Getting blog traffic from GatorPeeps (Tuesday Tips #4)
Social Media is a tricky beast. On the one hand it offers amazing tools which show great potential to help your personal brand, your company and your website. On the other, it is a densely populated jungle that has proven very difficult to navigate through and get results from. Today’s ‘Tuesday Tip‘ is aimed at helping you see through the shrubbery a little clearer and make the journey through the jungle a little easier. And now that the cheesy analogy is out of the way, let’s start with the good stuff;)
GatorPeeps
When we launched GatorPeeps (a micro blogging service for Africa) we caught a lot of flack for being Twitter clones. But the fact of the matter is that GatorPeeps is not out to replace Twitter. We launched #peeps because there is a vibrant African community out there NOT on Twitter. And we wanted to help Afrigator users connect and interact with each other.
Value and Engagement
If, after reading this post, you can remember nothing else, try and remember these two words. They are the foundation of everything else outlined below. Offer value and engage with the community. Key to this is understanding that different peeps use the service in different ways. Some come looking for something cool or fun, others come with questions looking for answers, and other still come to spread knowledge they have found online. You’ll need to respect these motivations and interact with each kind of user in a way that makes sense to them.
It’s probably a bit trite by now, but in order for this to work, you’re going to have to participate in the conversation and be a part of the community. Once you’re trusted within a community and other members can see that you’re a real person, chances are that your submissions will get clicked on and you’ll see some traffic coming through to your website. It’s the equivalent of walking in to a room, making a few friends and then voicing an opinion. Chances are that if you participate in the other conversations in the room first, the crowd will take a listen to what you have to say. But if you simply walk in and start screaming links, you’re bound to get left out in the cold with no one wanting to listen.
Okay, now that the warm and fuzzy stuff has been dispensed with, let’s get down to a few practical tips to help you gets some traffic.
Sign up to GatorPeeps
If you have an Afrigator account then signing up is a piece of cake. You can also sign up with your Google or Facebook accounts (and more). Once you’ve signed up, add your blog URL to your GatorPeeps profile. GatorPeeps uses Afrigator to automatically index your blog and pulls in your latest blog post so that followers can see what the last thing was that you posted. GatorPeeps is indexed really fast by Google. We’ve seen cases where a peep is indexed and returned in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) within an hour.
Promote your posts (sounds easy right?)
Promoting your own posts sounds like a pretty straightforward task, but here are a few tips to help your links do even better:
- Create a short, interesting headline that grabs attention. Add your URL right after
- Use keywords in your description. Like we said, peeps are indexed by search engine and since we don’t use a no-follow tag on peeps, it’s important that you use your keywords in your description for when search engines pick up the peeps.
- Keep it short so that others can quote you. This is probably the best way to get traffic. If someone likes your update, then they’ll quote it to their followers. If your description is too long it won’t work though. GatorPeeps adds “via @user” at the end of a quoted peep. If your update is too long, users simply won’t bother.
- An easy way to create really short URLs is http://gatorurl.com, it really helps.
Promote others posts
If you find a post that has value, spread the word. Whenever someone spreads the word of one of my posts, I’m grateful and usually return the favour by promoting their links too. It’s a delicious circle I tell you.
Follow the leader
Follow more people than you think you need to. Chances are that if you follow more people, more peeps will follow you. This means more peeps to interact with and more peeps to read your content once you put it out there.
Don’t be a spammer.
This is the easiest way to get dumped and left with a bad name. Posting nothing but links looks spammy. Remember the rules – you need to be part of a conversation, not a one way screaming match.
Answer questions
If a question comes up that you think you know the answer to, then do a post on the answer and let the peep who asked the question know. You’ll be surprised at how often people all have the same question but never ask.
Ask questions
This is a great way to engage within your community. Ask and ye shall receive.
Upload a profile picture
I am of the opinion that folks will trust someone who has taken the time time to add a picture more readily than they will a system generated image. Go to http://www.gravatar.com and get a cool avatar for your profile. It makes you look friendlier and more approachable.
As you can see from the waffle above, participation is the key to success. GatorPeeps (and social media in general) is a great way to get legitimate organic traffic as well as meeting new people and generally having a good time 
I hope that this info has been helpful. If you can think of anything that I’ve forgotten, please drop us a comment below, we’d really appreciate it.
Till next time, keep on blogging.
Lester and the Afrigator Team.
Robert Bravery said,
Wrote on June 23, 2009 @ 09:41
Lester,
Great post man. Lots of useful information and tips. Some excelent points I would like to highlight:
Promote other posts.
Follow more people than you need.
Don’t Spam,
Answer questions.
These are all points that I try to live by as well as point I like to promote.
Blogging is more about sharing than receiving. Sharing information, sharing in other posts, helping and aiding other bloggers.
I have experienced this first hand. While commenting on other blogs, I can definitely see increased traffic coming from those sites. Not thousands, but some. THe point is that it all helps. The more we share and help the more it benefits us in the long run.
Keep it up
onelargeprawn said,
Wrote on June 23, 2009 @ 09:51
Thanks. There’s a small spelling mistake in the “Don’t be a spammer.” section. I believe “noting” should be “nothing”.
Lester Hein said,
Wrote on June 23, 2009 @ 10:33
@robert I fully agree. The average blogger lives in the long tail and as such every little link helps. And as the old saying goes, the more you give, the more you receive.
@onelargeprawn thanks for the heads up mate, all fixed up now. My spelling gets worse the later it gets! (you should see me try to spell good morning…eish).
Mickey Geeh said,
Wrote on June 30, 2009 @ 04:12
I’m def going to try this out. I’m trying to get the word out about my site, http://www.kichizi.com/. Wat other ways can i get traffic?
Fatai Adewunmi said,
Wrote on June 30, 2009 @ 21:45
What a post, the truth is a quite number of the afrigator subscribers did not know the usefulness of this great tools in our hand. I believe whit post like this we ‘ll make use of it to it’s full potentials.
Thank 100 times.
Buy your readers flowers – Tuesday Tips #7 | Afrigator Blog said,
Wrote on July 14, 2009 @ 11:58
[...] you. There was the one about what you should read, the one about which tools you should use to get traffic, the one about linking and of course, the one about how you can make your blog just be [...]
Oluniyi David Ajao said,
Wrote on November 22, 2009 @ 17:57
How to make Gatorpeeps work for you…
If you are an African blogger and have your blog listed on Afrigator, chances are that you know about Gatorpeeps but can’t seem to understand what it is nor how to use it. Thus, the social networking website is grossly under-utilized by its users…