Tuesday, November 27, 2012

How to Increase Your Website Traffic By 100%

1. We assigned an Online Editor for the SocialNicole blog. This position is essential to ensure that blog posts are assigned, put on the calendar, turned in on time, edited, published and reviewed. Our online editor makes sure the process goes smoothly day in and day out.

2. Engaged all employees in writing for the blog. This was easy as everyone loves social media and it was a matter of setting things up internally to include everyone in the blogging process. We now have four internal bloggers which is great and they each have a unique voice and interests that keep the blog interesting. Furthermore, having four bloggers brought in new website traffic from each of their own online communities!

3. Set up regular editorial meetings each month to discuss the topics of the next month and assign topics to each staff member. We review the landscape for all interesting and important industry news and review keywords and recent trends to help select our topics for the next month. We brainstorm to come up with the topic ideas for the next months posts and then the Online Editor assigns the posts. She even assigns me posts and yes I have to turn them in on time. There is no hierarchy in positions in this process we are all equal – except for the Online Editor who is our “boss” when it comes to getting our work done and in on time.

4. Set up a Basecamp project for the SocialNicole blog and setup our editorial calendar as well. Basecamp has been huge in assigning and managing tasks and I encourage you to look into it! If you’re wondering how to set up or utilize an editorial calendar, we a great post on the topic to get you started: Creating a Content Calendar for Your Blog.

5. Setup and editorial process for each post. This means when I write a post I send it to one of my editors. I pay for it to be edited just like a client – imagine me investing in my own social media like any client does! The editors take a crack at it and send it back to me for review. I review and adjust and send it to the Online editor. We get it in perfect shape the blog post goes to the community manager who oversees everything for SocialNicole. We always have the same Community Manager manage the blog so it has a consistent look and feel. The Community Manager publishes the post and does one last review for spelling and layout. After publishing the link comes back to the writer for final approval. Rinse and repeat!

What I failed to realize over the first few years of the blogs existence is my stubborn attitude of doing everything myself.  This was costing SocialNicole business which was ultimately costing us money. By implementing the full-service solution we offer to clients internally we really did grow our traffic by 100% in the last year. We now blog between 2- 3 times per week. We are growing our social footprint as well, more and more people are sharing our content and more and more are also commenting on the posts.

As our traffic has grown, we have seen our leads increase as well. A larger number of clients are actually finding us through Google and report they found us by reading one of our posts. The leads continue to grow and match our target audience of medium-sized businesses which tells me our content is on target. So we continue to move ahead with a streamlined process that is growing our online presence! At this rate, we can continue to put SocialNicole on the map as a leader in the social media and content marketing industry.

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