A viral blog post is a good thing: Podcast 192

Detroit Creative Labs Podcast – Photographer Edition – You don’t need to be from Detroit nor a photographer to be apart of this digital marketing and social media experiment.
Time: 30:00
Podcast host: Rosh Sillars
This weeks show notes: Driving traffic to your blog. 17 things photographers should not do, reinforce what works, How can social media make you money?, Weekly email from Linkedin, Instagram, Best Business Practices for Photographers by John Harrington.
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February 13, 2012 at 7:40 am

Rosh, congratulations on your viral post. I read it when it first showed up in my inbox, thank you for the generous contribution. You spoke about your blog post on 17 things photographers should not do and how this particular post has gone viral but beyond the obvious (getting a lot of people to read it) what difference does it really make? I mean, you never know when something will turn into something else, like a job, right? So from that standpoint more traffic is great. Sometimes jobs come out of nowhere – as you described in your podcast – but are you purely excited about your viral post (from the business perspective) because the more eyes that see your material, the more chances there are that you might get hired to shoot? Or, do you have a direct way to monetize the traffic, and if so how are you doing that, and finally, you talked about doing something with all that traffic, i assume you mean beyond hoping that one of them will call you and give you photography project – whatever that might look like. Could you please give us 5 specific things, or more since you like numbers, and if you have time, that we can do with the data? How much data do you get, and what do YOU use it for when it comes to traffic? You’re so exited about producing a viral post, and rightly so, but tell us how youre turning that traffic (mostly unexpected) into useful information and even more importantly, profits – recognizing that there is inherent value in good, well, great traffic! Thank you and keep up the great work.

Rosh says:

February 13, 2012 at 7:55 am

Tony,

More than anything it is nice to have confirmation of your work once in a while. I have solid traffic each month, but to have an entire months worth of traffic in one day is exciting. I could write an entire post about what I learned from the data…. mmmmm.

What is the benefit? More people linking to my site and solid social media activity improve my over all SEO for my portfolio sites connected to roshsillars.com. That feeds my family.

Plus, more new subscribers and followers tends to lead to more speaking gigs.

Good questions Tony. I’ll make sure to recap and reference your other questions in the next podcast.

Rosh

1. Tony Bynum says:
  
  February 13, 2012 at 8:10 am
  
  Rosh, thank you for the follow up, and for agreeing to cover this topic in more detail later. I hope you dont mind me digging a little deeper and throwing out more refined questions (you dont have to answer them in this post). I hope you consider digging deeper into: “That feeds my family.” By that I mean, how are you monetizing the direct traffic, or are you? Are you turning the traffic directly into cash, and what specific analytic’s data are you gathering that then helps you formulate additional strategies? Thank you again from snowy, and still cold, Montana! Tony
  
  1. Rosh says:
    
    February 13, 2012 at 8:28 am
    
    Yep, I’ll get into all that in the podcast.
    
    But, I will say, my focus has never been to directly monetize the traffic to my blog. I my goal was the indirect benefits such as SEO, speaking and photography opportunities. I’ve not accepted advertising or sponsors over the last 4 years. Except for my own stuff like the book (another benefit from my blog). I just put Selina Maitreya’s link on my site a couple weeks ago (it is an affiliate link), but only because I like her and her work.
    
    Rosh

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