How to achieve an EntreCard rush

Posted on August 7th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,385 views

I think a lot of bloggers are aware of the “rush” effect of certain blogger’s social communities on their blog traffic and are usually very keen to learn how to exploit techniques to maximise their traffic.

Why do bloggers crave traffic?

Because traffic translates into ad dollars. The more traffic a web site gets, the more attractive it is to advertisers.

There are a multitude of articles written about how to exploit Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Mixx etc. and many who claim to be able conjure traffic at will from these sources, but frankly they all suffer from an inconsistent ability to DELIVER.

At certain times, they fare much better than at others. But eventually, they all suffer from diminishing marginal returns. Part of the reason for this diminishing effect is that there exists a kind of “arms race” between the bloggers and the social network. The social network actively seeks to discourage attempts to exploit it. They prefer to have traffic generated via organic means, i.e. naturally, as a result of posting a great article that everyone is interested in reading, rather than deliver a constant flow of traffic to blogs which do not rise above mediocrity.

While this is a noble goal for them to pursue, it still leaves the ordinary blogger scratching his head and wondering what to do to get the traffic he needs to make the ad dollars he seeks.

I believe the EntreCard community fills that needed gap. With EC, it is not merely a case of submitting your blog posts to it and then sitting back and waiting for the traffic to arrive, which is the case with many other social networks, such as StumbleUpon.

Even when lots of traffic is generated by, for instance, StumbleUpon, the bounce rate is usually ridiculously high with few of the readers contributing to one’s blog by way of leaving a comment.

Bloggers want traffic, but they also seek to expand their regular readership base and to get their readers to participate in the discussions. This builds their own personal community and adds interest to their blog.

So how does one gain an EntreCard rush?

By dropping the maximum number each day – i.e. 300 drops.

This used to be quite difficult to achieve, but with the recent introduction of the EntreBar, which is a toolbar add-on for Firefox 3 web browser, this task has been made a whole lot easier.

But it’s not just a matter of dropping on 300 random EC blogs, how you drop is also important.

For instance, if you dropped on a random set of 300 EC blogs, I have observed that you can expect that only a third of them will drop back. So for your 300 drops, you’d get roughly 100 drops back.

But you can do better than that.

Over time, by examing your drops inbox you can identify those EC bloggers who fairly consistently drop back on you if you drop on them. Favourite them. Unfavourite all those who rarely return your drops. Over time, your list of favourites will contain only those EC bloggers who consistently reciprocal drop on you.

Then use your EntreBar to browse your favourites and drop on them FIRST.

If you have, for example, 100 favourite EC blogs, that leaves you with 200 drops left over to do. Divide that in half and drop your next 100 on blogs that have something in common either with your blog’s overall theme or in common with recent articles you’ve written. By doing that you may find that some of those who return your drops will find something about your blog which resonates with what they are doing and feel interested enough to do more than just drop on your blog.

The last third of your drops can be done on a random selection of EC blogs. The EntreBar conveniently offers a random selection option to make this easy.

But whatever dropping strategy you adopt, you will find that you get the maximum amount of traffic from EntreCard if you drop the maximum number each day.

So it takes effort, and that is what distinguishes EntreCard from other social networks. In that respect, EC gives you more control over your traffic because there is something concrete you can DO everyday to make it happen. You have less control over the other networks and therefore your results are more random and more inconsistent.

If you have a favourite method for maximising your EntreCard traffic and reader involvement in your blog, I’d be interested to hear it. Please leave a comment sharing your experience.

Tags: ad dollars, blog traffic, EntreCard
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