Tips To Increase Your Traffic

Here's what's worked for me: I developed my own unique author branding by creating a Google+ author page, brand-specific Facebook pages and brand-specific Twitter accounts. I've spent the last 5 years developing a following of readers. I post my stories daily on those pages. I also post stories on the TN Facebook page.

As a completely new writer, I am finding the first few months very difficult as traffic is far harder to come by than even a year ago. However, it seems longer form content is working the best these days, like 1,000+ word articles and then hitting as many Facebook groups as possible.

Some resources - headline analyser https://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer

Dave, Denis, Marc, you're all dead on the money. Second only to building a consistent return readership is the 'hook" of the headline, and today with Google, a compelling headline is not always good enough to secure top search placement in Google Search. My highest volume page reads come on days when I buckle down and commit myself to 3 articles, but not always. The increased activity generally pushes Honda-Torque News to a higher search position. Social media: For me that's a 1 to 2% crap shoot. It's taken 4 years to build Honda-Torque News. Believe me, there are days i'd like to hang it up. Yes, I make a dollar or two. But for me, it's the cars that I drive and the people I meet along the way that keep me on the keyboard. You must love everything automotive to do what we do. It's a tough gig with reward (sometimes) commensurate to the amount of research based sustenance one is willing to inject into the article. This is not 'a cut and paste' gig. Originality of content pays off in increased readership over time. Success in this gig comes from qualifying yourself as an expert resource for consumer and manufacturer generated automotive news. In a day of 300 word sound bites, that's a tall order. Thank you for the tips gentleman. Best of luck to all of us.

I agree with Marc, Dave and Parks! I’ve also found there’s so much more to it than social media. It’s really about being consistent, writing compelling stories, being the expert, finding out what your readers want to know, and studying your craft. Spend as much time on the title as you do writing the story, coming up with unique angles to the news, creating an engaging first line, and first paragraph, creating news, not being driven by it, coming up with stories that connect with the reader, and then all the SEO stuff that makes a story stand out. I do a lot of research on my stories to see what’s working and what isn’t. I’ll go back one full year and analyze my work. There’s a lot to it, it takes time, but your efforts will pay off if you keep at it!

Whenever possible I try to insert links from other TN writers in my stories. Use the search bar to find related work. There is always something. Armen suggests to always try to ask a question or leave something unanswered and use the link as the answer. It drives more traffic. In this particular case, I didn't have that format, but I used Dave's prior story on fuel economy as a link.

These is a little code snippet I also use to make it open in a new window. That way, the reader does not leave your story midway through. The way it works is you create the link as normal using the pub tool, then you insert this code below between the last occurrence of these two characters: ">

The code you insert is target="_blank"
I usually leave the last link in my story without that code, figuring the story was almost finished and the reader may prefer to just jump to the next. Check out how the links in my story work:
http://www.torquenews.com/1083/what-does-three-time-prius-owner-think-hyundai-ioniq-hybrid
I have to credit Patrick with showing all of this to me. I have a more explicit explanation he wrote I can e-mail you if mine is not clear to you.

The next idea is participation in FB clubs and on-line forums. Armen and I have started or taken over a number of FB clubs. We keep that to ourselves, but it's not really a secret at the clubs that we also are TN affiliated. Check out the Lexus RC Club as an example. We look at the member's comments and we find story ideas. Sometimes, a sort of "Super-user" emerges and we befriend them (honestly) and we then create content around the work they do. This is better than just letting them guest-write for TN in two ways: 1) Keeps our quality at acceptable levels 2) Gives you a topic!

One related idea is to insert your story into a club you don't "own" as the admin. I urge caution doing this. Much better to send your submission to an admin and request it be inserted. Once you get kicked out of a club for "Trolling" or "Spamming" there is no going back. You may have noticed that I submit a weekly story based on the Tesla FB Admin's Youtube video. This is an example of our cooperation, but it is not common. Even though I do this for him, I still no longer insert stories into his club, even though he would not ban me for it. Rather, I may wait and if I get something truly special and unique, I may ask him to insert it for me. Armen and I still do sometimes post a TN story in a forum, but it is with some serious forethought. We learned some lessons the hard way. If we collectively are sloppy about this, TN could get a bad reputation. Some TN writers don't do it at all. They feel it is not OK, and I see their point.