Last week, I discussed Building on Online Following Through Recognition. Today, I wanted to touch on rewards. Over the last few weeks, I have been kicking up my marketing and list building efforts. I get things running on autopilot for 3 to 6 months, then go back to revisit and revise my methods. This isn’t scheduled, it just happens.
When looking for good information to share with my own list, I noticed I am currently only subscribed to a handful of online marketers. How did that happen? I’m usually on everyone’s list. One of two things has left me with few people getting my attention these days:
1. Rewards – Those handful of marketers that I still had an email from in my inbox are full of good stuff. They build an online following through rewards. Every week I get some great download, resource or information I don’t know how I lived without up until that point. I can’t unsubscribe. I might miss something great.
2. Inactivity – There are probably quite a few marketers that I’m still subscribed to, I just haven’t heard from them in quite some time. They got busy and haven’t kept up on their ezines. If you aren’t talking to your audience, someone else is. And you better hope it’s not Group Number One.
This gave me insight into exactly where I want to go with my subscribers for the next stretch of online highway. One of my marketing mentors recently suggested setting up one pre-scheduled autoresponder for your list each week until you have one year’s worth (52). Include evergreen information, free reports, etc. Make sure they will get something each week, regardless if you have the time to write your next newsletter. Never let them forget you. Get on autopilot, and build your online following through rewards.
Let’s talk NoFollow DoFollow
If you are a blogger concerned about optimization and page rank, I’m sure you are familiar with the NoFollow/DoFollow debate. As with all of the secrets within Google’s algorithm for deciding where your site gets placed, no one REALLY knows what’s going on. That’s how Google likes it. Some “experts” will tell you it matters when leaving comments, others will tell you it doesn’t. Who the heck really knows?
When I started this blog in February, I of course wanted to start getting backlinks. I shamefully fell into the nofollow/dofollow trap. Why do I call it a trap? Because I spent more time trying to find relevant dofollow blogs than I actually did leaving comments. It was overwhelming.
Over the days of endless searching, I also got discouraged. Here were all these great blogs that I could leave extremely insightful comments on, BUT they were nofollow. So, I wasn’t supposed to waste my time there.
So, I started leaving comments where I saw fit, and starting subscribing to those DoFollows I found along the way. Over time, I started seeing a lot of traffic coming to my blog from these comments I left on relevant blogs. People that have stayed here, and people that help promote my blog.
I find it a bit sad when I see an online business owner, usually someone relatively new, saying they won’t comment here or there because it’s NoFollow. They are passing up the opportunity to be Comment No. 1 on an extremely pertinent blog, but instead go on to be Comment No. 1,254 somewhere else. Comment No. 1 is the one people are likely to see and visit, Comment No. 1,254 will likely get lost in the mix. Having a good mix of traffic and SEO links is important.
Let me know what your commenting policy is. Are you on an endless search for DoFollow blogs, or are your concentrating on building relationships with people…not search engines?