Meme’s, love them or hate them. No one is usually ambivalent toward them. They can actually help you drive traffic if you are involved in the right ones.

For those not familiar with the concept a Meme is similar to a virtual game of tag. A topic is selected, something along the lines of “5 Things I Can’t Live Without”, or “7 Things I will Miss From The 20th Century”. A group of bloggers are then sent the challenge of writing this list, we all know how popular list posts are with readers. Each of those bloggers then sends the challenge on as a “Tag” by linking to their fellow bloggers in their post.  Each person who is tagged completes the list and includes the person that tagged them (with a link to their site) in their post.

So what’s the benefit to you as a blogger? Well, firstly, your readers get to know a little more about you as a person rather than just your usual topic. That never hurts, after all its all about “Social” media. Secondly, you generate a bunch of outbound links, which will show up on other bloggers stats, which means that at least some of them will reciprocate. Lastly, because each person you tag, if they join in, will include a link back to your site, it immediately adds both authority to your site (inbound links) and opportunity to drive new readers to your blog.

So, go have some fun with your blog.

Popularity: 2% [?]

That headline says its all.  How To’s & List’s are the number one way to increase traffic to your blog.  Readers love finding them and most importantly want to share them with their own network.

Lists of the top 10, top 20, even odd numbers like the top 7 things catch people’s eye.  You can derive the content from your own experiences.

The Top 7 ways to make money on the Internet - would you read that? I would, and if I found it useful I would be sure to share it with my network.

While you might want to write great pieces of prose about the state of the nation, or why the world is the way it is.  While these will attract some readers, if you want to get your message to a wider audience then make sure to mix these up with useful How To’s and Lists to increase the number of people who get to read those pieces.

Popularity: 3% [?]