Everyone’s heard of Technorati. Personally, Up to now I haven’t taken full advantage of the Technorati benefits. Just a short while ago I was looking over Technorati.com and the next thing I knew half an hour went by. There really is a ton of information there.

If you love Blogging as much as I do you will appreciate Technorati’s ‘Top 100 Blogs‘ and ‘What’s Popular‘ sections. These two sections under Technorati’s Blogger Central are great starting points to quickly see what the heavy hitters are doing. If you’re looking for tips and ideas you may as well learn from the pros.

I’m just now getting to claiming our new URL so we’re starting over on Technorati but like I said we weren’t really taking advantage before. So check our Technorati Profile and don’t forget to add me to your favorites if you like the site.

We all know that if no one goes to your site it doesn’t have a chance of generating an income. Common sense also tells us that we need a steady flow of website traffic. If there was one single hard and fast rule in generating income for your website, which there isn’t, it would be a steady and continuous flow of traffic.

We want a lot of site traffic but not just any traffic, it MUST be targeted traffic. That term, targeted traffic, may seem to be getting a little old or worn out but it’s just as true today as it ever was. If your site is a tool to sell E-Book software, for example, what good does a thousand people auto-surfing for their own site visitors do? The fact they are jumping through hoops to get low NO quality traffic should be a pretty good indication they’re probably not buyers.

Generating targeted visitors to your site is just as important as sales copy, pricing and every other sales consideration – other than ROI (Return On Investment) of course. If you’re taking a loss then the whole business in in trouble.

The need for targeted traffic is the same as it always has been but many of the preferred methods of generating those site visitors is changing. Not completely, the traditional methods such as article marketing, ezine advertising, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) etc. are still necessary but now we have many other options with the success of Social Networking or Web 2.0.

It’s a very exciting time, especially for those of us taking advantage of the Web 2.0 era. I hate that term, Web 2.0, it sounds like an alternate internet somewhere. I remember when I first heard the term I was wondering how they were going to keep it separate from the old web lol. Social Networking and Web 2.0 are the same thing if it’s still unclear. Not to complicate things but I prefer Social Marketing.

What makes social marketing exciting from a traffic generation stand point is just how ‘targeted’ it can get. When sites like MySpace started getting Internet Marketers excited, I jumped right in. Right from the start I could see how if not used properly the whole thing could be a huge waste of time. Those marketers adding anyone and everyone as ‘friends‘ in order to get their friends list up into the thousands were going about everything wrong. I decided to only allow other members in that had something to do with online business. My MySpace page only has less than 600 members but it’s targeted. I even had the Google PageRank up to 05/10 but I see it’s down to 02/10 now -slap:-( My niche is Internet Marketing so now if I send a broadcast it can be seen by several hundred other marketers and online business owners. For that broadcast to go out to ten thousand teeny-boppers, bands and spamming models (I’m being very kind with that term) would only be a waste of everyone’s time and completely ignored. So you can’t just sign up, jump in and start sending traffic to your site like many are implying, you still need to give it a little thought and planning to make it work.

MySpace was my first but it’s certainly not the only kid on the block. There are literally thousands of Social Networking sites out there. Many with their own twists and benefits. In fact, there are so many you could easily get caught up in another problem – no time for anything else. What good is the traffic if you never have new content for the visitor to see and you don’t have anything to offer? Combine all of the various sites out there for social networking, social bookmarking, Blogging networks etc. with the fact that you’re actually making new friends and having fun and you have the potential of becoming addicted.

Social Networking has turned the tables on large sites. Many of the larger sites that were dominating the search engine listings and there niche market have all but taken a back seat to someone that just runs a blog and it grew by accident. That’s got to hurt, right? You spend years developing an online business. Countless hours and a ton of money building traffic and growing your list and some guy with a blog comes around and kicks your butt right off the top search results! It’s just amazing to see someone posting daily to a blog and just being social skyrocket to a pagerank of 7/10 with RSS feed subscribers of twenty thousand or more. You see, it pays to stay on top of things. I can’t wait to see what comes next!

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There are a ton of Blog networking sites/directories but I’m only going to mention two for now. They’re my favorites and you’ll soon see that it takes up a little of your time to actually get the most from them so small steps might be best for now. The name ‘Directories’ seems insufficient because these are truly full featured social networking sites for Bloggers.

As with any social networking site, you can only benefit from the possible traffic if you actively participate. Yes, that means being social. You need to comment, read, comment more, rate and than add more comments. The cool thing about the two sites I mention below is you can even get credit from just visiting a Blog without commenting but I do recommend you comment. Most Blogs have added the available widgets so they and their visitors will see your picture or avatar and some will click to see what’s there. It’s important to be logged into both networks while you are Blogging so the widgets know to add you as a recent visitor.

A note on commenting. Keep in mind you’re commenting to create online bonds and relationships with new friends and contacts. You’ll get traffic and fellow participation from building these relationships not by simply commenting on a Blog. Never never never comment just to get a link back to your site! Most Bloggers will delete silly comments like ‘Nice site‘ and ‘I agree‘ and many will even ban your IP address. To truly participate you need to actually read the piece and form an opinion. Only then can you intelligently comment on the post. That’s all that anyone is asking and everyone hates comment spam. Please don’t be that comment spammer.

Here Goes Number One:

At the top of my favorites list is MyBlogLog.com. See my profile here. MyBlogLog.com is a very popular site that helps you develop Blog traffic, track your stats and they even use no-follow free links to your submitted Blogs so the search engines follow the link to your site.

Link love and the occasional click is certainly not going to significantly increase your targeted site traffic alone. You need to participate here too. MyBlogLog has a huge collection of communities and you should join and participate in as many communities as you can stand.

Add as many friends as you can that share your same interests. Remember, the key to quality traffic is targeted traffic and you can get that by being somewhat selective when adding new friends. Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to friends but you still want as many as you can.

Now that you belong to a bunch of communities why not create a few of your own. Popular communities can be pure gold to Bloggers and you will benefit from creating a quality resource and venue for your MyBlogLog friends.

Lets make our efforts count. Visit your friends profiles and leave a message. Be sensible and leave a nice comment and not the usual ‘Please visit my blog’ or ‘Subscribe to my feed’ nonsense we see everyday by those that haven’t quite figured it out yet. You have to be sociable and spamming everyone’s message board is not the way to generating quality traffic. Sincere comments and messages will bring people to your profile and that’s your online calling card. It’s a simple click to your Blog and many will take that step if you’ve made it interesting for them.

Now here’s the real fun part. Blogging! Yes, now you need to visit your friends Blogs, read the posts and place a comment or two. Go back to their profile and let them know it was you that posted a comment to their enjoyable article. This will certainly earn at least one visit to your Blog and possibly a comment. It’s a two-way street. If someone is kind enough to comment on your Blog visit theirs and try to comment there as well.

Now For My Other Favorite:

The second Blog networking site I swear by is BlogCatalog. See my profile here. If I had to decide which of the two sites I like the most I’d have to choose BlogCatalog. BlogCatalog is very similar to MyBlogLog. Your messages box becomes your Shoutbox and communities are called neighborhoods but it works pretty much the same.

A nice feature unique to BlogCatalog is the Comments & Reviews section for each neighborhood. Each Blog gets it’s own neighborhood and it’s a great place to participate in neighborhoods you join.

Another priceless feature of BlogCatalog is the ability to post a broadcast that your friends will see. This is an incredible feature that allows you to let friends know you just added a cool post or whatever you want. Don’t get carried away or everyone will simple unsubscribe and you’ll loose friends.

I also like BlogCatalog’s Related Blogs and Tag Cloud sections. These can help Bloggers find your profile and help you find similar and relevant Blogs to befriend.

The only drawback to BlogCatalog that I can see is they do add the ‘No Follow‘ tag to the external links to your Blogs. It’s their prerogative and decision but it would be nice if they would consider spreading a little of that PageRank since they would be nothing without the members but that’s just my opinion. I still love BlogCatalog and I’m glad to be a member.

I joined Twitter back in October 2007 and up until now I only added fourteen updates. I’m not a big user obviously. Posting short (140 characters or less) updates on my profile just seemed like a waste of time.

Today I was looking at an article that SmartBrief sent me about Twitter. It was a nice piece by The Washington Post and it triggered my curiosity. I started a short search on how to use Twitter to draw traffic or even make sales. I’m going to add Twitter to my daily ‘to do‘ list. I guess I just needed a little inspiration.

Every blogger has heard of ProBlogger. I thought I’d follow the advice of Darren Rowse rather than buy another useless ebook promising to shed some light on the subject and delivering another waste of disk space. I’ll share the links I’ve used to educate myself. They’re all from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net. According to The Wall Street Journal Online, yes, I said The Wall Street Journal, Darren Rowse earned roughly $250,000 in 2007 off ads on three blogs he writes.

Why I Love Twitter

ProBlogger Links:

How I Use Twitter to Promote My Blog

TwitterFeed -- Promote Your Blog Posts to Twitter Followers

Twitter is a Complete Waste of Time!

Why Twitter Isn’t a Waste of Time

35 Twitter Tips from 35 Twitter Users

When Seth Godin isn’t Seth Godin