Simple and effective way to get VOTES for your article: Web Traffic

We have seen many people struggling to get Diggs, Stumbles (or votes in general ), all over the web!
Most of the time its frustrating for both the parties, the one who asks for vote and the one who is been asked to vote. If you start asking for vote continuously 100 times on twitter, then I guess everyone will unfollow you. And if you try in IM quite frequently, then chances are you will be blocked by your friends.

And one more important thing which I have observed is, if you start asking for diggs or stumbles directly on your blog(giving some incentives or otherwise), and if you start getting lot of diggs or stumbles from that page, then there is a high possibility that your blog URL will be blocked by those services.

So the best way to get more votes with less effort is: Make use of RSS Signature plugin. And politely ask for a Digg or stumble.
Digg AND stumbleupon
Why is this effective?
If people have subscribed to your blog, it is most likely that they get some value out of it and they will be more generous to vote for you when compared to search engine visitors or random visitors.
And it does not take a lot of their time. Just click the link and then hit the thumbs up or digg button. But take care that, you ask votes for only those stories which deserves their time and that one click. And ask only when it is needed. Do not always have a message to vote for some story. This will surly make readers blind to that particular message. To avoid this, ask for the votes only when there is a high quality article and which is already getting good response from your readers.

Do you think it works?
Yes. And this works best with Stumbleupon, than with DIGG. If you have 1000 subscribers out of which 100 to 200 people have stumbleupon account and if 30 to 60 people like the article and hit the thumbs up button, then the story will become popular in stumble and many more other stumbleupon users will be presented with the same story. And there is more chances that they will also like it, as almost 30 to 60 people have already liked it, so I guess it would be a good article. So you may get even more thumbs up. Making the story even popular.

Using this technique may help with Digg stories, if you have more followers who are active in Digg.

Why will this footer message work?
If we have the same message in the article, then also it will be read by our regular readers, then whats the need of RSS signature message — This is a good point.
But to get votes of most of the regular readers you need to make the message more clear and personal. Make it clear to the subscribers that you are asking for votes only with subscribers. Make the message as personal as possible and you will get more votes.
If you ask for votes generally in the article, then chances are that it will generally be neglected.

One Silly commonsense tip 🙂
After activating the plugin and composing a good personalized message, just don’t sit and expect hell lot of votes. Instead write an article, so that it gets delivered to their inbox or RSS reader. So that they open your article there and notice your vote request 🙂

Do you think this technique is simple and effective to get votes from your regular readers? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Basic Things to do: To Convert Readers to Subscribers

Many bloggers keep trying to develop a loyal reader base for their blog, and will surly be willing to convert their visitors to subscribers.

Following some simple tweaks or optimizations will help us in increasing our blog subscribers:

First of all label the RSS and/or email subscription link as FREE RSS and FREE EMAIL SUBSCRIPTION. This will make some people curious to checkout and someothers will not have fear to click on it(as its free)!

We ran an experiment session with some of the people who use internet to read emails, Google for stuffs they want to know about – Not so geeky about internet. We could see that many of them clicked on an text ad or any related topic links, after they read any article ( that they got while Googling ) or they checked for things which are labeled FREE Gifts or just FREE !

And we also saw that many people never bothered to see the small subscription links. And they just book marked the URL of sites which they liked.

But some of them subscribed to some blogs[which had some interesting contents] which were showing email subscription form at the end of each article and many others gave their attention to the big email subscription form present in 300 x 250 or 250 x 250 space at the right side sidebar.

So we can say that, we need to show some really big, appealing subscription forms and links, for our visitors and make them aware that we do provide FREE RSS and email subscription options on our site.

So some of the things to remember is:

1. Show email subscription form below each article or in a place where there is high visibility. This would surly increase your subscribers.

and/or

Showing Big subscription forms in 300 x 250 space, in upper part of your blog would encourage them to subscribe.

2. Labeling it as FREE will attract some more non-geeky people to check it out.

3. Call for action: Ask your readers to subscribe to your blog. This is also an effective strategy.

4. Educate your readers about the RSS and email FEED of your blog. This would also bring in some more subscribers.

Also run some experiment session with friends(friends who are non-geeky, geeky), and take care that you don’t do experiments on your blog, with your friends, as they may click on your ads(PPC) and make loss to your advertisers 🙂

If you want to know about your blog/website, just ask your friends or online guys to give you feedback about your site.
5. Run contests or giveaways and attract some more people to subscribe to your email updates.
6. Provide value to your readers and they are more likely to subscribe to your blog updates.

These are some of the basic things which we can implement to get more subscribers to our blog updates.

Now we ask you to support us, in the effort of making this place ( Technotip.org ) as a place which provides value to all our readers. Please subscribe to our blog using RSS or email subscription options: