Ever try replying to an email newsletter or customer service email from a big company? If you have, you probably received one of those annoying, frustrating or infuriating (depending on your situation) automated responses telling you that you can't reply directly to the email.
"Should I quit my job?" That's a question I hear a lot.
When someone asks what the fastest way to grow traffic to a website is, first I tell them they're asking the wrong question. Wanting to know the "fastest" or "easiest" way to do anything is a sure route to failure. The fastest route is the path sold to suckers with no patience for the actual process involved in creating real value.
In the current blogging landscape of lowest-common-denominator marketing and recycled "top 10" lists, there's something incredibly simple you can do to dominate your topic and stand above your competitors as a leader.
If you want to build a thriving online audience of fans and customers who will push you to unthinkable heights, there's one thing you have to get right first, above all else. Have a vision for your followers.
There is a time for basic information. Everyone needs to know what an RSS feed is, how commenting works on blogs, that guest posting is sometimes a viable strategy for gaining visitors and that WordPress is probably your best choice of content management system. You should also know when Twitter is important and that you can use a Facebook page to spread your message.
Chances are, when you think of blogging, you also think of commenting. Comments have been a unique and tightly integrated feature of blogging since the beginning of blogs. But several high-profile blogs have decided to turn comments off in recent years. Zen Habits is one of the biggest examples. Seth Godin doesn't allow comments on his blog either and never has. These two blogs are among the biggest in the world.
A reader asked me on Twitter the other day if I would start writing more traffic-building tips here. The implication was that I haven't been publishing content that will directly help you build a bigger online audience.
It's that time of year again. The time when many of us think about what we've accomplished over the past year and what we might want to accomplish next year. I've made huge changes over the past two years and I've watched many of my friends and peers transform their lives. Some people seem to be able to do just about anything.
I've often advocated learning from other successful people in your field/niche as a way to become successful yourself. No doubt, I've learned a ton from and owe a lot of my success from observing people like Chris Guillebeau, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, Seth Godin, Leo Babauta and many more.