Last week I outlined my initial response to receiving no traffic to my blog for a full 7 days, something I have called traffic flatline.

Since my last post I have added some features to the blog to encourage interaction and retention of visitors. If you look at the right of the page, below the opt-in form you’ll see I’ve set up an RSS feed. It’s so long since I’ve done this that I had to go hunting for help and found some easy to follow instructions here. I’m not sure how many people are likely to use the facility, but if I don’t set it up I’ll never find out.

I’ve also added two other features. CommentLuv allows anyone leaving a comment to include a link to their own most recent blog post, and I have also installed the Select Sociable plugin, which produces the sharing buttons below each post. I also intended to have a tell a friend plugin but discovered that the one I planned to use has an out of date security certificate and opens a warning window when used. Not exactly what I was aiming for so I deleted it and have yet to find a recommended alternative.

To get traffic I’ve continued to post on forums and blogs. After publishing last week’s update I posted a link to it in my Facebook account and in a couple of Facebook Groups I am in. They are both internet marketing related so I was hoping the links would attract some interest. I monitored any comments to my blog posts and replied to those that were not spam.

I also emailed my list letting them know that my traffic had flatlined and invited them here to see how I was responding and what was working.

So if that’s what I’ve done what results am I getting?

Below are my Google Analytics stats for 18th November – 4th December. The patient is no longer dead, but hardly a picture of health!

The top three traffic sources are organic Google searches, then direct click throughs, then Facebook. The remainder come from blogs I have left comments on. There has also been one visitor each from Stumbleupon and the Warrior Forum. As you can see there was a peak of 22 visitors last Thursday after I announced my blog post to the Facebook groups and my email list. You can also see that traffic is still dropping to zero when I don’t maintain forum and blog commenting.

My plan for the coming week is to persevere with commenting and bookmarking. However these methods are less than ideal and may be dropped if I can get alternatives to work. One alternative is Facebook. My results show it can help build a spike in traffic and everyone says its a great traffic source and too big to ignore, so it seems wrong not to attempt to leverage it somehow.

I hope you’re finding this useful. If you’re shadowing what I’m doing or finding your own ways to grow traffic to your site it would be great if you would leave a comment below and let me know your story, thoughts or feedback.

I’ll post another update next week.

David