I was playing with the logs and stats from my Google Analytics account and it really didn’t surprise me that some of the posts that gets the most traffic were the ones that really didn’t have anything to do with internet marketing, blogging or make money online (w/c is the topic of this blog). Here’s a short screenshot from G.A:
Contest posts are naturally high traffic ones due to its intrinsic nature, while some of the other posts here go within the theme of this blog w/c is internet marketing and blogging. The hits from other couple of posts and pages may seem unnatural though. The post about the best birthday gift for the girl I love have the most no. of unique counts and pageviews in terms of posts and the about and photo pages are the most popular in pages.
That is voyeurism at work. It continues to amaze me how offtopic writeups, mostly are personal posts, get so much traction. When I wrote that “teenage-love” affair post I really wasn’t so keen that I would get responses but I was surprised when so many people I do not know commented and gave me their tips. It also went hot on social sites and eventually just got so many traction.
Why it rakes in traffic
People love personal posts, there’s no doubt about it. Most of my readers read my blog because of my expertise in this topic so that being said, any other post outside my niche can either spark a good interest or no interest at all and luckily for me its working on a good side.
Voyeurism is a superb traffic technique just because of the fact that it enhances your relationship your audience. It brings you closer on a more personal basis and in marketing, that’s an added trust and credibility.
Top 3 ways on how to take advantage of Voyeurism
- Build your expertise first and foremost – Ok, you cannot just start a blog and write random personal posts and then expect a heap of traffic. It is not gonna happen. What you can do though, is work on building a presence first, overdeliver good content in your niche and focus on growth. As I’ve said people become more interested on your personal stuffs when they trust you for what you provide.
- Share your personal craps BUT STILL add value – One thing you would notice with all the personal posts is that they all add value. No one wants to read something they wouldn’t enjoy so whether that value accounts for enjoyment, or learnings, its all up to your readers. Just make sure they are going to pick up something useful.
- Don’t hold back anything – People love honest stories and it’s always one thing that people admire. You cannot call that post personal when you’re lying so make sure you don’t hold anything back.
- Limit yourself in doing it – Ok now we know that personal posts are the ones that get good traffic. We also understood that people like it for intrinsic reasons so what now? Make all your posts personal posts? Naah! Like anything there’s a limit. When it comes to superb content, you can’t feed your readers with these each and everytime as they will get overwhelmed. That goes the same with personal posts. Once you abuse the use of it, it would start boring the heck of your readers.
So what now? Here in my blog, I’m proud to say that people like my personality (debatable). I get both good and bad feedbacks but overall I think I’m doing things fine. Voyeurism is an effect of good personal branding and if youre not leveraging it, you’re missing a lot.