Back in December, when Google launched its real-time search, it was predicted that Twitter was going to receive a big increase in traffic, which had previously declined after a peak in the summer of 2009. So far, it looks as though those predictions were true after all. According to comScore data, there has been a 9 percent increase of unique visitors to Twitter — between December of 2009 and January 2010. The all time high was reached in January, with 21.79 million unique Twitter visitors; this number is slightly above the 21.25 million that was recorded in July of 2009, by comScore. By the end of 2009 (December), the count for unique visitors was up by 3.1 percent, over November.

Twitter seems to have seen a great impact in the month of December, thanks to the December 7 launch of Google’s real time search. Then according to Experian Hitwise, the data suggests that it was Google that was the main source for the increase in traffic to Twitter. The amount of traffic that was coming from Google was increased by 9 percent, compared to the week ending December 5 and the week ending February 13; the count jumped from 12.8 percent to 14 percent in this time period. Hitwise too saw a 5 percent increase in market share of U.S. visitors within the same time period.

It seemed only natural that Google decided to launch Buzz (a supposed competitor of Twitter and an add-on for Gmail) after spending about $15 million for Twitter’s feed. Of course, Google wants to keep majority of the incoming traffic for its own network, where they’re able to deliver more ads to users.

On the other end, for Twitter, it seems that things are looking quite promising for them. So far, they are maintaining the U.S. share of visitors, while expanding globally and on the usage of its third-party application service via APIs. Compared to Google Buzz, Twitter offers its users more freedom to control as much as they want and how much personal info they want to share — it is an already established social media network, so the odds are against Google Buzz for a while. It will also be difficult to measure the impact of Google Buzz because it is embedded in Gmail.

Last month, Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter, made a comment about the usage of Twitter was decreasing, saying that the microblogging service was bigger than ever. At one point, Twitter’s traffic was on the verge of flatlining in the United Stated, with figures backing up what was being perceived. Then Williams created a tweet that said “across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter’s highest usage day ever. (And today will be bigger)”. A lot of people were thinking the same thing, especially since the rush of people was dying down after the media rush died. But Twitter still has the tweeters that are using the site more and more and on different platforms.

It is believed that people are still going to be signing up on Twitter and using it over the long term because Twitter is just awesome (well, they offer a lot of great stuff). Just let Clark Shirky tell it, who stated that Twitter has more raw capabilities for users than anything since (the creation of) email. It would be difficult to wait out Twitter because it is lightweight and endlessly useful, getting better as more people begin to use it. Everyone is using it, she stated that brands and institutions are using it and that Twitter is becoming a place where important conversations are taking place.

The day the co-founder predicted that Twitter had a good day and that the next day would be even bigger shows great significance. Now, media organizations continue to use Twitter more and more, increasing the site’s traffic higher. It might not be as much as before or as high as Facebook, but it will indeed be bigger and better.

Since the broadening of Twitter’s demographic (towards 24 year olds and younger), things have been going very well for the site. It has also been growing for more mature markets within the U.K. and U.S. and other places around the world. Internationally, comScore showed that Twitter jumped up 8% in unique visitors (73.5 million in January from 65.2 million in December).

Facebook Zero and Google Buzz are also trying to get a nice share of the real-time market. Not sure what will happen with Buzz, but there are predictions that Facebook Zero may have great success, since a lot of big Facebook users and mobile owners are teens that also use Twitter (this could have an impact on Twitter’s site).

Let’s look at a quick comparison of Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz:

Facebook: The users on this site have Twitter beat; they update their profiles over 60 million times daily, which would translate to a rate of 700 profiles per second. The stats for Facebook only show profile updates. The hundreds of other activities that are on Facebook aren’t counted at all. Comments to updates and “likes” to status updates are counted, but adding links, pictures, pages or joining groups counts as nothing.

Google: After launching Buzz, there was an average of 55 posts per second. These stats were released two days after the site’s launch, so by now it could have grown a whole lot more.

Twitter: The amount of tweets per day have grown to nearly 50 million, averaging 600 tweets per second. Although, it’s kind of difficult to see the true number of tweets since a tweet is considered to be an original message, comment, retweet or links that are being shared, so each time a comment is posted to a tweet, it is counted as a tweet.

Overall, it seems that Facebook is the winner when it comes to the amount of activity that takes place on their site. Runner up would be Twitter. It seems as though we’ll have to wait a couple of years to see how Google Buzz really compares to other social media sites.

Everyone knows the benefits of having a blog on their website — it can help to increase traffic, sales and even loyalty. There are a few ways you can go about making the visitors of your site become readers and from there, you need to interact with them to keep them engaged and coming back for more. A lot of people build blogs on their site and don’t nurture it. It takes more than just posting up blogs every now and then. Readers on the Web are always browsing for something, whether it’s products/services to buy or information and news. If you can offer any of these on a regular basis, you are more likely to have more visitors — even if they aren’t repeat visitors. But the goal here today is to become more engaged with the readers of your site. Doing so can lead to loyal visitors who will continuously come back to your site. Here are some ideas you can use to interact with your users via blog content.

Keep Your Blog Updated

If you can continuously update your blog with new and relevant content that is informational or entertaining, this is a form of interaction. Keeping your blog updated is like posting up new conversations. What better way to interact with your readers than by creating more and more conversation starters.

Encourage Feedback

As you’re posting up content on your blog day-to-day, you should encourage your readers to leave comments and feedback. Post up blog posts that are “comment jerkers”, meaning it will be hard not to comment. Some bloggers do this by posting controversial topics or subjects that will bring about different responses from different people. Entertainment, opinion pieces and news topics are usually great for generating comments, especially if its about something people care about. Try posting up topics that are important and entertaining, while not going off the niche of your blog. When you finish up your posts, motivate readers to comment by asking what the they think or if your opinions are agreeable.

Ask Questions

Asking readers questions about a topic you’ve posted about is another form of interaction. Directly speaking with your readers is always a great way to get engaged. It’s like having a conversation with each reader individually. Try to ask questions in the beginning and in the end of your posts to keep the readers thinking.

Comment on Your Readers’ Comments

Now, that you have put so much focus into generating comments from your readers, you will need to reply to their comments. You can set up your blog with a widget that will allow you to accept and decline reader comments — that way you are in control of what’s being posted on your site. You want to keep spammers and harmful comments out of your blog. As your readers begin to comment, interact with the comment by replying. When other readers see that the author is replying to comments, it will encourage them to leave their own comments behind. It’s important that you do this early on when readers are still looking at the post. It will be more difficult to do this later when the value of your comment begins to decrease. When readers see an active comment section on your blog and that you value their comments, you will begin to see your community grow. Soon you will have to do little interacting with the comments, as they will interact with one another on their own. But that doesn’t mean you can or should abandon the comment threads.

Set the Rules for Your Blog

Create a policy that outlines the boundaries of your blog. Doing so will tell your readers what is and isn’t acceptable for the comment section. After learning about the rules, your readers may feel more comfortable with leaving behind their responses. You should also keep your comment area managed. Ensure that people are following the rules. If you have your blog set up to accept and decline comments before they’re posted, you will be able to do this easily. No one wants to post on a blog that is out of hand with nasty and uncivilized comments. This just isn’t an attractive things to readers. It’s okay to allow readers to express their opinions to one another, but it has to be done in an inoffensive manner. Many bloggers will leave up all comments unless they are spam.

Make it Easy for Readers to Comment

Some bloggers think that it is a good idea to make readers sign up and login in order to read blogs or comment to posts, but this can sometimes be aggravating. Readers may come across your blog and think a post is really interesting and would like to reply — but if they have to endure a lengthy sign up, they will be discouraged to do so. Leave signing up to your blog a choice — if you make it mandatory before commenting, you could end up missing out on a lot of potential visitors and replies that could enhance your blog community. Have you ever came across a really good post that you really wanted to comment on, but you didn’t want to sign up in order to post? Well, your readers could feel the same way. Of course, one would think that great posts that require registration to comment would bring in a lot of registrations, but this isn’t guaranteed. More registrations you have, the more emails you have access to for your promotions, but you should obtain signups by making them want to do it on their own, so just keep up with the good blog posts.

Show Readers that You’re Interested

Besides commenting to the posts your readers make, you should reward them by highlighting the comments that have good points. When readers see that you are pointing out great posts, more visitors may want to become a part of it and gain recognition. Hey, everyone likes to feel special at some point or another.

It’s true that it takes great link building and linkbait to increase website traffic and rankings from search engines, but how you go about doing it will determine how successful you will be. A lot of folks aren’t sure if they should reciprocate links, buy links or simply earn them. Then there are some who use software to do all of the management for the link building process instead of doing it manually. What everyone should be doing is figuring out a way to win readers over and influence them in a way that will make them want to link back to your content.

Get People Interested

People aren’t just going to link to your website because you want them to — you’re going to have offer them something in return…valuable content. When creating your content, you will need to focus on writing about something that is interesting and/or of great use to your readers. Your readers must gain something from linking back to your site — this could be that you bought or traded something in exchange for a link. Or it could be that you offered content that was valuable enough for them to want to share it with their own readers. If you will be contacting site owners about a link, you will need to have in mind what it is that you have to offer them in return. If the only benefit you have in mind is for your own site, then you’re better off not making that request at all.

Make Your Readers Feel Important

This doesn’t mean you have to kiss the butts of your readers, but you should offer compliments and make them feel worth-while. You can do this by offering positive comments on a certain article or resource from someone’s site — afterward you can politely request for a link from the individual and have a higher chance of being rewarded. When a site owner sees a post about their website and/or content, it shows that you’ve spent enough time on their website to know that they area good match and it will make them feel important.

Use Names When Relevant

Once you have a specific site owner in mind, get to know the individual before addressing them. If you can get their name or pseudonym, you can use that within your post. This is like pointing a spotlight at the intended target, which they may enjoy. Everyone likes exposure. To find the names of the site owners, you can just search around their website for contact information of the editor. Most of the time, you will find their name within the email (julia.burns@website.com), if not, you may have to email them to obtain that information.

Approach Your Posts with Your Readers’ Perspective

Since you are asking your readers to go out of their way to link to your site, you will need to try to see things in their perspective. Before creating or sending out a link request, you will need to keep in mind the perspective of the reader, so put yourself in their shoes. If someone came to you asking for a link, would you jump right to it and accept the request? On the other end, if the requester took the time to look over your site and politely and personally contacted you about an article post that you could really share with your readers, you’d probably be more willing. With that in mind, you can begin crafting your request for a link from a site owner and probably be successful.

Building Relationships

While you’re steady link building, the real process at hand involves building relationships. This is sometimes automatically done when linking up with other sites in your category. Other times you’ll need to work at building these relationships. Linking is a whole lot like endorsing. By linking a site on your web page, it’s like telling a friend about a shop, service or product that you’ve recently used and liked. Now, this doesn’t mean that you should make requests by sending out dozens of emails to random folks about your site. This is like going to a party and giving flyers to any old body and asking them to tell all of their friends to buy your product or service. Sure, you might get one or two sales, but this isn’t the best route to go.

Your quest is to build good quality links that will eventually lead to great relationships. You can create these relationships through the use of email, blogs and discussion forums. When it’s relevant, you can make requests for links, but make sure to respect their opinions and their time once you’ve made the request. With this method, you may not see an overload of inbound links overnight, but you’ll soon see a steady flow of quality links, without all the work and hassle of just sending out emails to any and everyone.

Using Blogs to Engage with Readers

If you don’t already have one on your site, consider building a blog and using it to communicate with your readers. Posting up topics that are worth discussing will make people want to visit your site often. If any of them happen to be site owners they are more likely to link back to your content. To ensure that the right people are finding your content, make sure to implement keywords that relate to the blog post. Sometimes, it is better to create post titles that have keywords that are more likely to be punched into search engines, rather than choosing a heading that is solely based on relevance. Do your research to ensure that the keywords you have chosen are relevant and rich as well.