Why SheGeeks Is So Awesomesauce
Apr 02 2008 
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Today I got a reply on Twitter from FaceySpacey.com that said: "I’m just entering the blogging space. How have you done so well?" Well, let’s recap:
RSS Subscribers
My subscriber count has skyrocketed this month (in my opinion). According to my Feedburner stats, I went from having 19 subscribers on March 1st, to 188 subscribers today. My subscriber count stats has reached 191 twice this week!
Traffic
On March 1st, I had a total of 11 visitors to this site. That was pretty big to me, if you can believe that. I have averaged over 300+ hits a day in the past month, and 500+ hits within the past week, with 72% of my audience being new visitors (which has gone done drastically also). My highest visitor count so far has been 1,892 (Feedburner) or 1,838(Google Analytics) visits on Thursday, March 20th, no doubt because of breaking the story about the ColorWars on Twitter.
Contributions To My Success
People
- Don’t be afraid to ask for promotions
- Grow your relationships with those who are helping you out
- Grow your relationships with those who simply like your work
First and foremost, I can thank Louis Gray and Steven Hodson of WinExtra for promoting not only my "FriendFeed Is THE Next Big Thing" post, but also the entire SheGeeks blog on their blogs! Louis actually caught some unnecessary flack for it. Yet, without these two, my site would probably still be a diamond in the rough. Others that have contributed to my success include writers of Mashable, Chris Brogan, RSSmeme developer Benjamin Golub, intelligent and great women like Sarah Perez of Sarah In Tampa and Erin Vest a.k.a The Queen of Spain, the best Digger in the world, SteJules, and a great guy who gives me brilliant things to try and one of my partners in crime: Chris Miller of The Social Networker!The relationships that I’ve developed with these wonderful individuals over the past month has gone a long way.
If you know any of the "A-listers" in any way or if you know people of any relevant influence, don’t hesitate to ask them if they can help you promote your work. It doesn’t need to be done with every article that you have. In fact, be very selective of which works you wish to promote. Sometimes people will promote your works simply because they like it, but sometimes it’s best to open your mouth. "Closed mouths don’t get fed."
For example, when my FriendFeed article began to take off with promotion from Louis and Steven, I asked Chris Brogan, using Twitter, if he knew of any site that I could promote my article on. He went a step further and sent a message to his entire Twitter audience of over 4000+ followers linking back to my post. It’s now my second most popular article with 400+ views and 42 diggs (thanks to SteJules).
StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, and Twitter
- Share what you read with your audience
- Respond to your audience
- STOP PROMOTING AND START BUILDING YOUR NETWORK
StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, and Twitter are the sites that send me the most traffic hands down (in that order). These are also 3 of the largest communities that I’m the most active on and if I share a link one of them, I usually spread the love to the other two. I try to give back as much as I’ve been given by users of these communities, which is very important and hard work. If you’re only promoting your work, you can bet your bottom dollar that these communities will NOT take notice of you. They are all about promoting others just as much as you promote yourself. Take advantage of this! [see Becoming A Resource for more info]
Also, these communities are where I’ve found most of the people I’ve been forming relationships with days. They are great mediums not only for promoting, but for building. I’d advise anyone who’s getting started to build your networks more than you promote work. Eventually, what you’re building upon will become its own promoting machine for you. In the end, friends and people that just plain like you will be more than happy to retweet your twitter messages and share your links with their audience.
Becoming A Resource
- Link to others with relevant articles
- Be a resource, not just a blogger
I’ve seen quite a few articles that others have written and that provided a link back to my content that may have been relevant. If you’ve done the same (and I do), people will do the same for you. Make sure you link back to other people, sites, and articles. Give credit where credit is due! People check for trackback links and I personally have edited a post or two to add a link to someone’s response to my posts. It helps to build relationships and trust (there’s that ‘B’ word again). You also let your audience know that you know other valuable sources that could help them out and you’re not afraid to share. By doing so, people will look to you to help them find not only great articles, but also great people, opinions, and websites. Then, you’re no longer just a blogger. You’re a resource!
This also has a great side effect of building up the amount of people that link back to your site, which search engines and sites like Technorati pay attention to. This helps you move up in rankings and allows for your content to become more accessible quickly.
SheGeeks + You = Awesomesauce
In the end, these are all the valuable things I have learned and put into action to help continue to make SheGeeks an awesomesauce success. Of course, great content (which is King) and site design are important factors too! What I’ve listed are tips that can help your site gain momentum and what helped SheGeeks take off!
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you go girl .. the awesomesauce is yours for the giving :)
great post, story and great advice. congrats! I have enjoyed getting to chat with you and see your awesomesauce-ness :)
I really wish I had some graphic design skills. You absolutely need a badge of some sort that says “awesomesauce approved” for people to put on their posts or utilities that you point out. Kinda like one of these, but cooler (um, sorry, I mean with more awesomesauce): http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/images/scanaler...
These are great tips. I recently discovered your site through a mutual network of friends and you're spot on about the importance of that. I enjoy your writing. Keep up the great work.
Yanno, I was just going to do an article on the same thing. My readership has increased this past week too – also mostly due to twitter and relationship building. With Mommy Blogs people want to feel as if they “know” you. Hmmmm – maybe I'll still write that article after all (and show you some linky love along the way).
It's great to have good people who like your stuff, I'll agree, but it also starts with the fact that you write good stuff that people find interesting. : )
i know my comment is going to seem a little off topic at first, but here goes.
i hooked twitter into friendfeed this week, i hooked evrything into friendfeed this week and suddenly i keep seeing the same people pop up all over the place. so i know who shegeeks is and her awesomesauceness is something that i have been able to witness because of friendfeed and all the various social networking tools that are starting to come together.
whether or not i have subscribed to your blog, it endsup being in my google reader feeds because people on friendfeed share it somehow, so some of the metrics may even be on the small side. this may merit some more study.
Congratulations. I have subscribed your feed at the end of last week. I stumbled upon your site on a google search about twitter color wars. Now I follow you on Twitter and your Blog with a Feedreader. Have fun!
Greetings from Germanys first Videopodcast,
Simon
Corvida. I've seen you rising in the ranks lately. And truly respect what you're doing. It looks like your site needs some serious branding and design though. Let's talk. Maybe we can help each other out. I design/brand you with my team. You promote for me and my clients.
Now if this article doesn't get dugg, tweeted and stumbled as a great resource, I am not sure who will do better
I don't think it has been dugg. I've tweeted it numerous times and I think a few people retweeted it. Looks like it got 2 stumble reviews though =)
Welcomes! I hope you're enjoying the news!
Thanks to you I'm going to make one tomorrow in Photoshop. I'll keep you posted on it!
Keep me posted on whether or not you write that article!
Aww yay!! That's definitely a great way to look at it. FriendFeed as yet another RSS metric. Great perspective!
Welcomes! I hope you're enjoying the news!
Thanks to you I'm going to make one tomorrow in Photoshop. I'll keep you posted on it!
Keep me posted on whether or not you write that article!
Aww yay!! That's definitely a great way to look at it. FriendFeed as yet another RSS metric. Great perspective!
Welcomes! I hope you're enjoying the news!
Keep me posted on whether or not you write that article!
Aww yay!! That's definitely a great way to look at it. FriendFeed as yet another RSS metric. Great perspective!