Let's build some online traffic

Ok, for those of you following along at home, and wanting to build some traffic and readers to your site some things you can do pretty easily and quickly:

• Join Active Rain. Active Rain is a real estate online community, but more importantly it has terrific traffic. You will want to join and then right away post a few articles on the free blog there. Make sure that you send yourself links to your own outside blog from your active rain blog. You'll start seeing traffic pretty quickly. These inbound links will also be strong in helping search engines and possible readers find you. As soon as you have joined send me your profile and blog addresses, so I can subscribe to you and keep track of your posts.
• Send an email to all your contacts, the people that you know well not spam, and ask them to head over to your new blog and respond by commenting. Remember you're trying to build repeat traffic, so get them to head over and while there they need to leave a comment which helps you know who's been there and also they could leave some ideas for future articles.

Try these two today, more tomorrow.

Another tool for traffic creation online

Squidoo invitation

Step by Step - Blog Today

I'd like to try my hand at a step by step series of posts on setting up a blog, in one day, and getting traffic.



Let's jump right in, I'll update and revise as I get questions and comments.



Step One - Choose blog platform and sign-in



I have used http://www.blogger.com/ for all my blogs for the last three years, and I've learned a ton and frankly used as many of the features that blogger offers as I could understand But, in talking to other bloggers and reading their posts, I really think that http://www.wordpress.com/ may be the better site. Update: if you want to eventually use google adsense you'll want to stay with blogger for now, wordpress won't let you run ads.

For Blogger:
Go to http://www.blogger.com/ and go through the sign in process. You may need to set up a google mail (gmail address) to do so. That's fine, it'll come in handy when it's time to set up google ads anyway. Choose a name for your site, don't overthink it, you can change the title later, or even start a brand new site in a week or two if you want a different address. It's free and really the key is to get blogging, we can move data later.


For Wordpress:
Go to http://www.wordpress.com/ and sign in. USe the big green button that says Sign Up Now! You'll need to create a user name for yourself, and a password so that you can access the login process each time you go on your blog to write or read. You can be the author of numerous blogs from this one login name, choose "agree to terms" and put in a valid email address.

Wordpress will send you an email to validate that you are legitimate and not just spamming.

On the next screen you'll be asked to choose a name for your blog (the actual address will be name.wordpress.com) This is time to pause and reflect on possible names, at least for the time being. Once this blog is created, it's created. You can create others. You can always chane the title on the next line, to help people find your site better.



If you are a Realtor you might choose your micro-market niche as your name ie ValparaisoRealEstate or NWIndianaRealEstate ... Much later, we'll be looking at registering your own domain name, and using this wordpress or blogger site but letting people find you from your own domain name or names. That's not a lesson for today. Today we just need to get the first site set up and first post written.


Go to your email and check for the email from wordpress. You should have one telling you your accepted user name, password, and some links to get started. Choose "write a new post".



On either platform (or for those of you that are aggressive and decided to set up a free site on both platforms)

1. Choose a title for your first post maybe "Finally I'm here world" or "My first blog post", it doesn't matter, no one is reading yet, and you can delete this post later


2. Write some text, some words of wisdom, your thoughts on why you started this blog in the first place.


3. Insert a photo from your computer, see the little button that looks like a tree? Punch that and follow the screens to insert a photo into your blog post. Blog posts with photos tend to get better traffic.


4. Choose some tags, these are terms that would help people find you. Maybe NW Indiana if you're around here? Or some words that typcially get searched in your industry.

Save and Publish, you are now officially a blogger! Welcome to the wide world of blogging.

So, I followed my own procedure here and created a site http://blogsnwindiana.wordpress.com/ and I will post this step by step both here at marketing blueprint and there for each additional step. Go to my site and give me the address of your new blog so I can link to you and we can start the process of building traffic together.

The key to traffic and to searching strong is to get links from others, so make sure you tell me and others your address so we can give you some link "love"

Update: First new blogger working with us on this NW Indiana project is On Home Comfort

december 7th live blogging

Thought I'd try live blogging a travel day. With photos to be added later in the day.

Most edits and updates will come from my phone, let's see how that works eh?

5:15 am up and rolling to get ready and have coffee with my wonderful wife before heading to airport. Leave notes for oldest on his biography homework on founding father stowell. Only man to have signed all four major US documents: declaration, constitution, articles, and federalist ... I think gotta check the fourth one. Lost his first wife while fathering 7 kids and married again to father 8 more!

Forgot boarding pass, so used phone to access southwest rewards from car while driving and get confirmation number so I wouldnt have to go to counter at midway.

Drive takes only 50 minutes, even though we had an inch of snow last nite in chicago.

Arrive hour ahead of time and grab first bloody mary while planning day. Pins to friends leaving Indy for Florida. Emails to partner in Valpo handling closing on power of attorney today.

Check newspaper on online, comment on article that suggested fire trucks couldn't get thru round about, my buddy the fire chief took care of the naysayers once and for all. Basically you have a bunch of people that just can't stand Costas and will make up stuff to shoot him in the back.

Digg an article
Twitter updates and respond to two friends

Ok, first break in the action, gotta head to my plane. More in 2 hours from Bonita where I meet my brother and Realtor pal Eric Babon. We've got a couple meetings, looking at office space, and fishing Sunday and golf Monday.

Update: got like 20 mins before I have to board and turn off phone (wink wink). One eye on today show, which I can't stand, but it does help to see how the other side thinks. Other eye on news feeds. I wonder if I can google reader from my phone? I'd have to close blog, which means I have to reload, but heck it"s worth a try.

Plane broke down, their getting us a new plane, 20 mins late which is cool, my brother doesn't get to bonita till 2 anyway.

Word of day: surly
Signed up for sketchcast.com may not have worked, but I'll fix it later, got the idea from google reader feed post by phoenix real estate guy.

You have to push google mobile to let you read your feeds, looks like it hasn't been fully integrated with google mobile yet. Downloaded all google mobile updates, might like using picassa to handle photos since the phone has such limited memory.

Uh oh 9 am closing has problems. Lumber company messed up counter tops and didn't deliver until late yesterday. Appraiser went out to clear and saw they were getting installed and didn't issue clear to close. Now appraiser has to go back out, and we hope to close two hours late. Title company decided to close early today, so lots of pressure from them to move to monday. And of course the customer wants to move in early. Gotta love home building.

Life and Lawns fellow NW Indiana blogger posts a scathing rebuke of Mitt Romney and his Mormonism and the way the church functions. Couldn't comment from phone but will later. Frankly, the Mormon church is a cult, not bad people, but a cult nonetheless.

Google reader working a little better, but I had over 1000 feeds to read, and nine at a time was killing my eyes!

Got thru maybe 100. Need a better format for reviewing ones reader on mobile device.

Driving Lamborghini in Arizona - Fast!