When you first set up a new website it’s natural to do all you can to make sure as many people as possible see it. Over time you learn that a small amount of targeted traffic is better than a large amount of visitors from all directions – many of whom don’t have any interest in your site.
But you can easily become a victim of your own success. When your efforts result in a steady stream of targeted traffic it’s all too easy to sit back and relax, watching that steady stream continuing to come in. That is fine, but why don’t you aim for the next level and try and find more streams of targeted traffic to add to it?
You probably already know that the more people you can get to visit your site who have an interest in what you want to sell, the more sales you will make. That much is obvious, and you’ll get a much higher conversion rate of visitors into sales than you will from a general audience, who mostly just sucks up your bandwidth each month.
So think about what other methods you can use to find more targeted traffic. Which advertising methods can you use to get good results? Can you do things for free which don’t take much effort to get up and running? Even if you have to tweak them or do a little regular work every now and again to keep them working, it’s worth it if you get a lot of visitors in return who are genuinely interested in what you do.
However successful you are at the moment, targeted traffic can get you to the next level of online success. All you need to do is sit down and work out how you are going to get there.
Being an active member of an online community such as MySpace can take up valuable amounts of time each week. Some people end up getting sucked into spending more time on these sites than they do promoting their business and figuring out how they can sell more online. There’s a point when social marketing and Web 2.0 can turn into a time waster.
That’s where you need to be wary of how many online communities you join. There is no definite number, and what one person finds to be unmanageable might be just the right amount for someone else.
The key to getting the most out of your own online communities is to find out what your happy number is. If you get to the stage where keeping up with them all is getting difficult – and your work is suffering as a result – then you know you’ve got too many.
It can also depend on how particular online communities are set up. Some are much easier to understand and use than others, and by their very nature it’s going to be the easy to use ones that will get to stay if you find you need to start paring down your efforts in this area.
But you should also consider which sites get you the best response, and funnel the largest amount of traffic over to your website. Those will ultimately be the ones that should stay, since they are bringing in the largest volume of interested people.
Social networking has great potential when it comes to locating the target audience for whatever you are selling. When the sites don’t allow you to advertise directly to other members, you can still make a name for yourself because people will start looking for you and your website.
So choose your online communities wisely. Sometimes less really can be more.
What are you doing when it comes to promoting your blog? Are you recording every post you make in all the social bookmarking sites you can find? Are you pinging it every time you update it in some way? How about your website – do you link to it and mention it on more than one page?
A lot of internet marketers do everything they can to spread the word about their website, but when it comes to promoting their blog things can go slightly awry. Some of them seem to leave the promoting to other people, hoping that every visitor who finds them will tell everyone else and send waves of traffic flowing in their direction.
Real life is not so wonderful of course. You should be promoting your blog by shouting from every rooftop you can find. If you have business cards make sure your blog URL is printed on them. If you fancy the idea of one of those neat metal strips on the outside of your car, boasting your web address and an eye catching quote from your blog, why not splash the cash and get one made up?
Sometimes all it takes to be promoting your blog in a way that will get you noticed is to do it differently from everyone else. Try printing up some slips of paper on your computer with a cryptic message or tantalising question that leaves people wanting to know more. Add your URL and stick those bits of paper wherever you can think of that’s relevant.
If you write about internet marketing, stick a piece of paper in every internet marketing book you can find at your local library. Get creative. Be different. It’s what will get you found when you are actively promoting your blog.
Blog posts don’t just have to be small personal opinions on things. They can be long and detailed and full of insight if you so desire. They can also significantly help your online presence.
And long blog posts can give you another advantage as well. Let’s say you’ve written a really good article on a subject you frequently write about. You’ve sent it to a few article directories and you are pointing the resource box towards your main website.
Why not make even more out of that one article by using it as a blog post?
And better still, you could give anyone and everyone who reads it permission to put it on their website or blog. They might link to it anyway, but why not let them copy and paste it over with a backlink to your site?
People are forever looking for fresh new content to put on their own sites, and if you actually say to someone, ‘Hey look, I’ve got a great piece here you can use wherever you like – just make sure the contact details at the bottom stay the same…’, that’s really persuasive. It’s steering them carefully towards doing exactly what you want them to – which is to stick your nice long blog post on another site somewhere to give you even more exposure.
The internet is all about sharing, but even while some people might like to read and use your content elsewhere, they won’t ever get around to asking you if they can do so. If you give them permission up front you never know where your articles could end up.
If you’re pretty new to internet marketing you’ll still be looking for ways to promote yourself and start to make a name for yourself. Giving people permission to republish your blog posts is a great way to do just that. So why not start writing, posting and offering right now?
