Most blogs start low. Low traffic, low number of subscribers. But some of them, indeed just a few, manage to increase these numbers. As in most cases, the key to success is simple (and threefold).

1. Linkage

In the digital age, where most blogs ride the long tail of information, word of mouth is the best way to get your content noticed. Malcolm Gladwell in his book “The tipping point” identifies three types of people, who are responsible for a successful distribution:

Connectors; Most of you have already heard of the ’six degrees of seperation’. We are all connected with one another in approximately six steps. Well the truth is, that the connectors are linked to everyone else with just a few steps; the rest of us are connected to those special few. They are social glue.

Mavens; Mavens are active aggregators of information. They know things, that the rest of us don’t; and they like to share them. They are data banks.Salesmen; Salesmen have the skill to persuade us, when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing. They are…salesmen.

 

Locate the connectors and mavens in your niche and convince them (or put a salesman to do it) to talk about your content and provide you insights. You’re one step closer to success.

 

2. Stickiness

The quality of the content is of utmost importance. But it just isn’t enough to make your blog explode. Take your information and package them in such way, that they are irresistable. Use eye-grabbing headlines (one of my favorites: 33 Reasons why chocolate is the new milk), write controversial posts, improvize. Make it stick in people’s memory.

Always consider the circumstances under which you post. Learn to read between the lines of the news. Find the hot topics, before they become hot; and write about them.

Write sticky content, while it’s still hot.

 

3. Stay in Context

While you’re at it, keep an open eye for hot trends too (before they become hot). Be one of the innovators, who will test new technologies, new social networks, new services (Do you smell the coffee?). See what the community needs and what the technology provides. Is it worth it? If so, jump on the wagon; and write about the ride.

Innovate.

[Image taken from Noor Ali-Hasan]

Like many bloggers, I too have been experimenting with several popularity-sites. I believe each one is there for a reason.

Slashdot is good to get latest news on privacy, technology, science.

Digg is good when it comes to design, videos and visual content.

But when it comes to promoting your content, my latest favorite is by far StumbleUpon.

But, after lots of experimenting, I asked myself if it is really worth it. You get this recurring question in your head: quality or quantity?

Checking the value of StumbeUpon; Subscribers

One way to check the StumbleUpon value is by the number of your subscribers. If it increases after a stumble, then surely you have to thank SU for it. In my case, the subscribers increased significantly only to drop a couple of days later. The thing is, that the final number of subscribers (after a week) was higher than the original number.

It is a common (Jon, in his post ‘The StumbleUpon effect - definetely worth it, noticed the same)– and logical – result, i think. If 300 people take a look at your site, its quite possible that a small percent of them will subscribe.

Jon had a 50% increase of subscribers (in 3 days, if I understood well). For me (after a week) it was an increase of only 7 subscribers. A much lower percentage, which agrees with Shane’s results (a 10% subscribers increase and a 20% traffic increase).

Checking the value of StumbeUpon; Bounce rate

The other way to check the value of SU traffic, is the bounce rate. The bounce rate tells you how many people stayed at the site, or clicked off it right away (in less than 5 seconds). In SEO 2.0, they noticed a bounce rate of 30%.

It also agrees with Darren Rowse’s results, where he notices a bounce rate of 39.28%, across all pages of the blog. But for particular pages the number goes as high as 52.31%. It is also a number that agrees with my stats (I got 56.6%).

Overview

An overview of the above results indicates:

• half of the stumblers will stay at your stumbled page longer than 5seconds

• a bit more than a third will click to another page of your blog.

• a tenth (more or less, depending on the quality) will subscribe (and stay subscribed).

Is it allowed to stumble yourself?

Officially, stumbling yourself is not allowed.

StumbleUpon recommends pages based on correlation and user clustering, rather than average ratings, so people rating their own sites as ‘I like it!’ cannot spam the database. Anyone attempting to circumvent or abuse this system is in violation of our terms of service, and is subject to prosecution.

As Kevin Muldoon, remarks:

Clearly you cannot stumble every one of your posts but I suspect that stumbling one of your articles every other week will be fine and will not get you banned.

I have noticed self-stumbling to be a very common practice. Other stumblers don’t seem to complain, but Kevin is right. First of all, don’t overdo it and second of all don’t stumble crappy stuff.

Is it worth it?

So stumbling sounds good so far. You just click this ‘like it’ button and you’re done. No trouble and a bunch of traffic. I don’t think it works that way.

StumbleUpon is community driven. This means:

• you must socialize (make friends, stumble others, send messages, write reviews, etc)

• create a good profile

• connect with the people who like your content

• invest time (for stumbling) and effort (for good stumbling = more fans).

So this is a question you have to ask yourself: Is all this time and effort worth a small increase in your subscribers and an adrenaline rush, due to the big traffic?

Words2content for example says:

Did I gain anything? My answer is ‘nothing really’.

Did I loose anything? Oh yes, the large volume of traffic gifted by SU ate away a good amount of my precious bandwidth.

Final remark

I must say though, that the implementation of the stumble toolbar, makes contribution much more convenient. After a while, it evolves to a fundamental part of the whole surfing experience; it grows on you. From my experience in all these communities, stumbleupon seemed to be the friendliest.

I felt digg to be a closed circle; in slashdot you have to spend light years to feel comfortable.

Maybe in the end its not about getting traffic, its just about being in a community where you feel your contribution being appreciated. Where do you enjoy most the community experience?

Footnotes

So, if you want to get involved in such a community and time is not one of your biggest assets, maybe StumbleUpon is a very good place to start.

“Where does StumbleUpon traffic come from” is an interesting post, which explains how SU functions (with the help of two very helpful graphs). Take a look at it, if you’re willing to participate in this community.

If you have any additional results, that could change or enhance my remarks let me know. I might be a stumbler, but I want to be objective above all.

Terry Heath started a blogging meme yesterday, inviting bloggers to explain why they blog. An additional point of this question is to - hopefully - start a tagging wave. The two simple rules of the ‘game’ are:

1. Answer the question, “What do you expect from your blog?” and try to be as specific as possible. Avoid warm-fuzzy answers unless that really is your thing. Link back to the blog who tagged you so your readers can check others’ answers.
2. Tag at least five bloggers with the same question.

In that way Terry (me too) hopes to get as many reactions as possible in an interesting topic.

So why do you blog?

• Surely I like traffic and billions of zillions of subscribers. This blog is my little creation and I find it very rewarding to see it grow. So, yes, that is a point - a minor one, but still a point.
• Blogging is about interaction. When I see 300 unique visitors and just 2 comments on my post, it kind of dissapoints me. To be honest I would rather have more comments and less visitors. (and I don’t mean 300 comments and 2 visitors).
• A variable that directly derives from my previous point is diversity. Surely, it boosts my ego when I read mail and comments praising my writing. I really do, and hope to get more of it. But I also like (constructive) criticism. I like to see my readers, posing questions that show that they have really concentrated on the post. Diversity helps me improve my writings, encourages discussion even more and brings the debate forward.

Who do you tag?

And for the second part of the meme, here are my tags:

Insight Buzz,

GeekAlerts,

Wayne Porter on Attention Revenue,

Gadgetastic,

Every single one of us is a little civilization.

Lets say you are a blogger. You just wrote a post, which you find really enlightening. The public should read this post. The question comes: Should I go and digg myself?

That’s a tricky question. Unofficially the rule says “don’t digg yourself”, although Daniel Miessler thinks otherwise. He considers it necessary for the promotion of quality content. Stan Schroeder sees it as a dilemma, although he finally supports self-digging. He argues that quality content should not get buried, despite its self-submitted. He thinks

…that the good stuff is easily recognizable from spam and that the quality of content should be the only merit for digging or burying a site.

But the subject that derives from this discussion, is if it is actually worth it.

Digg has some very specific attributes, which constitute digging very complicated.

Digg is highly community-driven

If you are not an active part of the community, your posts have less chances of being noticed. The debate some of us witnessed months ago is an example. Very active contributors have followers, which can assist in boosting their diggs.

As doshdosh explained:

In order to appeal to and attract the attention of all (or most) social media users, you’ll need to leverage the all-familiar brand of the community site while addressing the collective/individual persona directly. Talk to everyone by talking through an identity that everyone instinctively relates to.

Digg consists of a certain group of contributors

Most digg users are still in high school or college.

Very few media and technology professionals — or professionals of any kind — read Digg, and Digg’s high school/college student audience has little interest in the business of media and technology (with the exception of some Apple and Google stories).

It seems that the digg public is not that diverse and therefore concentrates on specific topics. If you manage to decode the structure and form of these topics, you may get yourself digged. But do you want to customize your interests (and consequently posts) for more traffic? It sounds like selling out.

Diggers scan headlines and keywords

The two (out of three) specifications for submission in the clarifies:

• Be controversial and make false promises (it sounds bad, but it works!).

Example: If an article was called “Professor says days of ‘no oil’ are nearing” you may want to use this as the digg title “Days of no oil are nearing”.

• Use keywords in the title that diggers love and that are also relevant to the story.

Example: Amazing high resolution photos of the Sun.

The research of xedant.com on the subject says it all, i think.

Conclusion

• If you are not an active member of the digg community (something that requires time. lots of it) you should let digging to the digg members. Maybe having a digg button next to your posts can assist diggers do their worker easier.
• Out of mainly ethical reasons, I wouldn’t provide material specifically targeted to the digg community. Do your thing and let other do theirs. If you’re good, you’ll get the proper attention.
• There are many ways to get noticed on the social web. Finally it comes down to this: interaction, content and patience.

Digg as every social network is a comlex system and sometimes unpredictable. Although we can study the behavior of its users, we cannot really determine how they will react to every post. The parameters are just too many. But our assumptions can provide some guidelines.

The blogosphere has constructed an interesting paradox.

• On the one side readers/viewers/subscribers are mostly interested in quality content. There are numerous blogs and little time; we want to spend our online time – and consequently attention – on blogs that provide quality information. At least that’s what several blog posts are argumenting (How to boost your blog traffic).

• On the other side though, writing a perfect post seems like a trap. When the entry has said it all, then there isn’t much more to say. The blogosphere is mostly an interactive medium (if it can be called a medium) and perfect posts just don’t encourage this interaction (why you shouldn’t be a perfectionist).

Imperfection; the web paradigm
The World Wide Web is human. It is made by humans, for humans and shares a universally human characteristic: imperfection. It consists of millions connections created by people who are willing to communicate.
These connections, as a human construct, are very often broken. It occurs quite often while ’surfing’ to reach a dead-end link, a link that does not exist anymore, is deleted or replaced with completely different material as expected. But no one is annoyed, simply because that is how the web is built; imperfect.
Users happily sacrifice the perfection of a centralized system for an imperfect decentralized network. It is this decentralized structure of the web that makes it so interesting, so democratic and so polyphonic. There is no single power, which chooses who posts what, where and when. Anyone can be part of the web. This fact makes us see perfection under a new lens.

The blogosphere; being informal
In the web, we are facing an ambiguous attitude towards perfection. On the one hand people want to express themselves informally - a sign of interaction between individuals, between human beings. Communicating according to specific rules and suggestions homogenizes the public, a feature highly avoided in the social web.
Everyone wants to have its own, personal voice. This multitude of expressions and voices gives the social web its power; sometimes it is not only intriguing to see what one says, but also how it says it. But being informal also comes along with mistakes.
This does not mean that the users will not get interested to an imperfect post. On the contrary, they will comment on it and propose improvements. The web fascinates users, because it provides direct, informal interaction not because it provides perfect content.

Imperfection as a means of communication
It is true that knowledge is highly praised (offline and online), but this does not mean that it will draw the attention of the crowd.

Material provided by an expert, is usually accompanied with a sense of authority, meaning that it is not open for discussions; it is supposed to be perfect. Users have nothing to add to it, so they just passively read it. But this is not the purpose of the social web. People want to interact, to discuss and argue about subjects – they want to be productive. Perfect content refrains from such a discourse. Occasionally, professionalism stands as an obstacle to development.

The collective intelligence
Of course the presence of experts is needed in the social web to encourage knowledge and provide solutions. But when we are dealing with a collective intelligence, communication and participation can, at times, have much better results. In a group, the individual knowledge loses its importance and the collective wisdom becomes the center of focus. Sometimes when our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right way, our collective intelligence is often excellent.

The problem

I still don’t get it though. Do readers prefer authoritative posts (so that they don’t look around for other sources), or they like an imperfect post, which encourages a discussion?