You will not recieve points until you verify, so check your spam folders for feedburner email. From my last post, alot of people have checked and emailed me and it has been sorted out. If you have issues feel free to contact me.

Having that said, let me go on to explain what Clue #9 is all about. Well you guys know about entrecard right. Yeah it is something like dropping your business card on the wind sheild of every car hoping that you will get one customer. Yup, but in this case you are dropping cards on people’s sites and they visit yours and drop their card on your site. So basically it is like a traffic exchange system. You can earn entrecard credits by selling daily adspace on yoru site and such. But I am not going to ask you to drop cards on my site. BTW: If you want some tips about entrecards, then check out this cool article I wrote about Powerdropping entrecard in 30 minutes.

In this clue I want you guys to write a recommendation for Balkhis and add me to your favorites. Your recommendation can be positive, or negative. Basically what you feel about this site.

Here is how you add the recommendation. (Make sure you are registered at entrecard first)

Visit my Profile Page

Then on the top right hand side click write a recommendation.

And that should do the job.

To add favorites … It is also on the right hand side.

By doing this will get you 4 points in the contest.

Join entrecard if you want more exposure for your site. It is not only for blogs because I see alot of other sites using it also.

Stay updated with the contest. Good luck you all.