We know how administrators love free tools that make their life easier.Here are 10 of the best free tools for monitoring devices, services, ports or protocols and analysing traffic on your network. Even if you may have heard of some of these tools before, we’re sure you’ll find a gem or two amongst this list – and if you know of any others, leave us a comment below!
1. Microsoft Network Monitor
Microsoft Network Monitor is a packet analyser that allows you to capture, view and analyse network traffic. This tool is handy for troubleshooting network problems and applications on the network. Main features include support for over 300 public and Microsoft proprietary protocols, simultaneous capture sessions, a Wireless Monitor Mode and sniffing of promiscuous mode traffic, amongst others.
When you launch Microsoft Network Monitor, choose which adapter to bind to from the main window and then click “New Capture” to initiate a new capture tab. Within the Capture tab, click “Capture Settings” to change filter options, adapter options, or global settings accordingly and then hit “Start” to initiate the packet capture process.
2. Nagios
Nagios is a powerful network monitoring tool that helps you to ensure that your critical systems, applications and services are always up and running. It provides features such as alerting, event handling and reporting. The Nagios Core is the heart of the application that contains the core monitoring engine and a basic web UI. On top of the Nagios Core, you are able to implement plugins that will allow you to monitor services, applications, and metrics, a chosen frontend as well as add-ons for data visualisation, graphs, load distribution, and MySQL database support, amongst others.
Tip: If you want to try out Nagios without needing to install and configure it from scratch, download Nagios XI from here and enable the free version. Nagios XI is the pre-configured enterprise class version built upon Nagios Core and is backed by a commercial company that offers support and additional features such as more plugins and advanced reporting.
Note: The free version of Nagios XI is ideal for smaller environments and will monitor up to seven nodes.
Once you’ve installed and configured Nagios, launch the Web UI and begin to configure host groups and service groups. Once Nagios has had some time to monitor the status of the specified hosts and services, it can start to paint a picture of what the health of your systems look like.
3. BandwidthD
BandwidthD monitors TCP/IP network usage and displays the data it has gathered in the form of graphs and tables over different time periods. Each protocol (HTTP, UDP, ICMP, etc) is color-coded for easier reading. BandwidthD runs discretely as a background service.
Installation is easy. Download and install Winpcap version 3.0 or above (you’ll already have this installed if you have Wireshark on the same box), unzip BandwidthD to a specified folder, edit the ../etc/bandwidthd.conf file accordingly, double click on the “Install Service” batch file and then start the BandwidthD services from the services.msc console. Once the service is running, give it some time to monitor network traffic and load the index.html page to start viewing bandwidth statistics.
4. EasyNetMonitor
EasyNetMonitor is a super lightweight tool for monitoring local and remote hosts to determine if they are alive or not. It is useful for monitoring critical servers from your desktop, allowing you to get immediate notification (via a balloon popup and/or log file) if a host does not respond to a periodic ping.
Once you launch EasyNetMonitor, it will appear as an icon in the notification area on your desktop where the IP addresses / host names of the machines you want to monitor can be added. Once you’ve added the machines you wish to monitor, be sure to configure the ping delay time and notification setting.
5. Capsa Free
Capsa Free is a network analyzer that allows you to monitor network traffic, troubleshoot network issues and analyze packets. Features include support for over 300 network protocols (including the ability to create and customize protocols), MSN and Yahoo Messenger filters, email monitor and auto-save, and customizable reports and dashboards.
When you launch Capsa, choose the adapter you want it to bind to and click “Start” to initiate the capture process. Use the tabs in the main window to view the dashboard, a summary of the traffic statistics, the TCP/UDP conversations, as well as packet analysis.
6. Fiddler
Fiddler is a web debugging tool that captures HTTP traffic between chosen computers and the Internet. It allows you to analyze incoming and outgoing data to monitor and modify requests and responses before they hit the browser. Fiddler gives you extremely detailed information about HTTP traffic and can be used for testing the performance of your websites or security testing of your web applications (e.g. Fiddler can decrypt HTTPS traffic).
When you launch Fiddler, HTTP traffic will start to be captured automatically. To toggle traffic capturing, hit F12. You can choose which processes you wish to capture HTTP traffic for by clicking on “All Processes” in the bottom status bar, or by dragging the “Any Process” icon from the top menu bar onto an open application.
7. NetworkMiner
NetworkMiner captures network packets and then parses the data to extract files and images, helping you to reconstruct events that a user has taken on the network – it can also do this by parsing a pre-captured PCAP file. You can enter keywords which will be highlighted as network packets are being captured. NetworkMiner is classed as a Network Forensic Analysis Tool (NFAT) that can obtain information such as hostname, operating system and open ports from hosts.
In the example above, I set NetworkMiner to capture packets, opened a web browser and searched for “soccer” as a keyword on Google Images. The images displayed in the Images tab are what I saw during my browser session.
When you load NetworkMiner, choose a network adapter to bind to and hit the “Start” button to initiate the packet capture process.
8. Pandora FMS
Pandora FMS is a performance monitoring, network monitoring and availability management tool that keeps an eye on servers, applications and communications. It has an advanced event correlation system that allows you to create alerts based on events from different sources and notify administrators before an issue escalates.
When you login to the Pandora FMS Web UI, start by going to the ‘Agent detail’ and ‘Services’ node from the left hand navigation pane. From here, you can configure monitoring agents and services.
9. Zenoss Core
Zenoss Core is a powerful open source IT monitoring platform that monitors applications, servers, storage, networking and virtualization to provide availability and performance statistics. It also has a high performance event handling system and an advanced notification system.
Once you login to Zenoss Core Web UI for the first time, you are presented with a two-step wizard that asks you to create user accounts and add your first few devices / hosts to monitor. You are then taken directly to the Dashboard tab. Use the Dashboard, Events, Infrastructure, Reports and Advanced tabs to configure Zenoss Core and review reports and events that need attention.
10. PRTG Network Monitor Freeware
PRTG Network Monitor monitors network availability and network usage using a variety of protocols including SNMP, Netflow and WMI. It is a powerful tool that offers an easy to use web-based interface and apps for iOS and Android. Amongst others, PRTG Network Monitor’s key features include:
(1) Comprehensive Network Monitoring which offers more than 170 sensor types for application monitoring, virtual server monitoring, SLA monitoring, QoS monitoring
(2) Flexible Alerting, including 9 different notification methods, status alerts, limit alerts, threshold alerts, conditional alerts, and alert scheduling
(3) In-Depth Reporting, including the ability to create reports in HTML/PDF format, scheduled reports, as well as pre-defined reports (e.g. Top 100 Ping Times) and report templates.
Note: The Freeware version of PRTG Network Monitor is limited to 10 sensors.
When you launch PRTG Network Monitor, head straight to the configuration wizard to get started. This wizard will run you through the main configuration settings required to get the application up and running, including the adding of servers to monitors and which sensors to use.
PA Server Monitor: This powerful server monitoring system is capable of watching Windows and Linux based systems. It can also monitor wide range of network devices installed in a cluster. This software keeps an eye on various critical parameters of the web server and keeps the statistics in a secure database. You can visualize all the monitoring details through user friendly reports. You can also access this software on iPhone and Android through specialized apps made for these two mobile platforms. This application also employs smart algorithms to predict disk usage and other parameters to warn you ahead of any catastrophic event.
Hyperic Server Monitor: This is a complete monitoring suite that supports wide range of system and servers. Freelancers and individuals can use the open source edition to try all the powerful features of this application. You can monitor different types of operating systems, web servers, database servers, application servers, network devices and much more. This application is used by several big brands and is well known for its reliable and robust monitoring modules. It measures the health, performance and resource utilization for each critical component of the server under its surveillance. You also get custom reports for better assessment of each web server's condition.
WhatsUp Gold Network Management: A good server monitoring system is a combination of several dedicated modules for different tasks. This intuitive software provides the same functionality with multiple monitoring modules to keep your web or application server up and running. You can create custom monitors with various set of rules apart from the standard system monitors available in the application. This application is ideal for monitoring multiple system resources in a large network. You can exclude selective components within a network from monitoring modules so that you can concentrate on the most important applications and web servers.
ServerAssist Monitor: This excellent software can be used even by a layman. It's user-friendly and is loaded with tons of server monitoring features. You can customize and activate different types of monitors simultaneously with each one having their own set of rules. There are several alert options along with handy GSM modem integration for keeping check on organization's mobile connections. You also get various standard and custom reporting modules to analyze the collected data through various active monitors. A centralized dashboard gives you quick access to all the active modules for easy management of the entire monitoring system.
Nagios: This is an award winning server monitoring software packed with loads of features. Apart from regular monitoring functionality, its intelligent alert modules also detect various kinds of security breaches to keep your systems clean and in a healthy state. It can also repair certain types of problems automatically without human intervention for quick recovery. It also includes intelligent reporting module that presents trending reports for critical parameters to help you in keeping your servers in good condition throughout the year. You can also configure scheduled maintenance time frames so that its monitoring modules do not give false alarms while you're upgrading or repairing your web servers.
up.time Enterprise: This software is made for professionals and large organizations to monitor their large and complex network of servers and network devices. It can monitor from a single web server up to a large cluster of cloud storage. It supports almost all major software and hardware platforms to give you a custom monitoring solution that suits your requirements. It also has a large number of pre-made custom alerts, reports and monitoring templates to get you started in no time. It also has an intelligent self-healing module that proactively detects common problems and repairs them with minimum intervention. This ensures that you servers experience minimum down times.
Server Nanny: This software is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses using multiple application and web servers for their business needs. It lets you configure unlimited number of custom actions for a single monitor. Its flexible notification and alert system gives you multiple channels to get the critical information as per your convenience. It has a user-friendly interface and stores all the monitoring information in its own database system. It also lets you write your own custom scripts or executables to create custom monitors. Server Nanny includes over 50 different types of custom monitoring templates for easy deployment in different server configurations.
PRTG Network Monitor: You can monitor different kinds of servers through this useful software. It can keep check on application servers, web servers, mail servers, FTP servers, database servers and much more. You can create large number of custom rules for each monitor and can configure custom actions based on the outcomes of various conditions. It can not only monitor server's availability but can also collect large amount of data related to utilization of different resources on the server. This software is very easy to deploy and configure. It also has a free edition that can be used by small businesses to monitor their limited number of web and application servers.
Tembria Server Monitor: This is an extremely flexible all-purpose server monitoring software for IT professionals. It supports creation of graphical layouts of servers and network devices for better planning of monitoring routines. This software also includes large number of custom monitoring templates for quick deployment. Since it a web-based system, multiple team members can work on it from different locations. What I liked most is the types of notification supported by this software. It has also a very easy installation process compared to other products in its category. It also has multiple security modules for maximum protection of your hardware and software assets.
OpManager: This is a perfect solution for monitoring server resource utilization and availability. You can monitor different services and processes on a web server every easily through this software. It can also monitor event logs and various ports on a web server giving you details statistics about every single activity happening during peak hours. This much extensive monitoring generates massive amount of data and to better visualize and understand this data OpManager provides an excellent reporting module. You can create tons of custom reports to drill down into the mine of information gathered through this excellent software. It's must-have monitoring software for Windows-based web servers.
Lithium: This flexible monitoring software can be deployed on Windows, Linux, Mac, iPhone and iPad. It has a gorgeous interface accompanied with equally powerful monitoring system. You can program custom action scripts whenever an alert is received from the software. This gives you the flexibility to trigger complex tasks based on the events happening on the web server. Custom scripts are supported both for monitors and notifications giving you complete control over deployment of a complex rule-based surveillance system. You can also deploy this software on a virtual machine created by one of the popular virtualization software. It can also monitor large array of network devices with ease.
Monitor Scout: It's a robust monitoring system ideal for keeping watch on large number of web servers. You can configure over 50 different types of monitoring systems through this service. It not only monitors server down time, but also keeps check on various internal parameters to asses' web server's health. You can choose different methods for notifications and can configure them easily for each active monitor. You can also configure unlimited number of custom monitors for a single web server or a network device. Its feature-packed reporting module gives you time-based and parameter-based in-depth reports of important monitoring information as per your needs.
Simple Server Monitor: As the name implies, this monitoring software provides simple yet extremely reliable web server monitoring functionality. You can monitor different applications on a single web server and can receive different types of notifications on different communication channels. You can also monitor FTP and mail servers through this software. A master log gives you all the monitoring details at one location. You can also create custom reports for detailed analysis of web server's health and performance. It also lets you enable or disable custom monitors with a click of a button without any need to shutdown or reboot the system.
ProtoMon: You can monitor wide range of servers through this reliable server monitoring software. It has a flexible notification system and supports different types of checks. It also has a Telnet and SSH monitor for monitoring connections of secure file transfers. It also has a powerful script execution module including support for boolean expression filter for maximum flexibility in creating complex actions. You can also launch an external application based on the alert notification to trigger a desired chain of events. I tested this software on a Linux server and found that it is extremely effective and reliable in reporting down times and unavailability of system resources.
FrameFlow: This is yet another free and powerful server monitoring software with a gorgeous interface. It has a strong support for multiple-users with flexible reporting system. This enables large teams to work seamlessly on a complex network of servers, switches and routers. You can create custom threshold levels for different system resources to get notified whenever your web server experience excessive load. You can also switch it to full screen to see the network of monitored assets. It uses graphical nodes with different color schemes for better visualization. You can also schedule emails containing custom reports to multiple team members for timely distribution of vital server statistics.
GSX Server Guard: If you've deployed different types of Windows-based servers, then this software is ideal for you. It is specially made to keep check on multiple Windows servers having different popular applications like Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint. You can also monitor IBM servers through this software. It has a soothing interface with tons of options to get your own customized monitoring system. It has an integrated dashboard to monitor and control all your web servers from a single pane. Its powerful reporting module generates tons of different kinds of reports for system administrators as well as for the senior management.
Big Brother Pro: One can monitor any kind of digital device with an IP address through this software. You can also use large number of useful plugins with this software to deploy a custom monitoring solution. It has a powerful wizard-based configuration system to create custom monitors and alerts. It also uses flash-based graphing engine to show you server statistics for better analysis. You can also use its Map SDK to visualize your servers and other resources on a realistic earth map. This software is ideal for businesses having multiple Windows and Linux servers at multiple locations across the globe. It also has a large and active community of users to help you in understanding its usage.
Ganglia: This open-source and free monitoring system is used by large companies like Twitter, Microsoft, Dell and many more. It is extremely powerful and can monitor wide array of hardware and software platforms. It has a live dashboard that gives you real-time data collected from all the monitored assets. It is made for large and complex network deployments and is able to generate large amount of useful data to refine existing infrastructure. It is also ideal for computer science students to understand the concepts of server monitoring by examining its source code. Needless to say, it has a large community of active developers and users who can help you in correctly deploying it in your organization.
Scout Monitor: This is a reliable hosted server monitoring solution for professionals. You can run it on a typical LAMP stack and can configure it extensively through a web interface. It has a good collection of plugins to configure different kinds of monitoring system easily. This software automatically updates itself without affecting the monitoring routines. It also has a powerful API for power users to take full advantage of all its features. It also has real-time graphs to pick incidents in time. It also works seamlessly with popular cloud services. You can also replicate alerts and triggers across different clusters with a single click. Once can also combine multiple server monitoring statistics in a single graph.
Server Density: This feature-packed server monitoring software is well-known for its ability to send notifications and alerts through different communication channels. You can either get real-time statistics or you can choose to get snapshots at regular intervals. It has interactive report graphs with colored annotations for easy analysis. New users can use its standard metrics to start monitoring their web servers in no time. This software also provides an API for easy extraction of data to use it with external applications. It can monitor both standalone as well as cloud servers without any fail. It also supports notifications on different mobile platforms like iPhone, Android and an iPad. Search engines such as Google are seen as black boxes that hand out page one search rankings for websites and blogs based upon secret and mysterious calculations. In essence that is true.
Hundreds of scientists and mathematicians are constantly working in quiet rooms to increase the artificial intelligence of its search engine.
Some search engine optimisation experts have used devious means to try and trick Google into getting ranked high in search results. This has been done via tactics such as “Black Hat SEO” that are used to try and fool Google. Google doesn’t encourage these activities and is constantly fine tuning its search algorithms to eliminate these practices.
Google’s objectives is to ensure that it is always delivering search results that users find relevant, interesting and also timely. If they don’t keep doing this then people will stop using Google and then its $30 billion of revenue it earns off search advertising is under threat. Also breathing down its neck are rapidly growing social sites such as Facebook that indirectly are providing alternatives to Google (rumours are constantly circulating that Facebook is building its own social search engine). If Google doesn’t continue to deliver then its whole existence is heading for a slippery downward slope of Web extinction.
In the last 2 years Google has increased the importance of usability such as measuring the speed of websites and sites that are producing unique content , hence the targeting of content farms and de-ranking them.
Google Loves Unique Content
What Google does like is great unique content. We have seen the rise in importance of content creation and curation as a marketing tool over the last few years. People use the web to find information, that is why Google is putting such a high value on unique content. Creating great contagious content that begs to be shared such as videos, blog posts and ebooks also has a big side benefit. That benefit is that people will link to your website or blog and hence Google gives you big ticks in its search engine calculations the more often back-links are created to your blog and website from other websites.
This is is where the tactic of “offsite optimisation” starts to make its importance and presence felt and should be included in your SEO strategy. This is the final stage of getting Google to like you.
Off-page Optimization
SEO experts generally agree that off-page link building techniques can contribute around 80% of the effectiveness in any SEO campaign. Off-page optimization or building links, is by far the most important activity for assisting us in getting our website well ranked in search engines. And the key driving force in this, is backlinks.
The Importance of “Back Links
A link, or back-link, is the link that you use to be brought to another page. Backlinks are incredibly important because they are basically like “votes” for your page that tell search engines that other webpages like and utilise your page for information. The more websites that you have linked or “voting” for your webpage, the higher your ranking will be. Though, not all votes are weighted the same, as links from the homepage of major websites, like the Australian Government australia.gov.au, amazon.com or facebook.com, are going to be worth a lot more than a lesser known website.
So here are 6 tips for easy link building:
Tip 1: Competitor analysis
Assuming you won’t be getting many links from those major sites, there still are easy link building tactics available to you. Begin your link building campaign with a competitor analysis. Basically, you want to repeat what your best competitors are doing, as one of the key link building principles is to match and exceed your competitors. Meaning, if you can go through and match all the links they have, or at least a majority of them, and find a couple of other ways to get additional links that they don’t have, you will be able to easily surpass them in searching ranking results.
Tip 2: Content, content and content
As always, the best way to encourage people to link to your website, is by consistently providing new, compelling and useful content. Content, content and content, to steal a well known phrase.
Creating compelling, relevant and useful content; such as writing about your products, industry, general current market information with keyword oriented useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factor discussed here. After the Google Penguin update, regularly posted quality content is the recommended method to getting more traffic to your website. Ideally you should post at least 2 new articles per week, more being better, as Google will favour websites with frequently updated material that contains unique and relevant content. And if your website offers good content, other websites will naturally want to link to you as well.
When you are posting articles, don’t forget to apply the same principles of Title tag and Meta Description to your articles, and don’t forget to include your desired keywords or phrases.
Tip 3: Guest blogging
Other ideas for a successful link building campaign include guest blogging. The general idea behind guest blogs is to get a link to your website posted on an already established website/blog. These links tend to carry more weight in Google because they are harder to acquire. Some sites will have very stringent requirements for the types of articles they will accept, so links from these sites have more value. Another popular and highly successful method is to contact bloggers or webmasters in your niche and simply ask them for a link. Or, ask to be a guest blogger for the sole purpose of getting the chance to link your guest blog posting back to your site. Establishing relationships with reviewers, authors, professors, enthusiasts, topic experts or anyone else who is operating a website in your niche area, whether it be through social networking or message boards, is a great way to build a network of people who might be willing to reference your website in their content.
Tip 4: Join web 2.0 site
Joining a web 2.0 site is an excellent method of developing search engine friendly links. If you are not familiar with the name, web 2.0 is the term used to describe websites that have a social networking component to them. Sites like Squidoo, StumbleUpon, and Delicious generate most of their content from the site users themselves. These types of pages facilitate interactive information sharing as well as collaboration, where you yourself can add articles that include up to 9 free backlinks per article to your website. Don’t duplicate any of your existing articles on your website and use them for either Squidoo or HubPages though, as search engines are filtering out content that way.
The best way to build links and create strong SEO benefits through Squidoo.com is by creating unique content that focuses on your keywords. Always try to incorporate multimedia, such as videos or images to gain more trust and authority quickly. It only takes a few articles until you’ll be able to add on a number of backlinks in your articles to your main site. I also really like Squidoo’s RSS feed widget, as this gives nice backlinks plus context to the links, which is great for search engines.
Tip 5: Vendors, Partner testimonials
Always give online testimonials to your suppliers, business partners or anyone else you can give a testimonial to, as it is a great way to get free backlinks from legitimate websites. Don’t forget to include your strategic keywords into your testimonials and hyperlink it back to the appropriate webpage from your website.
Tip 6: Link request to your connections
And finally, source your own networks for possible opportunities to build more links. Business contacts, suppliers, distributors, family members, friends, even your children’s school, all have the potential for providing you backlink opportunities. If you have been nice to them and they like you, ask for a free backlink on their website. Of course, the higher page rank or relevant websites you can link to, the better. If you can manage to obtain powerful and valuable links from websites like edu.com, that would be highly beneficial to you SEO efforts.
There are a lot more tactics involved in SEO to help you compete and surpass your competitors in search engine ranking results. The aforementioned tactics are basic initial strategies that help build a strong foundation and starting point for your SEO efforts, and will immediately help you move your website traffic and search engine ranking results to the next level.
Twitter remains an enigma for many bloggers and businesses. Many questions are asked. What can I do with 140 characters? What is the point of tweeting? How can I use if for marketing? Should I check all the people who follow me before following back?
These and many other questions bedevil the casual Twitter user who often thinks that social media marketing only revolves around the Facebook universe.
Social media marketing at scale includes participating on as many social networks as possible that are relevant to your target audience. You need to have your brand on the major social networks and build large followings. Enterprise class tools for facilitating social at scale are now starting to emerge from players such as Exact Target and Adobe.
On Twitter one or two tweets per day with a random message to 200 followers is not going to cut the marketing mustard.
How Do you Build a Large Twitter Tribe?
I am going to assume that your blog or website has great content already. Content that has good headlines, published in a range of media types, is well written and structured are important elements in building the foundation to any substantial long term presence online.
Letting people know that you have this awesome information to help them solve problems and provide “how to information” is the magic sauce to take your brand from invisible to visible.
Building a large Twitter tribe is one of the most efficient ways to distribute that content.
How do you do that?
One of the best simple and free tools that I discovered that can help you achieve that and also abides by Twitters terms of use is Tweepi.com.
What are the steps to attract and build Twitter followers using this tool?
Step One: Create an Account on Tweepi
This is quick to do. All you will need is a Twitter account and enter some basic information and you are done. Best of all, it is “free”.
Step Two: Follow the Followers
One of the main drivers of growth on social networks is creating a list of friends and followers from Facebook to Twitter and beyond. This is where the multiplier effect of sharing drives traffic and brand awareness.
In this step we will “follow followers”. So go to the main dashboard area of Tweepi after you login and click on the “follow followers” button
Step Three: Follow the “Big” Names on Twitter
Most of us know who the big names are in your industry. Some will have substantial Twitter followers. It could be photography, surfing or fashion. In social media it is people like Chris Brogan (currently over 200,000 followers). Type in their Twitter name. eg “ChrisBrogan” (remember it must be their exact Twitter “handle”).
Then click “start following”.
Step Four: Follow Forty Followers at Once
You can now follow forty followers of Chris Brogan that are already qualified as interested in social media because that is the main reason they are following him (This is what you call an already qualified list). This can be done with just two clicks.
This methodology can be applied to any industry actegory.
Tweepi applies Twitter rules to allow you to follow a certain number of people on Twitter at a time. Don’t be too aggressive in building a Twitter tribe but take it one step at a time. Follow maybe 20-40 people and see how many follow you back.
As we know on social media networks, if anyone follows you then there is a sense of obligation to friend or follow back (of course not everyone will follow back) but if you have good content then a good percentage of those will reciprocate and follow back. Keep in mind that Twitter will allow you to quickly build the list to 2,000 with no limits. Once you are following 2,000 people Twitter applies a ratio that stops you following more than a 10% larger ratio than follows you.
Example: If 1,900 people follow you then you can only follow 1,900 plus 10% (2,090)
So performing this Twitter tactic regularly will allow you to grow your followers. Just rinse and repeat.
This tactic was a big part as well as the creating and publishing of content on a consistent and persistent basis that allowed me to grow my Twitter tribe to over 100,000.
Early in my social media endeavours, this was vital to grow my tribe on Twitter. Today with 3,000 to 4,000 following each month organically it is not as important.
I look forward to hearing your stories about your success at building your tribes. on your social networks.
Some of these tactics are more effective and direct than others but collectively implemented can create long lasting and organic growth path for your blog.
- Build a large following on Twitter
- Automate the sharing of content on Twitter. (you cannot scale if you don’t do this)
- Link to your blog on Twitter in your profile
- Link to your blog on Facebook
- Share your post (including links to it) on Facebook
- Build an email subscriber list from day one
- Host a webinar (you can capture many emails when you run a webinar)
- Create and publish great content
- Make it easy for people to share your content with a Twitter retweet button
- Ensure you have a LinkedIn sharing button (there are over 230 million users there)
- Include a Google+ sharing button even if you don’t use it very much (over half a billion people there!)
- Facebook sharing button is a must
- Make it easy for people to share your content with a Pinterest sharing button
- Provide an incentive for people to subscribe to your blog by offering a free ebook in exchange for their email address and name
- Place the email subscriber box in a prominent position (top right or even in the top banner)
- Include multiple locations for people to subscribe
- Include an RSS feed option
- Link to your blog from your YouTube videos and channel
- Make your blog easy to read (this will keep them loyal and bring them back)
- Write the best headlines you possibly can
- Guest blog on larger blogs in your industry
- Comment on other bloggers articles
- Reply to comments on your blog posts
- Interview the influential bloggers in your niche and category
- Obtain testimonials from influencers in your industry who have a strong social media presence
- Ensure your blog can be easily read on mobile devices
- Optimise for search engines by using an SEO plugin such as WordPress SEO (Also known as Yoast)
- Write sub-titles with keywords in posts to help your SEO
- Improve your blogs search engine friendly content by including key words in images
- Publish new articles regularly (at least once a week)
- Write long form content that will be a resource for readers (they will link and bookmark it for future reference)
- Place a Facebook ad that drives traffic to your blog (could be an offer of free premium content)
- Provide links to archives on your blog
- List your most popular posts (this is a default WordPress feature)
- Use an SEO friendly online publishing platform like…”WordPress”
- Use a simple design that profiles your content and highlights your focus
- Include “prominent” social media sharing buttons placed at the top of your articles (floating buttons are good too)
- Have your top social media channels displayed in a prominent position so people can easily follow you
- Share other top bloggers content on Twitter and let them know you have shared with an @topblogger mention
- Copy and emulate the strategies of top bloggers
- Write a great introduction that is compelling and draws readers in
- Engage with your readers so that they want to come back and become loyal fans
- Write a blog post that highlights the best bloggers in your industry
- As you build credibility display your awards, wins and social proof in a prominent position
- Link to your blog in your email signature
- Join Facebook groups and participate
- Create a Google+ hangout for a hot topic in your industry and promote it
- Participate in LinkedIn groups
- Create some controversy that attracts attention
- Submit your top posts to Reddit
- Publish articles on Stumbleupon
- Make yourself available to speak
- Have a business card for your blog
- Take photos with Instagram (over 130 million registered users there) and share them on Facebook and Twitter
- Include multimedia in your articles to broaden your blogs reach. Videos, infographics, podcasts and Slideshare presentations are sometimes preferred over learning in a text format.
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