Building links and partnerships

Hi,

We've been running our site HipsterTravelGuide for a year now and seem to have plateaued and only have a few links coming in -- what are some of the best ways to build up the links and develop those relationships with other sites? Do blogrolls help? Is that usually a mutual exchange? Should we offer up content to other sites? Is that worth the time?
And don't even get me started on attracting ads? Who has time to write?
Thanks for any help.
Scott

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jools Stone on August 7, 2010 at 9:37am

Hi Scott
I'm sure many bloggers here would be happy to trade guest posts in exchange for links within the posts and on blogrolls, occasional RTs on twitter etc. Myself being one of them.

Or you could choose a topic and invite short tips from lots of bloggers to put in one compilation post. Good example of this here: http://dld.bz/qWxe
Cheers
Jools

Permalink Reply by Scott Burgess on August 7, 2010 at 9:46am

Excellent examples Jools -- and let's do something.
I think the one thing we've done poorly is develop relationships with other travel bloggers -- trading stories, links and ideas are definitely good for everyone.
The compilation post is very cool. Kind of like Along came the manatee -- a story where a different person wrote each chapter -- imagine a travel story that continues from one website to the next to the next, venturing around the world and moving from author to author.
Anyway, I'm off topic again. Thanks.

Permalink Reply by Jools Stone on August 7, 2010 at 12:12pm

Definitely. I like the quirky content on yours BTW, and RTd yr recent post about the Chicago Museum live in experience. Most 'commercial' travel sites don't place enough emphasis on humour I think.

I'm going to do this compilation post thing on my rail blog too, so pls feel free to participate!

Cheers :-)
Jools

Permalink Reply by Joanne O'Sullivan on August 7, 2010 at 9:32pm

Thanks for starting this discussion, Scott. I just started two months ago, and my blog isn't strictly travel per se, but it's I'm trying to find a niche. Love your site, btw!

Permalink Reply by Scott Burgess on August 8, 2010 at 3:57pm

Thanks so much Joanne -- like everyone else, it's hard to devote all of the time to networking and SEO and social pages -- AND provide fresh content to the site every day -- AND have a day job to pay the bills.

We try to focus on travel news and reviews but sometimes get off topic as well.

Love your site. What a great idea on the 101 places to see before you're 12. Great twist. And where did you get the sign Take one, it's free?

One thing that seems to have helped is our Facebook page. And I've started using SocialMarker.com to speed up getting stories up to a lot of networks. (Though even that still takes time because you have to register to all of them. But it has upped the count of unique visitors. But all that feels like a full time job.

What I'd love is some super short cut that takes one minute a day and provides a million viewers -- but no such luck. I've had a little luck with Stumbleupon, but now I can never get two hits off of it. Ugh.

Permalink Reply by Jools Stone on August 8, 2010 at 4:05pm

There's too many SM sites to be effective on I think. But you have to try quite a few to see what works for you I spose. I'm still finding my way but so far have been using twitter a lot, facebook a bit, linkedin a little, tried a few times with SU but haven't really got my head around it or found many people I know on it.

None of this has made much impact on my traffic so far, but it's all good networking I guess!

Permalink Reply by Scott Burgess on August 8, 2010 at 4:20pm

And how Jools, twitter has worked some and I have my site programed to tweet the headline when a story publishes. Twitter can just suck up so much time. You get on there and oops, three hours later.

You're right though, you have to decide for yourself what works. FB has been pretty good for my site -- though I make it a point to only update it once a day. We're sending a reporter to Aruba in a few weeks and will use more twitter on that one.

SU sent 1000 people to one story, but after that nothing. Am definitely going to start a link exchange and will offer up content exchanges to other blog sites that are interested. It's mutually beneficial.

Permalink Reply by Jools Stone on August 8, 2010 at 4:35pm

What's your fbook page Scott? Mine's very new: http://www.facebook.com/pages/He-Thought-of-Trains/115562005163378?...

I use dvlr (?) to post updates to fbook, twitter and linkedin, but also put other stuff on fbook, images, links, quickfire interactive stuff.

And what's your blog about Joanne? (TBEX could make it easier to click through to other blogs direct actually)

Permalink Reply by Scott Burgess on August 8, 2010 at 4:48pm

here's the page url: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/HipsterTravelGuidecom/137872888759?ref=ts

I both liked it and had my page become a fan of it.

Permalink Reply by Clay Kramer on September 24, 2010 at 2:31pm

Scott,

Did you know that you can rename your facebook page so the link isn't so long?
It's simple, after you have 25 likes, and you have way more than that, fb lets you rename your urls. Click on this link and then use the drop down box to select your page:
http://www.facebook.com/username/

Permalink Reply by Joanne O'Sullivan on August 8, 2010 at 4:27pm

Wow, Socialmarker.com looks great- thanks for the tip! I just got the take one, it's free sign on flickr. i agree about the multitasking. What's interesting to me is doing the content research, but of course, that doesn't matter much if no one sees your site!

Permalink Reply by Scott Burgess on August 8, 2010 at 4:50pm

Joanne, it's just time consuming. But we saw some additional numbers after we started using it.

You're right -- the writing and reporting is the fun part -- and of course the traveling. But you have to grow your audience. While I want that growth to be real and organic, there are so many different kinds of sites out there, you have to work out ways to promote it. It's part and parcel with developing your site.