Alex Mandossian Visited My Blog

Several weeks ago I wrote a post about resources to use as an entrepreneur. In that post, I listed several people who are influential in internet marketing and on-line business development. One of these is Alex Mandossian who is considered one of the top-ten freelance direct marketers in the United States. At certain times of the year when he is doing a specific promotion, you can’t help but receive emails from many sources hailing the wonder of his products.

My point today is not to tell you about Alex, really, but to tell you about some technology that he has reminded me is important for coaching entrepreneurs. After mentioning his name here, I discovered that someone from his blog had visited mine! That was fun in itself, but the important points are how he knew to visit me and how I knew he had done so.

First, let me tell you how Alex knew I had mentioned him.  When you have a blog you have a private page that tells you all the current details of your blog.  This is called your dashboard.  You are reading a WordPress blog right now and WordPress automatically gives you a widget (a little piece of software) on your dashboard that goes out and looks for all the incoming links to your blog.  You may have to periodically click “see all” to keep it up to date, but the info is brought right to your dashboard.  This is probably how Alex knew I had mentioned him and had given you that link to his blog.  The incoming links widget is a great way to see who is interested in your writing and exactly what content they have linked to.

Secondly, it is vital that you monitor the traffic to your blog like you would a website.  The best, least costly way to keep track of traffic is to use Google Analytics.  You or your web designer can install this for free on your blog in very little time.  This will then tell you how much traffic you are getting, where visitors came from, what key words they used to find you and much more.  For example, I am currently watching to see how much traffic comes from my recent appearance on WS Radio so I can determine if I should continue pursuing that marketing strategy.  My tracking system told me about Alex’s visit.  When I reviewed my traffic sources detailed report, there was Alex Mandossian listed on the websites that visitors had arrived from.

So thanks, Alex. Your visit was fun for me and gave us an opportunity to discuss some important technology. It’s amazing all that we can know today by using technology wisely.