If You Are Not Growing You Are Failing

Last month I asked ‘What Blog Promotion Steps Do You Take?‘. We had some interesting responses and some great ideas. Several of our sites, including this one, seem to have leveled off with very little growth. We loose as many subscribers, customers, or members as we gain. At first glance it seems ok because we’re not losing business, right? I say wrong, without steady growth we are dying.

If all of your marketing efforts are designed to keep your online business from shrinking then you are loosing ground. We can see examples of this in every size online business in every niche. I’ll offer a couple recent big ones…

Right now there is a lot of debate on why myspace.com was just recently passed by facebook.com in traffic. We can discuss why one site suddenly outperforms the other but I would like to use it as an example. The chart below by compete.com clearly shows myspace.com holding steady and maintaining it’s traffic. That’s not good enough, is it? facebook.com is growing while myspace.com flat lines.

Another example is mybloglog.com and blogcatalog.com. I have accounts with both and everyone has their own opinions but we see the same scenario. blogcatalog.com grew 162.5% while mybloglog.com pretty much stayed level with a negative 3.9% in unique visitors. Within just a couple of months that growth shot blogcatalog.com way past mybloglog.com.

The reasons for the traffic shift of those two examples are really irrelevant for most of us. We don’t face the same challenges or have the resources of any of those four giants. What we can gain from are the results. For whatever reason one site is growing and the other isn’t. We need to find the ‘growth button’ for our niche and our business.

The Marketing MixMarketing is much more than advertising and selling goods or services. The Marketing Mix (The four Ps) Product, Price, Place, and Promotion covers all of the basics of general marketing. Our marketing mix incorporates market research, pricing, customer service, promotion, terms, branding, exposure, message, distribution, selling and much more. It is all about influencing new consumers to buy our product while convincing current customers to stay with our brand.

We don’t have to have huge marketing budgets for steady growth. It’s not even necessary to have a traditional product. If you are a blogger your website is your product. Optimizing our specific marketing mix for growth along with retention is imperative.

The Extreme Ezine is going to kick it up a notch. How about you? Is your online business growing? Are you gaining unique visitors to your site each month? Are your profits increasing each month. What are you doing to grow your business?

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Brian on March 7, 2009 | Filed Under Featured Articles, Marketing, Marketing Tips

22 Comments

Sheryl Loch  on March 7th, 2009

Hey Brian,
I think you have hit the nail on the head. You have to keep finding new ways to promote. To many people are stuck in the ‘well, it worked last year’ mind set. But, what worked last year may not do a thing this year.

As we know the SE’s are constantly changing what they want to see in order to give you better placement. To an extent, we have to change with them.

I am constantly learning new ways to connect with people and the SE goddess. This must be working because my organic traffic is growing.

I look forward to see some of the things you are doing to ‘kick it up a notch’. Umm, you will share right?

Sheryl Lochs last blog post..Biological Terrorist Pass Avian Flu

Brian  on March 7th, 2009

Hi Sheryl, I can’t help but share. My wife says I would blog the lottery numbers if I had advanced notice just for the credit of posting it first :)

Dennis Edell  on March 8th, 2009

I’m in the middle of this myself. Not just revamping th blogs themselves, but my entire promotional strategies and plans…more to come. :)

Dennis Edells last blog post..Google Closes Adsense Account – Google Gets Sued – Google LOSES!

Brian  on March 8th, 2009

Thanks Dennis, I hope you will share your strategies when you are ready. I also hope it doesn’t mean you will give up the Comment King crown :)

Marketing Business Review  on March 9th, 2009

Hi Brian,

Is that Millions of visitors? I wish I could have the same traffic as mybloglog, that would be awesome.

But yes, I prefer BlogCatalog it allows you to do your own discussion lil panels and share more with fellow bloggers than Mybloglog, I guess thats why they are falling down.

Marketing Business Reviews last blog post..Different Way to Make Money Online Out Of Your Personal Problems

My Life Thinking  on March 9th, 2009

Actually I am getting more new visitors since I started following your blogs, your posts changed my mind and directions :) Thanks Brian!

My Life Thinkings last blog post..How to Increase Twitter Followers?

Brian  on March 9th, 2009

@ Marketing Business Review: Hi Luis, I prefer BlogCatalog too. MyBlogLog, run by Yahoo, doesn’t seem to be managed as well. I’ve had a few sites up for months on MyBlogLog and the thumbnails haven’t even been updated yet. BlogCatalog had them updated right away. A small thing but a sign to to me that MyBlogLog isn’t a high priority for Yahoo. I haven’t done much with those sites either though so I might be in the same boat :)

@My Life Thinking: Hi Hisham, Sounds like a testimonial to me. I’m glad we are helping and hope we can live up to your expectations.

Dennis Edell  on March 9th, 2009

“I also hope it doesn’t mean you will give up the Comment King crown”

Never! LOL I may disappear and reappear from time to time as I delete some and find others (all by subscription).

Dennis Edells last blog post..New Category – D.S.W.M.

Kikolani from Blogging, Poetry, Photography  on March 9th, 2009

I think it is a matter, in terms of social networking and blog promotion, to find the network with the most active people interested in the subject you blog about. Even if BlogCatalog is the larger network, if you have a dedicated base of fans for your subject on MyBlogLog, then that will be the better network for traffic generation.

~ Kristi

Kikolanis last blog post..Fountain Park in Fountain Hills, Arizona

Brian  on March 9th, 2009

Good point Kristi, we definitely have to know where our target market is and focus hard on that group.

Gennaro  on March 10th, 2009

I tend to think that Facebook is overtaking MySpace because it’s a better product. That leads to more individuals leaving because of word-of-mouth. True of Blog Catalog too.

It strikes me that blogs need to quickly adapt to the changes each year. New widgets, social networking, visual framworks are always coming around and few keep growing without adjusting.

Drudge Report is the only site that comes to mind that stayed exactly the same without dropping off the face of the earth.

Brian  on March 10th, 2009

Hi Gennaro, Good point. To grow we need to stay on top of our games as well as marketing. Site design, content and the newest trends need to go hand in hand with our marketing strategies.

Just for fun I checked the Drudge Report on the Wayback Machine and you’re right, they have been using that same basic website for over twelve years.

Steve | Trade Show Guru  on March 10th, 2009

hi Brian,
To play devil’s advocate… not necessarily. At least in the brick and mortar world, some people are happy with one restaurant, and those that expand to have three or four end up working all the time and then go out of business. Of course Google and Microsoft never listened to me…
I would imagine with blogging that some of us are happy working at it part time, and don’t really want to put more time into it. But if we can work smarter, now that’s another thing…
~ Steve, the trade show guru

Steve | Trade Show Gurus last blog post..Green Trade Show Displays

Brian  on March 10th, 2009

I’m with you Steve, I don’t want to add to my work load either.

I’ll give you a quick example. I have an Ad Tracking and Short URL site that does pretty well. I haven’t been promoting it much lately but get enough search traffic to cover the expenses with a little extra. Those new accounts are just covering the members that cancel so the site is not growing.

The problem is my competition is promoting their service so they are passing me by. With that I move from number one and two spots on Google for my best key words to number five and eight. Now less traffic from the only real source so less sign-ups. Now I’m losing numbers and profit. I didn’t work at growing the site while the competition did. Now I have to play catch-up. It’s much easier to stay up front with the momentum that to catch up from a break.

Kikolani from Blogging, Poetry, Photography  on March 10th, 2009

Also, on another note, I’ve tagged you in one of those wonderful 7 things about you memes in my 7 things post. :)

~ Kristi

Kikolanis last blog post..7 Things for New & Dedicated Readers

Brad West  on March 15th, 2009

Hi Brian,

Great topic, I have been here a few times and refrained from comment because I am a little overwhelmed in my promotion being in the same boat, I do realize the obvious, but have no magic wand to wave at the moment.

Commenting on blogs with good solid comments seems to draw some traffic, but very time consuming. Forums to some extent seem to be coming back to life a bit as people are realizing that the power behind them is fantastic. Mixing blogs and forums seem to be working very well. The combination of using the two defiantly complement each other. A new little twist I read about some time back was to blog on a forum.

I have a post about this on our board but will give a little review. Yes you should be taking full advantage of this as a member.

As you know we have an advertising section on the bottom of our board for members only, I will use you business as an example. Take your ad tracking and short url site to the advertising section and make a post. Come back in 3 days and add another post as a reply to your first post, and so on. The reason I say 3 days is I have set the post bump to 3 days so if you reply to your own post to bump it before 3 days your reply is just added to your last post unless you are replying to someone.

But you get the idea, use a forum thread to blog on. Keep adding relevant content to your thread. Now you are creating your forum thread blog. So now the spiders can pick up all your information and keywords in one place and index them.

From what I have been reading this is working great getting indexed. I have been neglectful doing this because well, I have no excuse.

Not exactly sure why, but I am thinking that Google took some of the punch out of single forum posts and pays more attention to multiple post threads. I believe this happened when the big spamming wave came through a couple years back, allot of spam bots were getting through registration and posting single posts in a section with a common word like Lounge or intros.

I wish I had more to offer right now, but Sheryl won’t let me. LOL!
All I know is content rules!!

Always the best for everyone.
Brad West ~ onomoney

Brian  on March 16th, 2009

That’s a good point Brad. I’ve suspected that for a while as far as active blogs and forums. Blogs with more comments and forums with multiple post threads seem to be better off in every way including Google. I have never gone back to bump a forum post back up but I understand what you are saying. I feel it’s much better for other members to fill that roll if they find it interesting. I need to get back into visiting forums. I’ve all but stopped since I’ve become involved with blogging. Except for The Internet Marketers Guild of course.

InternetStrategist from GrowMap  on April 13th, 2009

This post explains very clearly why there is no such thing as a perpetual money-making scheme that will work without at least an intermittent investment of additional time.

InternetStrategists last blog post..Blog Traffic Up 54.87% in the Last 30 Days: Our Proven Traffic Improvement Strategy

Brian  on April 13th, 2009

Well said GrowMap, thanks.

Christina Bledsoe  on April 13th, 2009

I prefer BlogCatalog as well for the same reasons as above. I like that you can have discussions and whatnot. I also found out quickly after wasting several months that Facebook is a much better way to promote opposed to Myspace.

Christina Bledsoes last blog post..Departures Movie Trailer

Brian  on April 13th, 2009

Hi Christina, I like BlogCatalog too. I have Facebook and MySpace accounts but don’t do much with them.

david from malaysia florist  on April 16th, 2009

i agree with you, not growing = failing especially at the competitive internet business nowadays, we should always come out with innovative idea to attractive more traffic