If you have been blogging for your business for some time, do you feel it's helped to grow your business and bring sales. I do blog and have not found a way of tracking sales through my blog except through contests where I offer a coupon code. However, I have noticed a direct correlation between my blogging activity and sales. The more I blog, the more sales I get. And I feel it's because my blog brings in so many different eyes because of the variety of contest I post. In fact, I feel that blogging #1 and facebook #2 are my two best marketing options that don't cost me anything but a little time.
Much of my blog traffic comes from google - which is great. But I've recently increased by readership to over 20K unique visitors a month - that's over 400 unique visitors a day - with a few tricks and submissions. I've been playing around with a lot of different options like kaboodle, craftstylish and blogher blogs to pull traffic back to my own blog. I also share my posts on facebook and twitter. Additionally I have added several options for following my blog - google friend connect, networked blogs, email subscription, and blog lovin'. My top traffic sources, however, for www.soapdelinews.com come from the following:
Google - make sure you've submitted your blog and use lots of keywords in your content and your title.
Stumbleupon - Stumble your posts. Have others stumble your posts. It works.
Pinterest - They're still new, but when you pin something crafty and fabulous a lot of repinning goes on and your work gets shared over and over.
Craftgawker - They're picky about photos, but if they like what you've got, they will send you a good amount of traffic. Don't just share posts about your products, share other content as well. Your blog should have an obvious link back to your shop so you shouldn't feel you just need to promote your stuff with them. If you have wedding lovelies, check out weddinggawker.
IShareCrafts - Very similar to craftgawker. Less picky about photos. But it must be a craft project of some kind. They also have spin offs like craftgawker does for food but also for printables.
OnePrettyThing blog - If you have craft tutorials this is a great place to submit them. They'll link to your project and send traffic your way. It must be your own original project though - not a link through to a tutorial on another blog.
Blog Lovin' - A blog directory that also lets you follow your favorite blogs and check out the daily feed of your favorites in one handy location.
Giveaway sites - If you run a giveaway and submit it to giveaway sites, your traffic will soar. You can also use giveaways to grow your social networks and blog followers.
Tumblr - I don't use tumblr as my main blog and I was VERY reluctant to give it a go. But now that it's established I've found it can work. I often blog a photo from my main blog with a short description and a link back to my blog. Be sure to TAG with keywords. I've gotten a lot of hits to specific articles through tumblr from people doing a key word search ie. DIY While it's not consistent, if your article gets featured in a keyword search the traffic surge is obvious.
Hopefully you will find these sites as useful tools as well. Also, if anyone else has had success in bringing traffic to their blogs using specific sites or techniques, I'd love if you would share them here!
If you don't blog and are reluctant to blog on a consistent basis, I would recommend starting with tumblr. You can simply reblog content on days you are not feeling motivated. I read an article not long ago that says blogging increases inbound links for businesses by 55% or something like that. And I believe it based on my own personal experience.
