Defy Gravity: Drop Your Bounce!

By Susan August 25, 2011 Blog, marketing No Comments

Blog – 8 months ago = low on visitors and readership, bounce rate 65%

Blog – today = high on readership, visitors have quintupled and the bounce rate is now below 1%

How did I do it?

It all started about 8 months ago. So many people would contact me and ask me questions about software, social media, websites, email issues and more. In addition, I was building a lot of WordPress and Concrete5 theme websites. Each new client would need a tutorial to understand how to work their new site, so I realized if I could create screencast video tutorials, they could be widely used over and over and I wouldn’t need to teach them individually anymore.

So I created blog posts, explained in the post as well as in the video how to do something, like brand your YouTube channel, how to use TweetAdder, or a 10 video series on WordPress blogs, setting, plugins, advanced features. I also would SEO tag all these posts just right so anyone looking for those instructions would land right on that page.

As I continued to create these posts and videos I saw my readership was going up, they were staying longer, reading more pages and my bounce rate going down.

Then in May, I attended Savor the Success‘s Rock The World NYC 2-day conference and thought, there are so many women in the room and most had great successful brands, so was there a way I could help them and they could help me?

Brand Interviews was Born

I created the new section on my blog, Brand Interviews and wrote to many of these women as well as many other artists, photographers, designers and other entrepreneurs and asked them if they’d like to be featured and get some free PR? Well, that worked out to be very successful and there are now about 22 interviews so far and each week I publish another.

Why were these interviews working? Because first, most people like to tell their story, second, others love to read brand success stories and learn tips, and third, because I know just how to present them in their best light as well as SEO tag the page to draw traffic to them. In addition, each new interview draws different crowds depending on who that person is connected to. So they come to read that interview and then go look at who the other interviews are with and maybe read another two.

In addition, social media became a terrific advantage so that each interview could be shared with both followers of the interviewee and my own and it continues to spread.

Branding Wars

Last week I started another section, I will compare two companies against each other, but these will only be companies I have used and are familiar with, so I can really tell my own take on them. The first was Apple vs Dell. Next up might be the Yogurt war.

Conclusion and Tips

We always hear “content is king,” well this blog story turn around, proves it.

Make sure when you’re posting on Facebook and Twitter you are using a link that goes directly to the post or page, not just to your homepage. If they land in the middle of your site, they may look around. If they’re just reading the post right on your homepage, they may read and leave.

If you belong to any social media sharing sites like the Social Buzz Club, they can help your reach and visibility on the web.

If there are links on your homepage, to press or YouTube videos, and they are sending people away, change the links so they go to another page on your own site, your press page or media page.

Study the content stats on Google Analytics, what’s most important there is seeing which posts are read more than others, how long they stay on a particular page. For example: If a post has a great photo in it, and the average time on that page is 15 seconds, you know they came to see the photo and didn’t read anything. If you have a video loaded and it’s 3 minutes, and the average time is 4 minutes, you know they read and watched. By reviewing this you know what people want more of.

Make sure that your content is helpful, that will always attract more fans.