Special Entrecard pages

[Skolor]

I've been analyzing the use of various ways of getting traffic to a website lately in my blogs, in an effort to discuss the planning that should be done for a website. I was considering it while writing out my latest blog post, and wondered what all of you thought about this idea:

Since most entrecard droppers are only there for a few seconds while they're searching for your link, if you want them to be any kind of useful hit, you probably need to grab them and get them to keep reading the page. Assuming this traffic is like any other, to use some terminology I use in my blog, you've got to convert these "Answer Seekers" into "Loyal Followers," who will keep coming back to your blog, not just to drop a card, but to read the posts too. The best way I've found to do this is by grabbing those Answer Seekers, and showing them you've got a lot of useful content that they should be coming back for.

Instead of having your Entrecard links be to the main blog page, why not link them to a special page just for them. Give a synopsis of your blog, a few of the topics you've talked about in the past, and links and summaries of your best/most useful posts. That way, in the handful of seconds that they're on your page they may see something that catches their eye, since its specifically tailored to grab the entrecard traffic.

I haven't really started doing this yet, at least not for my entrecard traffic, but was wondering what you all though about it? I'm in the process of going through my previous posts and pulling them apart, to create such a page. Has anyone else tried this, and is it effective?

[Katalina]

That sounds like an interesting idea. I think the most important idea is that you catch them with content before they get a chance to click away! I would ad a "featured post". I will frequently "get stuck" reading a blog, but I don't know if I would click away to another page.

[Skolor]

Thats kind of what I mean. I've found one blog so far from entrecard that I regularly read, Living on Adsense. What caught me was two things, the icon they used (Homeless guy with code in the background), and when I clicked on it the first time I ended up reading through the entire first blog post because it looked interesting.

What I'm thinking is putting together just a single page all entrecard traffic will directed to that page, which instead of being just my regular blog will be a listing of my more interesting stuff.

I think I'm going to wait until early April to start this. I just added Google Analytics to my site, I want to grab some decent stats on entrecard traffic when it is just directed to my blog, as opposed to what it does when I send them to a special page.

[Ben Barden]

Not a bad idea in theory, but it's potentially another page you might forget to update. It would be better to prepare the front page of your site so any and all visitors get a good overview of your site when they first visit. There's a very good post on this subject: Creating Stop Signs for Site Traffic | Jason Boom

[Skolor]

Thats very similar to what I was thinking.

My main thinking has to do with what I've been talking about lately on my blog. I've been discussing the different types of traffic, and really think entrecard traffic needs to be treating very differently from any other kind of traffic. So much of it is just random, people coming quickly to the site, then leaving right away. A whole lot of sites run a "About" page, so it doesn't to be much of a stretch to change it a little so that the about page gives a clear synopsis of the site, not just a description, but a good entry point for your site too. Then, just link your entrecard ads to that page instead of your index.

I don't use Stumbleupon, but my guess would be that it would good for this too. Any site like that, where you're trying to get the "quick" views to stick around.