How to pull traffic from myspace.com to regular blog

Is your traffic on your myspace blog following links or searches and just happening to arrive there or are they visiting your blog every day as a destination?

To pull traffic to a new site it is a good idea to post parallel on both sites and include a fancy link to the new site.

Use FeedBurner for your new site RSS feed from the beginning and include that FB promotion box at the end of your new articles on the old site.

Also all promotion efforts should go to the new site.

they are visiting as a destination I have over 4,000 "subscribers" and there is also a blog rankings chart that I usually place in the top ten which will draw additional traffic.

I have had weeks where I have had over 50,000 readers.

"FB promotion box at the end"

That is an excellent idea. I have been using the FB e-mail subscribe at the bottom of my blog. But I think the promotion box would be great to advertise the main page feeds where all the blogs are updated.

I do have a banner ad at the top of the blog and on my page. I really want to explore how to get other readers as well away from myspace. Although myspace was the easiest way to build a big following in a short period.

One thing you can do is constantly link to the other "for more info", "more like this", "other stuff you might be interested in ...". An email list and prominent RSS Feed are also good tips.

Are most of your existing subscribers also myspace users?

It might not be worth risking annoying your myspace users, but you could try posting partial posts on myspace and then have a link to your other site with the full article.

If you are going to try and get people to live myspace to read your rss feed, you will probably want to include a nice post on your myspace blog telling people what rss is and how it can help them track blogs that they like.

That 4,000 number is my myspace subscribers. The feedburner e-mail subscriber setup we started just cleared 400 people. Which I am sure is probably mostly myspace people.

We have started doing "exclusive" postings which has worked well. Where we just post the link to the pointless banter blog of the writer in their myspace blog.

As far as RSS feeds go and explaining them I really like that idea. Myspace blog readers really don't know about blogging off of myspace. Most don't know what feeds are. I really like the idea of writing a blog and explaining it.

I just want to thank everyone who has responded so far. I am so glad I found this site and plug-in!

Kev,

Remember that MySpace is one of the highest trafficked websites on the net! In my opinion, you should mirror the content on PointlessBanter and MySpace for a while, and slowly move towards only putting teasers on Myspace with links to the full story on PointlessBanter.

Here's an example, a user goes onto your MySpace blog and sees this headline, "PB Reveals The New Lineup" or something catchy like that, then the body of your MySpace blog should be a link to PointlessBanter.

Also, please be aware that MySpacer's and those who visit blogs are not necessarily the same demographic. Just check out Tom's profile sometimes, most of the users are comparing him to Sergey Brin and Larry Page from Google. What does that tell you regarding how much Internet knowledge MySpace users have?

Readers of blogs are a much more different beast. They are shrewd, critical, and are drooling for valuable content. I don't mean this to sound arrogant, but you almost are catering to a higher class of Internet user.

Good luck with PointlessBanter, I wish you much success!

First of all I like the idea about the links to the blogs.

But I have to say you are way off base with your comments about demographics of users on myspace. The site has 94 million people and it is very diverse. While I agree there are a lot of not so sharp teens on there the site is just like any other community where there are people of diverse interests. It's just a matter of knowing where to find them.

I have been working on a book proposal and have spent a lot of time looking at the demographics of my readers on myspace. While I have only randomly polled 500 profiles of the 4000+ subscribers I have so far, would you like to take a shot at the age of my average reader?

18?
19?
20?
22?

Try 27 years old, mostly college educated, with a 2.5 female to every 1 male ratio.

While I want to pull my audience from myspace to pointlessbanter.net I can't knock the site. Because of myspace I landed a webtv show on musicplustv.com and will probably end up with a book deal after initial talks with a few agents. Plus I have had my writing read by head writers from Hollywood shows such as the Soup on E!.

I have learned how to work that site inside and out. How to build an audience and a strong network of people (the writers for PB.net have had well over 5,000,000 page impressions on myspace and have over 50,000 combined subscribers).

I just find it interesting how totally different the two worlds are. People on myspace have no idea about the blogging world outside of it. While bloggers off of myspace have no understanding of the value of myspace and what it can do for you.

What I want to do is learn to bridge the gap between the two and also help people to do the same.

@Kevin: That will be a fascinating process to follow. Please keep us informed.

I have checked pointlessbanter.net and the myspace equivalent this morning and I think that pointlessbanter.net is a really big and impressive blog network!

BTW, I would be very interested to hear about myspace from a pro-blogging perspective. How to promote, how to get the audience, how to build the site, ...

I am one of the many who have no idea what myspace might be good for (from the publisher side).

If enough people were interested about it maybe I could blog about it here.

I would definitely read it. My brother is mid-30s, my wifes nephew is 17, they both use the system but completely differently. Personally I have never found anything in it to hold my interest but I have always felt I should know more about it. It is like a micro web all of its own.

Yeah, I would totally be interested.
I've created an account on myspace just to see what it does.
Initial reaction was how ugly it was... didn't do much after that.

But like Chris says, it's a whole micro (almost macro) web of it's own that would be good to know. Being 24, my friends who use it just use it to scope out hopeful dates when they travel in different cities.

You have really collected your stats on this one. I didn't mean to imply MySpacer's were "stupid" or anything of that nature. I just get the impression they are two different worlds, and bloggers seem to be more picky about everything. Then again, my blog caters to tech-heads more than the mainstream users.

If you could continue to blog about your status regarding PB, I think you would be doing everybody here a favor.

With the groups on myspace you can find plenty of tech heads. There really is something for everyone.

Once I get caught up with some things (probably a week or two) I will layout some of the things I have done. Give everyone more info on myspace and how to make the most out of it.

And look for your feedback in making the transition.

Thanks in advance for more info on myspace!

Regarding the transition: Maybe you could let us know in general what you are planning and if implemented we could have a look at it? Just an offer ...

"Maybe you could let us know in general what you are planning and if implemented we could have a look at it? Just an offer ..."

Cool well let me tell you what I have done...

We have a two pronged look at it. We need to build an audience off of myspace as well as pulling traffic from it.

Search Engine Registration
-Google sitemaps for all blogs
-Register with major search engines

Blog directories and feed services
-make sure everyone is registered there (on going)
-technorati registration of all blogs (main page is ranked 7,704 so in less than six months we went from over 1 million to the top 10,000 which makes me kind of happy)

E-mail subscription to main page RSS feed to let people know it is update
-Created with feedburner 400+ people currently registered (need to get all the writer mentioning it)

This month we began asking the writers to post two exclusive blogs on pointless banter a month with direct links to them from their profile. That has increased site traffic by 50%. I would like to increase the frequency but feel it isn't worth it doing it at this time in the year.

Also I have made the main page a little more interactive. The front page has a chat box and a poll that is updated every couple of days.

Our next idea is to possibly hold a "blogging tournament" and post it in all the myspace groups. Which would draw a lot of traffic and attention to the site but that won't go down to September. I think we could get a few hundrand entrants which would be a good way to increase awareness of the site.

Also I am debating to dump the money I have earned from t-shirts and google ads into ad words. I am leary of doing that though. Any thoughts?

Any other suggestions?

The thing which is missing on your list is using a ping service like ping-o-matic.

Make sure to use it for every article posted and for every RSS feed published through FeedBurner.

Maybe some of your blogs or all are doing it automatically but it is worth checking.

Regarding RSS you should find out what kind of RSS feeds your blogs can publish (keyword RSS, category RSS, section RSS, comment RSS) and start submitting changes via i.e. ping-o-matic.

Check the thread about side kicks. It might give some inspiration.

Below the line I think that you are doing very well!

I have the automated pings set up in feedburner and added a few more than the standard ones that are in there. Should I still ping anyways? I did notice some lag between technorati which showed that I hadn't updated the main page in three days.

Maybe the automated pings aren't the way to go?

Thanks for the link I am going to read it right now! Thanks for all your help!

FeedBurner pings for the RSS Feed.
Your site can ping for the page itself.

In my experience Technorati is slow in indexing new entries even if you ping them manually. But I don't have tag links (!) in my excerpt RSS feed because the tags are added to the homepage list view but not the syndicated content and I am too lazy to manipulate the feed code.

Using the tag microformat in the RSS feed should significantly boost Technorati. Adding the tags i.e. through PFF does that work pretty well but you have to make readers understand that these links are outbound searches.

Feedburner was mentioned a couple times above, but let me add a couple details:

First, you might consider using Feedburner's 'BuzzBoost' function it takes the feed of your blog out of myspace, and provides the code that you can stick in your MySpace Blog. This(depending on your setting) will provide the headline, date of article, and 10-20-50-100 words of content, or full content in Myspace, plus with the setting it creates a link to that article.

So the user gets a nice crisp code, you only have to drop in the feedburner-buzzboost code once(let the feed take care of the rest) and you have that instant enticement to your new blog.

I personally use the headline animator(box) from feedburner to provide links in Myspace to my other blogs and this works well for me, but I don't have near the MySpace traffic that you do.

If you don't use Feedburner, you might consider setting the tag, such that when someone does click on the link for 'more' of the post, it will open your blog in a new window, that way they won't get upset about getting moved out of the MySpace Environment.

Last point, I'd suggest that you post a full article in your MySpace Blog anouncing your intention to move into your own blog space, so that people understand what's going on and don't get upset about getting shuffled around.

I wouldn't recommend it, but from a slightly black hat perspective it might be possible to put in a redirect - automatically moving someone from your MySpace page to your blog. "This blog has moved, and you will be redirected in 5 seconds." or something.(Curious what other users will think of this last one.:)

Can I link to multiple blogs in the buzzboost? Or is just the feed to my one blog?

I would love to find a headline tracker that will rotate through a bunch of the blogs on the site.

The one thing I am worried about when just putting a link up to my other site is that I am a "top ten blogger" on myspace. There are daily rankings and I usually place in the top ten based of views, comments, and kudos. I keep building an audience that way and I don't know if I want to totally move off of myspace while the numbers are increasing.

I might do every other day on there with one post on my site and the other on myspace.

I am stuck with the quest to grow an audience and the need to bring them to my own site.

@Kevin: What you are doing is 'forking'. It's up to you how and how long your content runs parallel. I dfinitely would not let the traffic on myspace die!

Regarding FeedBurner: As the name tells you you are feeding FeedBurner with Feeds (sorry just kidding). You can take your feed(s) and aggregate them before handing them over to FeedBurner. There are plenty of such scripts and some of them will generate a new aggregated feed which you can promote through FB.

Just found this in my del.icio.us bookmarks rssmix.com :-) Not tested but there are some more links to RSS parsers on that site.

I haven't practiced that so I can't give you specific recommendations but it should not be too hard to find out. Take a look at concepts like SuprGlue, PubSub, Bitty Browser to get an idea.

And as I have said in another comment you can bookmark all blogs in one specific del.icio.us account, add excerpts in the notes and let FeedBurner burn that aggregated feed which can then be published again on all blogs like a blog network content blogroll.

Last tip: Go to BlogBridge and create an RSS guide for all your blogs. They might love to have you as guide author. Just ask.

The problem is I would have to rely on everyone updating that on a consistant basis.

I am looking into parsers. The site you listed only lets you do four. I need to find one that will allow you to do multiple ones. That is online based... I am looking into it now.

Thanks again for your help!

I just used feedshake to combine some of the blogs and it didn't work. Feedburner doesn't like feed shake...

The problem is I have so many blogs on that site that they are too large for one feed. So I am going to do it by section of the site. I need to find one that will parse like ten blogs.

http://feedblendr.com/

Perfect for what I am looking for

I've read a few posts here from people saying mirror the content from your myspace pages, to your new blog - this is the last thing I would do unless you want your pages removed from Google for duplicate content.

Whilst you have a good readership on myspace, I would continue with that AND write unique material, but regularly post different content on your blog, and link to these blog entries from myspace.

Over time you'll see more users sign up for your RSS, and move over to your blog.

rssmix.com: "Mix any number of RSS feeds into one unique new feed!"

That was what I was reading. Only four would be disappointing.

Okay so here are a few of the tricks I am trying to draw traffic away.

Besides the exclusive posting I am going to hold a large blog tournament on myspace. I am going to plaster blogging groups on the site and other blogging forums around the net (more like traffic exchanges like blog explosion and other pop culture blogging type places).

I talked about it in my blog today and in a few groups and already 80 people have joined the group and 25 people have submitted blogs. I hope to get about 250-300 entrants. The first few rounds of the contest will be decided by flash polls so bloggers on myspace will ask their readers to go vote. This will have two outcomes. Links in blogs to increase the sites technorati rating, and also traffic going to the site. (Which hopefully will lead to increase ad revenue as well.)

The next idea I have is to start a streaming radio station. The hosting costs will increase but my google ad revenue will offset the cost. I figure it is another reason to get people going to or keeping them on the site.

Thoughts, input, reaction, boos?

amazing traffic buddy

Has anyone tried naming your myspace profile and google group the name of your domains. for example. naming my google group www.poker-id.com. I've read this is a great way to brand your domain, but I have not had any success...

Mike,
yes, I have tried that strategy. but have had no success. no bots have visited such social groups. neither have it produced any hardlinks to my main site.