I work for a small business and they just don’t get it. I wish I could show them this blog, but they’re pretty stuck on ‘STOP’ spending time on social media and start producing traffic. Been pretty difficult because this part-time became more stressful, for the fact that I’m not given the time to and don’t know how to track my campaigns or contests while the company is tracking other campaigns (Google Ads, etc). Feels like I’m being set to fail =/

Thanks for the post! It really reinforces my thoughts.

I like your writing. Thanks. It makes a lot of sense and the truth is that anything worth growing is going to take time. I can see having just started a site that impatience and the need for traffic is like taking drugs but it’s true that in the end, what you want to do is scratch an itch on the web and truly fill if not a need then a port in the storm to tuck into at least. Information and analysis is important but even a place where a reader or a contributor feels that he is going to at some point get turned onto something or someone that will help them or enlighten them or even make them smile. Mashable has become a place where I can always get lead or pointed to something or someone interesting to me.

I think if you can do that consistently and be that consistently and as you write about, can reward and embrace your original group you can build some as important as traffic that will ultimately be traffic.

Good stuff to think about at least for me right now..

Mike Binder
Jokeyphone.com

Gary is really big on embracing your community and caring about every single person who leaves you a comment.

Good stuff man.

For many companies, search engine traffic is their life blood. This is great for them, and I’m happy that they’re able to survive through superficial methods. However, I feel that if a similar company came out and utilized building relationships along with SEO traffic, they would go in and annihilate the competition. I have no doubt in my mind that if there are two similar companies, and one focuses on search engine traffic while the other works on cultivating their current user base, that the relationship-focused company would eventually win out.

Right, without conversion, you got nothing. The cash flow is the life-blood of the company.

I want to get you on my show bro

I do agree that focusing on high numbers of traffic via the social media game is useless. Digg and Stumble users do not convert and are usually a pain in the ass to try and game, beg your friends to vote you up and get a large crowd of haters that take your site down.

Google on the other hand is the key factor that I think you are missing. For small internet focused businesses, Google is their lifeblood. For one of our clients, getting him top ranking meant 50k in new business in one month. For blogs, not so much a problem, but for finding customers it is key! People on Google are searching for information/products/deals whatever, and if you are the trusted source (or so says Google), your conversions will show.

I guess what I am trying to say is that no matter how you do it, you need conversions - whether it is paid users, people buying products, clicking on ads, signing up for free, leaving comments, signing up for a newsletter, it doesn’t matter - you just need them to convert!

There are a lot of startups that make money through ads only. There are always other ways to monetize.

I’ve been blogging for about 2 weeks now and have read about 50 different articles/blogs on the topic. It’s like everyone read the same book.

Question, you seem to differentiate internet startups vs blogs. What kind of startups did you mean. I work for a tech startup, but I’m new to social media/blogging. Did you just mean startups that sell ads, but that aren’t blogs?

Thanks again.
-Chaalz