Internet Marketing Series: Generating Traffic – Part 2

In an earlier post on Generating Traffic, we discussed three steps you must take in your journey to success; Setting Up Analytics, Search Engine Optimization, and Paid Advertising. Once you are set up with these, the next phase is mainly about advertising and marketing. Advertising is what makes a business successful, and you can not hope to achieve success without them.

Social Media

It is time you hopped on to the Social Media stage, if you are not already there. It is estimated that 75% of consumers use social media in some form to learn about products and services. So you can’t afford to miss out on all the action!

Before we begin, let me tell you one thing clearly. DO NOT try to sell on Social Media. Social Media is all about building communities and interacting with people personally. People don’t like it when you sell things on Social Media. Think of it like this; a local shop has opened in your area. The shopkeeper interacts with you and talks in a friendly way. This will make you want to visit his shop and buy stuff. But what if he tries to sell his products whenever he sees you? Would you still visit him? Get my point? Only try to increase your likability on Social Media. This will help you in the long run.

Getting started with social media isn’t as hard as you might think. It only takes time. Here are some things you can do to make your mark on the online community.

Start Blogging

Creating a blog is easy! You don’t need any web developing skills! You can use any of the popular and free blogging platforms, like WordPress and Blogger etc, to get started. Just sign-up with any of them, and your blog will be created for you! You must choose a name that is related to your business, and welcoming to the visitors.

Once your blog is all set up, you need to create content for it. You can write about anything you like, but it should be relevant to your business. Blog post topics can include; Industry-specific tips, special offers, tutorials and how-to’s, reviews etc. You will need to update your content and create posts regularly. This will keep your content fresh, and your readers interested.

Encourage your readers to comment and interact with you and with each other. If some one leaves a comment, be sure to reply, as people likes it when they are noticed.

Start on Social Networking Sites

In this digital era, who isn’t using a social media networking site? Most of the people do! So for these people, you need to set up profiles for your business on the major networking sites Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. If you want to use other networks, then be my guest. But you must use these major networks, since they are the largest networks around. Notice how Smart Earning Methods has accounts for different social networks.

Once you get set up with your accounts, it’s time to get active! Start posting links to your blog, website etc. Respond to comments asap! Once you get set up, it shouldn’t be hard. Remember again that you can only promote your products, and not sell them.

For managing multiple accounts at once, there’s a great service called HootSuite. With it, you can keep tabs on all of your accounts, schedule updates ahead of time, and even monitor conversations about your brand!

Commenting

Everyone of has been to parties right? Can you imagine a party where everyone is telling their own story, and not responding to others’? How dull would that be! I don’t think why Social Media should be any different from a good party. Conversations on social media should develop, expand, and entertain.

All you need to do is, participate in conversations! Leave comments on blog posts, reply to Facebook posts and Twitter tweets, and answer LinkedIn questions. The more you participate, the more exposure you get, and the more you establish yourself as an expert in your field! This will result in an increase of your sales. Just try it for yourself!

Video Marketing

This is simply publishing your message online through a video for those people who prefer watching videos to reading articles. You video can be about anything; a demo of your product, a promotional campaign, an ad, you talking about the product etc.

To start off, you will need a camera (or not, if your video is gonna be based on Computer Graphics). An ordinary camera will do. They key here is to create hype about your video by making it clever, funny, interesting, or unique in some way.

Once you make a video, you can use it anywhere. Your first stop should be YouTube. Write down a good keyword-rich description. Link back to your website as well. Once done, you can then share your video on Social networks (Facebook, Twitter), blogs, forums, etc. Encourage others to share it too. You will be amazed at the level of exposure you might get.

Article Marketing

By now, you should have a decent amount of content gathered around your business in the form of articles, blog posts, reports, e-books etc. If not, then now is your time to start working on them.

Once you have some content at your disposal, it’s time to put it to good use. You can compile that content into article form, usually 300-500 words in length. You can then submit those articles to free-article hosting sites. This is called Article Marketing. You will surprised at how much more exposure you’ll get if you do this properly. In your articles, you will get a byline that includes your name, bio, and a link to your business website.

Remember; Don’t sell in these articles. The purpose of such articles should be solely to inform, educate, and entertain. Some great article hosting website that you can use are;

• Ezine articles
• Article Dashboard
• Article Biz
• GO Articles
• isnare

That concludes our Traffic Generation section. Although there are literally thousands of ways you can increase traffic, we have listed a major ones that you MUST do for a decent traffic in-flow. Our Internet Marketing Series continues in the next post. So stay tuned in 🙂