Read Before You Drop or Do Some Favor Before Leaving
I read an interesting post at blogSMARTER.dk wherein the blogger observed that most of his Entrecard droppers seem to just come and drop their cards then leave immediately without actually reading anything. For this reason, he wrote that post in an attempt to start a “read before you drop campaign”.
It’s really undeniable that although Entrecard generate hits to our blogs, the bounce rate is very high which indicates low quality visits. This may mean that the contents aren’t relevant to your visitors or simply it is none of their interest.
If you are an MMO blogger, you will rarely receive a good conversion with very high bounce rates. At least, one of the benefits you’ll obtain from Entrecard dropping is that it helps improve your Technorati and Alexa rank. This may help your blog obtain higher placement on the search engines.
Do Some Favor
Alternatively, you can choose to drop and read before leaving. This ensures that you will not forget the drop. Most of the time, I forget to drop after reading a post especially when leaving a comment or clicking on some features of the blog that interests me.
Maybe one way to at least do some favor to the host bloggers we visit and drop our cards is to leave a comment, click an ad, or click on some featured links that does not let you exit from that blog. This tells the browser that you have visited other pages on that site and that will help reduce the high bounce rate problems.
More Than a Two Word Comment
We should not overlook that within the Entrecard community many are professional bloggers and many are great writers too. They are writing a really helpful and informative posts which greatly benefit new and learning bloggers like me. Also many blogs especially the personal ones are downright entertaining and life encouraging.
At times I’m awestruck by the in depth thoughts and well written post that I’m always tempted to comment with the usual two-word comment spams like “great post”, “nice post”, “awesome”, “great job” and then just leave it to that. However, I learned from serious bloggers that with these kinds of comments, you may not really giving a real heartfelt applause to the blogger.
What if you really don’t have anything to say? The post is carefully written that almost every angle has been covered and you felt that you have nothing to add. Aside from giving them your words of encouragement, maybe you can add more to your appreciation by:
- Adding their post to Digg
- Tagging them on Delicious
- Giving a thumbs up on StumbleUpon
- Favoriting them on Trechnorati
- Linking them on your post
Update June 10 2009: Sigh, This post is an influence of reading blogs that belong to the so-called A-List bloggers and following their recommendations.
If only I have known earlier that making money chasing social traffic is not for everybody especially for beginners.
You hit the nail right in the head. Is my phrase correct? Yes, you’re right, Interesting posts should be written to let the dropper stop and read. like this one (grins). At first , I just dropped and dropped but I realized that there were many good posts and that , I should read them , so I started browsing and then dropping simultaneously.
Well written post. Thanks for sharing.
I really agree with it… few days ago I have 75 readers with about 75 page views from entrecard and that means they only come just to drop
I think it’s fun to drop my card on the widget and then click on the card that’s on the widget itself. I figured if I did that then the advertiser would consider buying an ad on that widget again, considering the potential exposure from the clicks. Although I must admit I’ve gone through a drop and run phase, especially on days when I haven’t dropped from the previous one or two days.
Hrm.. May i correct you? it blogSMARTER.dk not blogMaster.dk.
Put thanks for the post
@ Jena Isle. Thanks for visiting and reading. I love your short stories at your blog. I’ll be visiting it for more entertaining reads.
@ mxyzpl. Thanks for sharing. We are not oblige, of course, to do that favor. It’s our own choice if we want to make the host blogger happy.
@ bambit. Thank you for the tip. It’s actually one of the indirect ways of doing some favor for the blogs we drop.
@ Jacob Bager. I’m sorry making for your blog’s title as blogMaster.dk instead of blogSMARTER.dk. Corrections made.
Very helpful information and reminders! Although I comment on sites as much as possible, I usually forget to go the next step to Digg, Stumble, etc. I hope others read your suggestions as well.