January was my first full month of blogging in which my goal was to post at least one post per day, Monday through Friday. I did pretty well with posting on most days, but also missed a few in which I was able to make up for on the weekends. I thought I would have trouble finding topics, but between current events, some mind mapping I did at the beginning of the month, and simply remembering to write about some of the techniques that I regularly use, topics were not a problem. As I wrote more posts, new topics came to mind that I could add to the list, so topics should not be a problem for a time to come.

Here are some stats from Google Analytics that I was able to achieve in January. The numbers are not bad for the first full month and they set a good baseline for the months ahead. Using these numbers I can set goals for February and measure the percentage improvement.

Some of the January results:
Visits – 302
Pageviews – 546
Pageviews/Visit – 1.81
Time on Site – 2:05
% of Traffic From Search Engines – 30%

I am pleased with the 300 visits in January considering that I did not start posting until the 6th of the month and did not do any promotions on the blog. All of the numbers trended positively over the course of the month and with an average time on the site of over 2 minutes I can only expect that stat to improve as more content as added to the site

Goals for February 2010

My goal for February is to improve on the results from January and increase traffic to over 1,200 visits. That represents 4oo% increase in visits. It sounds optimistic, but without any outreach to increase traffic in January, a small effort in February should help to increase traffic. At least that’s my plan.

How I Plan To Meet My February Goals

I expect to be even more busy in February than I was in January, but there are some steps I will take ti increase traffic that I believe will have the biggest impact. Some of the techniques I will use are:

Social Media Submissions – I submitted two posts to StumbleUpon in January which drove 22 visitors. In February I will submit every post to Stumbleupon as well as other sites like Digg, Delicious and Reddit using Social Marker to save time. I would expect social media sites to drive at least 300 visitors in February.

Increase Twitter - My twitter account, @briankeithmay, only has about 80 followers right now and will have to increase for better exposure from Twitter. I will probably use Tweet Adder to increase my followers. In order to reach my goal of 1,200 visits in February, I will need over 1,000 twitter followers by the end of the month. I expect Twitter to drive over 200 visitors to the blog in February either through posts that I tweet about or through link on my profile page.

Post Four(4) Video Posts to Youtube – Although, I am not sure of the topic, I will post videos to Youtube that are training on some topic related to internet marketing or just life in general that may drive some traffic back to the site. My expectations for traffic from Youtube postings is pretty low, but it will help me to understand how to post videos best for success and which topics perform the best.

Three(3) Guest Posts – To increase links and to increase traffic, I will guest post on 3 other blogs throughout February. Since I have not identified any targets for guest posting, this will be more of a challenge, but it must happen if I am going to meet the goal of 1,200 visitors in February.

Facebook – With over 800 friends on Facebook, I will post at least 4 posts over the course of the month and my expectation is that I can receive at least 100 visitors from Facebook over the course of the month, Now that I type this I also think I may create a fan page so that I can get a message out to a group more frequently and more quickly. Facebook should become a nice traffic source.

Carrying through with each of the methods that I listed coupled with direct type in traffic and search engine traffic, I should comfortably be able to reach my goal of 1,200 visits in February. If you are reading this and want to help out, pass this post on to a friend or a hundred and help me reach my goal for February. I also have a personal goal of losing 10 pounds in February. This will simply require discipline in going to the gym regularly and eating better and staying away from the fast food.

The goals for this month are kind of aggressive but very attainable. I expect February to stand as the groundwork for even more aggressive goals in March. I will update my goals list on March 1st to let you know the results. Let’s go!!!

Can Twitter be effective for small business owners? It really just depends, but for most small business owners the answer is no. Small business is typically defined as smaller than $50 million in annual revenue. If that is the criteria, then the higher end of the range could possibly make twitter effective, but the lower end of the range, less than $15 million, are probably not going to see great results from twitter. There are a few reasons for this assessment.

1. Twitter requires a significant time investment – For a small business on the higher end of the range, it is more likely that hey will have a full marketing department and resources that could be fully or partially dedicated to to Twitter and other social media efforts. For smaller businesses, this task will most likely fall on someone who is fairly overextended already, therefore an analysis must be done to determine if the time investment is worth the uncertain returns. In most cases, the answer is a resounding no! Twitter can be effective for some, but there are many more sellers on Twitter looking to sell their products than their are buyers. For that reason, the time that it takes to interact and influence the buyers is significant and competitive. Keep that in mind when trying to measure results of your Twitter efforts.

2. Difficult to cut through the useless chatter – Attempting to have  a true business conversation on Twitter is equivalent to attempting to talk business in a crowded nightclub with the music blaring. Some things will be heard, but expect most of the conversation to be missed by your target audience. On average, most people are “following” a few dozen people which in many cases includes celebrities who constantly update their Twitter statuses. Your messages may get lost in the chatter many times or surrounded by more interesting chatter, therefore causing your message to get lost. Twitter success is a numbers game in that it requires large volumes of updates and constant interaction to cause any positive results.

Twitter will continue to dominate the news channels for a time to come, but due to the overwhelming amount of time required for the uncertain return, my recommendation is that Twitter is good for customer service or branding, but is not a great plan for business development.