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This guest blogging post was submitted by Sharon Hurley Hall from Piggy Bank Pie.

Who doesn’t like to get something for nothing? If you own a blog or website, the idea of free traffic is tremendously appealing, and many of us are willing to do whatever it takes to get a few more visitors to our websites. If it’s as easy as putting a widget on your blog, so much the better. It doesn’t take a lot of effort and you stand to gain a lot in return, or do you? I’ve tried a few of these widgets - TheGoodBlogs, BlogRush, Entrecard and others, and I’m beginning to wonder if they are really worth it.

The Good Blogs - Not So Good

One of my first experiences with traffic widgets was TheGoodBlogs. Like most other sites, you sign up, add your blog, select some tags that fit it and put a widget on your blog. The idea is that the widget shows posts related to your content, and your content in turn is shown on other blogs. One of the things that troubled me about the widget was that much of the content actually shown didn’t seem that relevant to my readers, and my stats showed that very few visitors actually came to my blog from that site. After a while, I gave up on it and removed the widget from my blog.

Blogrush? No Rush!

I was a lot more optimistic about Blogrush when it first started. Ok, the widget was ugly, but at least it had possibilities. The ten tier referral system meant that the more people you signed up, the more your blog would be seen. Sounds good, doesn’t it? The trouble is that it probably works best for those who don’t need the additional traffic. If you are an A-list blogger, you can sign up thousands of people, earning referral and traffic credits and getting your posts displayed in even more places. For the rest of us, the traffic you get is fleeting, if it comes at all. I got a trickle of traffic from Blogrush at a time when I published some of my best posts. It was time to move to the next big thing - Entrecard.

Entrecard

Entrecard held even more promise. When you sign up for Entrecard you get to customize a widget to put on your site. You earn credits for dropping your Entrecard (like an online business card) on other sites and when others drop their cards on you. You use these credits to buy 24 hours of advertising on the site of your choice. So how does it work? I have had a lot of traffic from Entrecard, but most of it is drop and run traffic, lasting 5 seconds or less. However, if I spend my ad credits wisely, and advertise on a related site, I get new visitors who stick around a while and may even subscribe to my feed.

The Verdict

So, what’s the verdict? These widgets don’t work well for me. My blog (piggybankpie.com) is in the freelance writing niche and it’s been around for a while. If you have a brand new blog, these widgets are a great way to start getting traffic. If you have blogs that cover blogging, technology, gadgets or any of the popular topics on Technorati, then you will probably get a lot from traffic widgets. They didn’t do much for me. I have removed all of those widgets from my blog and am concentrating on building a readership in other ways, through social media and networking sites. And even though I no longer have the widget, I am still spending my Entrecard credits to advertise on blogs in my niche. That’s the best way to use it, in my opinion.

Collin LaHay’s Verdict: I agree with Sharon, most of these traffic widgets are not sending me a whole lot of traffic, however I have so much extra room by having two sidebars instead of one that I am leaving them up until I find something useful to replace them with!  If you think they are there because they are bringing me tons and tons of visitors, you would be mistaken.  I will be getting rid of them in a few weeks.

Photo by Jurvetson

This guest post was submitted by Patrick from Piggy Bank Pie Writing Services.

You’ve probably heard of Search Engine Optimization hundreds of time. But bloggers these days are looking at more efficient ways to drive traffic instantly. The answer resides in Social Media Optimization.

There are numerous social media sites on the Internet. Some are specialized in news feeding, others in bookmarking, but the main point is, they are tools you can use to promote quality content published on your blog. Now, I cannot stress how important this last sentence is. Promoting every single post that comes out of your blog may put you in trouble. You will be seen as a spammer, and users will simply ignore you. But if used wisely, social media sites can really boost your traffic and give you high, very high visibility.

Let’s look how we can nitro boost your traffic using social media sites.

1. Install ShareThis

Let’s start with the basic. If you want to help your blog with social media sites, you need the provide a tool for readers to help them vote and promote your content. The best one I know is ShareThis. This plugin combines most of the social media submission links into one applet, and the installation is done in a snap.

2. Activate FeedBurner FeedFlare

Many of your readers will grab your posts right off your RSS feed. But when comes the time to get votes, these readers are away from your site, and therefore less likely to give their thumbs up… unless you activate FeedFlare. FeedFlare ads a footer at the bottom of each of your articles in your RSS feed. It displays the count of Stumbles, Diggs, comments, Del.icio.uses, etc. Not only subscribers get instant and dynamic information of how the post is doing on social media sites, but with a simple click they can cast their vote, helping you reach even more readers.

3. Get The Sphinn Button

If you wish to play the social media game, you need to play it right. Leaving aside the Sphinn community would be a mistake. More and more bloggers are using Sphinn to promote… what’s often buried in minutes on Digg: Internet Marketing and Blogging content. Sphinn is not BloggingZoom though, you should be careful not to submit only your own posts. Provide Sphinn fans their favorite tool and install the Sphinn submit button on your site.

4. Write a Diggbait

What is a Diggbait? It is a post especially written for Digg users. Writing a good Diggbait can bring so much traffic that very often, shared servers (cheap hosting deals) collide under the pressure of gigantic network load. But still, if you survive a Diggbait, you can easily add hundreds of new RSS subscribers to your blog. Your host here, Collin Lahay, previously wrote this Diggbait and received 70,979 visitors from Digg in 3 days! You can read the results of his experience in this post.

5. Help Your Blog To Survive DiggBaits

If you read digg on a regular basis, chances are you’ve been sent to a site that collapsed under pressure. If you decide to focus your energy on Digg, help yourself by installing WP-Cache or WP Super Cache. The concept of caching is very simple. Each time a visitor goes to your blog, a PHP request queries your WordPress database and retrieves the content that goes into your page (the text you wrote). This might sounds like an instant process, but thousands users reading the same page mostly at the time would badly impact your server’s performance. Instead of going through this database querying process, a caching plugin saves a copy of your pages including their content on the server’s hard disk, leaving slow database calls aside. Surviving mammoth traffic from social media sites will surely help your blog’s reputation, and Digg users will be confident they can safely submit content from your site.

6. Invest In StumbleUpon

A poll on ProBlogger asked readers what was their favorite social bookmarking site. 34% of voters said StumbleUpon. The closest followers were Del.icio.us and Digg with 21% and 18% respectively. When stumblers are going nuts for a post on your blog, you can easily expect hundreds of unique visitors in a day. Now the question is, can you stumble your own post? Yes you can, just don’t overdo it. By using SU on a daily basis, you will vote sites and participate in the community. Develop friendships and socialize with other users to build a strong profile.

7. Optimize Your Content For Social Media

It is well-known that users from social media sites have a very short attention span. What it means for you is that if you wish to promote content on these sites, you need to slightly adjust your writing. Never-ending posts where readers can get lost in paragraphs and paragraphs of text will not work. Keep in mind that not only you are writing for the web, but in this case you are writing for social media users. Let’s digg into the mind of a StumbleUpon user (that was a social media joke.) Ok, you click the Stumble! button and a site shows up. Your eyes are seeing what’s above the fold, which means, you’ll see a title and maybe the first paragraph. Now remember, the eyes are looking at the title, but the mouse pointer is still on top of the Stumble! button. Your mission, as a writer, is to provoke a mouse movement to push the pointer away from this location and prevent the user’s index finger from clicking the trigger. First thing you need is a killer title. Now if you pass this step, readers are heading for the first paragraph. Tell them what they can expect but don’t give too much information, you want them to reach the bottom of the page. Remember that social media users love bulleted and numbered lists. This makes your post easily scannable, and increases chances of being voted.

8. Play By The Rules, But…

To rap this up, I’ll conclude by sharing some explorations I’ve done recently. Blog Catalog has user groups where you can post vote requests for either Digg or StumbleUpon. When you feel like you have something valuable to share, like killer content, you may ask for social media love in order to get more visibility. Now, be VERY careful. I’m not going to say that you shouldn’t join these groups, but you need to know that reciprocal stumbling can get your blog kicked out of SU. I’ve seen users posting vote requests for each and every articles they publish. And sometimes, stuff that would never get submitted otherwise. Concentrate on writing quality content, and votes will fall from the sky. Curious? Go to Blog Catalog and join the Stumble group.

Do you optimize your content for social media sites? Any tips you wish to share? Join the conversation over to comments.

This is a guest post by Jason Pereira who blogs over at The University Kid and is currently running an RSS contest with $150.00 in prizes.

Anyone that’s ever tried to run a blog should know just how important readers are… without them, you probably wouldn’t be blogging.

No one likes to blog for empty space, and readers (and comment leavers) can make the difference between you quitting after a couple weeks and you going on to become a blogging mogul. I’d say the readers have the largest impact on a blog apart from the owner – their prods and advice can refine your blogging technique and help develop your blog into a better place to visit.

As your readers are so important to the site you run, you should truly cherish them; give them a reason to visit, and then give them a variety of reasons to keep coming back. Remember, people in today’s world are not just time pressed, but also notoriously fickle… what can you do to ensure your readers have a worthwhile experience on your blog?

Post valuable content

This is the most important thing, but one that is often overlooked by bloggers; they concentrate so much on marketing their blogs that they forget to keep up the level of quality they had when they first started out.

Without informative, interesting and amusing content, your readers won’t become repeat visitors – no matter how much you update or market. Remember, the real thing that makes up a blog is its content; it’s the reason your visitors will keep coming back time and time again (if it’s any good, that is ).

Reply to your readers

Be it their emails or comments, you should reply to readers when prompted – sometimes, you just won’t have the time to do so but when possible you definitely should.

Replying to comments increases interaction in a community and can eventually start off a debate (something that is always good); it also makes your readers feel valued that you took the time to respond to each of them personally. Remember, even if your readers just want to comment on how good a post was, you can thank them for doing so and ask them how they think it could be improved… their tips will turn you into a blogging maestro in the long run

Dealing with emails on the other hand – they help develop a more personal relationship between a blogger and his/her readers. As long as you’re courteous (you should only be so if the person that emailed you is, of course) and reply to them personally, you’ll leave a lasting impression in the eyes of your reader – one whose benefit may not be apparent immediately, but definitely will be in the long run.

If you’ve taken the time to personally reply to a readers’ email sent into you, they’ll remember it… and should someone ask them about you as a blogger, they’ll only be gushing with praise.

Run a contest every so often

Sure, readers can visit and interact on your blog, but why not reward them for doing so? Running a contest not only brings in more readers (especially if the prizes are good) but also creates a buzz in the industry – one that can help leave a lasting impression in the minds of those that have heard about it.

Make sure the prizes that you’re giving away are useful, and relevant – they don’t even have to be costly, as Entrecard credits or free advertising slots are still valuable. Also make the rules fairly simple to follow; remember, your readers are just as lazy as you are

Remember to promote your contest too so that everyone knows about it – there’s no use spending money on one if no one participates!

If you would like your own guest post to be featured on Mixed Market Arts, please email me through the contact form at the top of the blog.

This guest post was submitted by Sharon Hurley Hall from PiggyBankPie.

If you’re going to have a successful blog, you need to get smart with setting goals. Success does not just happen; you have to plan for it. I’ve found it to be a process of trial and error. I know a lot more about getting a new blog started now than I did two years ago - and I’ve made plenty of mistakes on the way. Here’s what I’ve learned about goal setting.

You’ve probably come across the acronym SMART before. It refers to setting goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. You can’t get much better advice than that. How does this apply to your blog? Let’s take a look.

Let’s say you want to build the number of feed subscribers. It helps to know exactly how many subscribers will meet your goal. This may change over time. When you start a new blog, you may be happy if your feed subscribers get into double digits. If your blog has been running longer, then only triple digits will do.

Setting a specific goal makes it easy to have something to shoot for, and you can still exceed it. Being specific also helps you with the second part of goal setting, which is making your goals measurable. If you can’t measure them, how will you know when you have achieved success? For example, you might want to attract a certain number of visitors to your blog, and you can use a stats program to measure when you have met that goal.

Next, your blogging goals need to be achievable and realistic. I always start my goal setting process by thinking big about what my perfect blog would look like. That’s the dreaming phase, where I think about what my ideal blog would look like. I write down my aims, and get rid of the ones that are unrealistic. Then I divide them up into short, medium and long term goals. That gives me targets to meet and realistic time frames in which to meet them. I also need to think about my own time. If I need to do something time consuming, like submitting my blog to 100 directories, I need to set that goal for a time when I can actually doing it - otherwise it isn’t achievable.

It also helps to break these goals down into little steps that you need to complete. For example, if I want to increase the number of email subscribers to my blog, I first need to burn my feed with Feedburner. Then I need to get an email subscription form and add it to my blog’s template. Finally, I need to let people know that they can now subscribe by email. I might do this by writing a post, and by adding a reminder to the end of each post.

Finally, your blogging goals need to be timely. Here’s how that might work. If you want to attract attention with a Diggable post, then don’t post it on a day when you have low traffic, or on a holiday when your regular readers might be away. The post might get lost in the shuffle and you will have wasted some really great writing. Instead, find out when your best traffic day is. Find out who else might be posting on something similar and tell them about your post. Sometimes that’s all it takes to build a buzz.

So when you’re ready to promote your blog, assess your goals and see if they are SMART. It will help you to focus and will save a lot of wasted time.