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4
I spoke this morning with a very pleasant chap from the Westchester County Business Journal.In the course of conversation I had occasion to mention that “nobody buys drills, they buy holes,” an aphorism attributed to Theodore Levitt, the late economist.
A drill is but a means to an end.
Similarly, few people care about social networking sites.
While I’m able to get excited about a minor Facebook tweak, a juicy little Gwave tidbit, a new Twitter tool, or even the latest Wordpress release, most people using social media care only about friendship, love, wealth, power or fame.
If you’re selling a product or service, people care not about your product but what it can do for them. Your product or service is but a means to an end, a drill, not a hole.In your marketing, think about the problems potential customers and clients want to solve. Address those problems. Offer to solve them, and let them pay you for your solutions.
Nobody buys drills, they buy holes. Sell them the holes.
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Nov
1
What it Takes to Build a Web Presence
Filed Under Blogging, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing | 9 Comments
Web marketing to me is entirely about building up both social capital and search equity, nurturing relationships and reputations both with people and with search engines.In Social Media vs. Search Engine Optimization and in The NEW Search Engine Optimization, I underscore the importance of both social media and search engine optimization and their interdependence. Your web marketing recipe must include plenty of healthy social media and search engine optimization ingredients.
I also point out in Website vs. Web Presence, that SEO, social media, relationships and reputation each contribute to the building of a presence on the web. Darren Rouse, the author of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, shares in a video his blog-centric approach to web marketing in which social media sites — which aren’t under our complete control — serve as outposts for our blogs and websites, i.e. our home base — which we do control.I agree with Darren’s point of view and adopted the same approach when I started Online Social Networking 24 months ago. I must stress however, that I have always envisioned search engines providing me with more than enough targeted traffic over time.
A Note of Caution
Many social media enthusiasts are in search of a predetermined blueprint for success. However, beware! One-recipe-feeds-all diners and buffets aren’t for you.
The precise description and proportion of each ingredient must depend upon your objectives, and upon the tastes of all the distinguished guests for whom you’re cooking up this sumptuous but scrumptious feast.
Bon appétit mon ami.
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Oct
28
Website vs. Web Presence
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Web Marketing | 11 Comments
Once upon a time, a business would put up a website with its contact information, and that was the beginning and end of its web presence.Those days are long gone. Savvy marketers today are very aware that a multidimensional approach is essential if one hopes to build a strong and responsive web presence.
Social Media and Search Engine Optimization
Social media and SEO are two of the most important aspects of building a presence on the web.
I’m reminded of a conversation I had several months ago with Christopher Boyer, creator of the Hospital Online Marketing Education site on the Ning network.
Chris mentioned that he tells his Healthgrades clients that search engines are where research starts on the Internet, and that a researcher’s attention is captured by the websites and social media content displayed on the very first page of search engine results. He asks hospital marketers to think of Google.com as their home page and to focus on dominating search engine results for their respective niches.Social Media and Relationships
Darren Rouse of Problogger.net fame shows in his video, How I Use Social Media to Promote My Blogs, the way he incorporates a large number of social media sites in his web promotion strategy.
Notice that Darren not only uses social media to drive traffic to his blogs; he uses it to build valuable relationships with people. Relationships and Internet buzz play key roles in today’s web marketing.
A Web Presence is Much More than Just a Website
The web presence paradigm has evolved. Search engine optimization, social media, relationships and reputation all contribute to the impact that we and our brands have on the web.
Your valuable comment below (and your subscription to this blog) will help us to build our relationship.
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Oct
25
Anti-Social Media Marketing
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, SPAM, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 14 Comments
I’ve already written about different types of SPAM, the reasons people SPAM, and alternatives for SPAM free marketing.In this article I look at four kinds of social media SPAM, or anti-social media marketing as I sometimes call it.
I also share several ideas for coping with social media SPAM. Although we cannot stop SPAM, we can try to mitigate its effects.
- SPAM Messages - These are the unsolicited commercial messages sent to your Facebook inbox, appearing in your Twitter replies, or plaguing you on other social networking sites. You should block the scoundrels, and report them too if they appear to be really awful.
- Comment SPAM - These are ads or links on your profile pages, blogs, forums or guest books. Beware of innocent looking blog comments such as “Great post. Keep up the good work.” The commenter is only looking for the link back to his site which most blogs (including mine) do provide. Require approval of all comments and use a SPAM filter (such as Akismet for Wordpress blogs) to help you with the job.
- Social Bookmarking SPAM - This is when someone bookmarks only his or her own content on bookmarking sites (such as StumbleUpon or Sphinn) which prohibit this. Be careful not to do this yourself.
- SPAM Blogs - These are blogs that aggregate search results (for profitable keywords) using feeds from services such as Google Alerts, and then publish these search results. They exist in order to spam search engines and other blogs and boost their own sites’ search results. If you have a blog, you’ll receive comment SPAM from them indicating that they’ve linked to you. They hope to get a juicy link back from you. If your SPAM filter fails to kill off their comments, be ruthless and do it yourself.
Creating SPAM blogs is often called autoblogging by the spammers.
In a November 2006 article, What is Autoblogging and How Does It Work?, Gobala Krishnan stated:
No matter how good you get at autoblogging, you’re never going to produce high quality sites that attract a loyal fan base using autoblogging methods. Nothing beats content that is original and written by a human being.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
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Oct
21
Why Aren’t Social Networking Sites Easy to Use?
Filed Under Facebook, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 12 Comments
Connecting on social networking sites with family and friends requires little forethought or planning. The most popular social networks are easy enough to figure out, even without instruction manuals.Most of us would agree that social networking sites are easy to use for casual networking.
On the other hand, reaching out to your target audience on social networking sites requires both planning and an appreciation of the fine points of each site. Social networking sites are not easy to use when it comes to marketing.
Facebook in particular is one social networking site that even experienced marketers struggle with, especially using profiles, pages, groups and apps in an appropriate and effective manner.
She Purged All of Her Friends on Facebook
Recently, I was contacted by a Facebook connection who happens to be some kind of celebrity. She was migrating her thousands of friends from her profile to her fan page, so that she could remove them from her profile.
At first glance, this is the Facebook equivalent of unfollowing all your friends on Twitter. However, you realize that it’s even more extreme once you think about it.
Removing her friends on Facebook, she gave up her access to their profile information and status updates. Either she was desperate for privacy
or hadn’t adequately considered the consequences or didn’t care much about connecting with the fans who were following her.Separating Business from Personal on Facebook
Yesterday, a marketing friend informed me that he was trying to separate “business from personal” on Facebook. He had set up a fan page and asked me to send people there rather than to his profile.
He also informed me that he was “trying to get to 100 members, so I could get a vanity URL” and asked if I had any suggestions.
This same friend is working on attracting his target audience to his Ning social networking site which may partially justify his separating business from personal on Facebook. Nevertheless, connecting as Facebook friends offers so many excellent networking opportunities that one can’t fully justify passing it up.
Furthermore, his difficulty reaching 100 fans for his page is a sign to me that perhaps he’d be better off starting by building a base of Facebook friends from which he could later draw members for his page.
In Conclusion
A feature on one of the social networking sites may attract you, such as the ability to have an unlimited number of fan page members on Facebook, but it’s critical to carefully weigh the pros and cons of each strategy and tactic.
With Facebook groups for example, you can only have 5,000 members, but you can send group messages directly to the inboxes of all those members. That capability may be more useful to you that having unlimited members.
A modest investment of time speaking with an online social networking or social marketing expert could dramatically increase the value of the subsequent time you spend marketing on social networking sites.
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Oct
18
Twitter Lists Beta Observations and Tips
Filed Under List Building, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Targeting, Twitter, Twitter Tools | 13 Comments
Last week, Twitter released a beta version of Twitter Lists, “a great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts.”“Beta” implies that there are still some rough edges, and tweaks are to be expected. It also implies that you might not yet have access to Twitter Lists.
Undoubtedly this article still has some rough edges as well and revisions are to be expected.
So what are Twitter Lists all about?
Facebook has lists that let you organize your friends. Twitter Lists enable you to do much more than that. This brand new Twitter tool adds an entirely new and exciting dimension to Twitter.Twitter Lists presents new targeting opportunities, and may also create new online social networking possibilities. We’ll know more once the feature is fully tested and rolled out.
Twitter Lists Observations
Here are five ways in which Twitter Lists and Facebook lists are similar:
- You categorize people and assign them to one or more lists. A person may belong to many lists or to none. The choice is totally yours.
- You create and name your lists, and you can edit its name even after the list has been established.
- You manage your lists and can add and remove people whenever you wish.
- Facebook lists and any Twitter list which you make private are known only to you, the list creator.
- You can view status updates and posts that are limited to the people you assigned to a particular list, making it easier to follow categories of people such as family or business contacts.
Here are five ways in which Twitter Lists and Facebook lists differ:
- All Facebook lists are private. However, on Twitter you can also create public lists to share with other members.
- People can easily tell to which public Twitter lists they’ve been assigned and who assigned them by clicking on the “listed” link on any of their account pages. Here’s my listed link (assuming that you can access it).
- On Facebook you can add only friends (or invited friends) to your lists. On Twitter you can add anybody as long as that person hasn’t protected his or her updates. Consider Twitter Lists to be a new method for following people.
- You can use Facebook lists to limit access to parts of your profile. This doesn’t apply to Twitter lists. Your brief Twitter profile is public and is visible to everybody, even to people who do not belong to Twitter.
- Not only can you view updates limited to the people you assigned to a particular Twitter list, you can do the same with anybody else’s Twitter list which you follow. Once you follow somebody’s list, you can access the updates for that list (as well as any of your own lists) using the lists menu on your Twitter sidebar. By the way, it’s okay to be nosy, so don’t feel guilty about it!
Twitter Lists Tips
Here are nine Twitter tips for maximizing your use of Twitter Lists:
- Look around to see how people are using Twitter Lists and in which lists they’ve been listed. You’ll get a good sense of how Twitter Lists work and a bunch of ideas for lists you can create yourself.
- Experiment. While you run the risk of driving other people crazy, you are free to make as many changes to your Twitter lists as you wish.
- You can add yourself to your own lists which useful for when people follow your lists.
- Instead of following somebody else’s Twitter list, often it will make more sense to select people from that list and assign them to your own list. That gives you some control and flexibility. However, keep in mind that when people are added to that person’s list in the future, your list will not update automatically.
- Be careful when assigning people to public Twitter lists. Don’t offend them (unless of course you’re an antisocial type of person). They might retaliate by assigning you to a list of jerks or dorks or even worse. At present, Twitter lists can’t be altered by the people listed. Twitter will have to take action if (when?) behavior problems surface.
- On the other hand, use your Twitter lists to communicate thoughts about people in a constructive way. Assign them to a public Twitter list of cool peeps or to a list of experts in a niche. Do this even (or especially) to people who don’t follow you!
- Do anything you want with private Twitter lists just as you would with Facebook lists. If you want a Twitter list of nerds or spammers, keep it private or face likely retaliation. You probably don’t want to make your “little black book” public either.
- You can start off by making a Twitter list private and later switch it to public and vice versa.
- Have fun, but set limits, as Twitter Lists can be addictive. Don’t let Twitter Lists become an obsession (unless you happen to be looking for a new obsession).
I’m @larrybrauner on Twitter. Assign me to any funky Twitter lists, and you’ll live to regret it.
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Oct
14
Is Email Marketing Dead?
Filed Under Communication, List Building, News, Personal Development and Success, SPAM, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Twitter, Web Marketing | 12 Comments
I read an excellent article this afternoon in the Wall Street Journal by Jessica E. Vascellaro about the declining role of e-mail in our day-to-day communication, as services like Twitter, Facebook and lots of other social networking sites continue to grow in popularity.According to Ms. Vascellaro, we obviously still use email. However, email was better suited to the way we used the Internet in the past, when we’d go online intermittently to read our messages.
“Now we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.”
If more of our attention is being directed toward social media and away from email, is there a future for email marketing?The success of email marketing depends on our ability to efficiently reach our target markets via their email inboxes. As people increasingly turn to social media, and internet service providers apply more aggressive spam filtering, email marketing becomes less viable.
Just last night, a friend messaged me on Facebook saying that she was “shifting over from an e-newsletter to blogging,” and that she was looking for a little advice.
Email marketers want to know how to react to the trend toward social media and social marketing.
Advice for Email Marketers
Here are seven tips for coping with the decline in email communication:
- Act Now - Don’t sit on the sidelines like your old media friends. There are still plenty of newspaper publishers scratching their heads wondering what they’re going to do about their failing businesses.
- Diversify - Adopt a variety of new social marketing channels, but do not discontinue your email marketing campaigns. Build on your past successes.
- Stay Cool - Don’t overreact. Email communication isn’t going away any time soon. Gradually make adjustments and find the allocation of resources that delivers you the best ROI.
- Learn Social Media - There are many social marketing resources and a fairly steep social media learning curve. Either make social media training a priority for yourself and stick with it or find someone to whom you can delegate or outsource all or part of it.
- Learn SEO - Learn search engine optimization as well, or again, delegate or outsource it.
- Keep Testing - Just as you’d test different lists or advertising copy, test different social media venues and content to determine what works for you, and what doesn’t. Be flexible.
- Get Help - Even if you do decide to educate yourself, look to social media and web marketing experts for help along the way. Their guidance will save you much time and money in the long run.
I still use my email autoresponder to communicate with many of my blog subscribers. However, email accounts for only 2% of my total blog traffic. Google, Entrecard and Twitter combined account for about 80%, and all other sources add to the remaining 18%.
I will have more to say on email marketing and on list building in future articles. I suggest meanwhile that you read List Building Paradigm Shift which I wrote at the beginning of the year.
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Oct
12
Social Marketing Momentum
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Outside the Box, Web Marketing | 13 Comments
In Social Marketing Leverage, I stated that the Internet gives us the ability to transfer information with relative ease and enables a great variety of online tools to provide us with a virtual type of leverage.In this article, I discuss another physical phenomenon, that of momentum, as it applies to the non-physical social marketing process.
Momentum is the impetus of an object or a process, its tendency to remain in motion. If you’ve ever skated or cross-country skied, you’ve enjoyed momentum or gliding. 
When riding in a car or bus that stopped short, you were thwarted by momentum as the vehicle stopped, but you kept going.
Most of the time, we don’t want to lose momentum. We’ve worked up some speed, or we’re highly productive — and we want it to continue.
Losing Physical Momentum
In the physical world, these factors can cause us to lose our momentum:
- Collision - Its outcome is generally hard to predict and is often catastrophic.
- Friction - Air, water and even our own brakes slow us down or stop us completely.
- Turning - To avoid collision, negotiate speed bumps or alter our final destination, we must brake partially or completely to change our direction.
Losing Social Media Momentum
In our non-physical social marketing work, the same factors contribute to our loss of momentum and productivity:
- Collision - Hitting the proverbial brick wall. A major plan is flawed, we accidentally delete all of our Twitter followers, or our Facebook account is phished. My advice in Social Marketing Leverage to “develop good contingency plans for when Murphy’s Law does strike” applies here and to all aspects of our lives.
- Friction - Indecision, multitasking, working at home while the kids are seeking attention, working at the office while a co-worker in the next cubicle is blabbing, slow social networking sites, associates who don’t keep their word, etc. These all tend to slow us down.
- Turning - This is huge. Abandoning a blog, changing our branding strategy midstream and other false starts lead to directional changes that slow us down and cost both time and money.
Social Marketing Prescription
What is my prescription for preserving social marketing momentum?
Planning, focus and consistency.
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Sep
30
7 Questions to Ask Before Signing Up for Social Media Training
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Personal Development and Success | 9 Comments
Another social media university, social media academy, guru or training program surfaces online nearly every day. Do we need these social media training programs? Are they worth our time and expense?I’m old enough to remember the data processing boom of the seventies. There were more computer schools back then than social media gurus or social networking sites today.
Computers in those days weren’t as easy to use as they are today, and people were needed in companies that used them to program and operate them. Computer schools collected large sums to train people for potentially lucrative computer programming careers, but in the end, students were very lucky if they even got lower paying computer operator jobs.
Students weren’t aware that businesses much preferred college graduates with relevant degrees to fill programming positions over graduates of year- long programs. Computer schools were able to rake in large profits because they didn’t fully disclose the reality of the job market.
The same was true years later with medical billing. Schools and home study programs nurtured false expectations. The probability of finding assignments after completing a medical billing course was dismally low.
Making an Intelligent Choice
To determine whether a social media training program is worthwhile for you, answer the following questions as thoughtfully and honestly as you can.
- What are your needs and expectations? Stop and reflect. What are you looking for? To change careers? Broaden your marketing skills? Build your brand? Have fun? Earn extra money? Getting clear about what it is you’re looking for is a sensible place to start.
- Can you partially or fully meet your needs by completing the course? In other words, does the course match your needs?
- Do the benefits of the course justify your investment of time and money? Unless your goal is to turn social media into a hobby that pays off emotionally, not financially, your course needs to help you develop money making skills that justify the cost. Please be wary of courses or systems that promise quick or easy results.
- How qualified are you to pursue the path you wish to take? Do you have the prerequisites to complete the course and follow through on your plans?
- Are you motivated enough? I’ve stated before that the social media learning curve is steep, and results aren’t quickly obtained. You need the mindset of a marathoner to succeed. Look at your track record. If you can persevere over a long period of time and follow through, you might succeed. Otherwise, resist committing to a long-term social marketing plan.
- How qualified and reliable are the instructors? Do they walk the talk? Have they demonstrated the ability to do what you yourself would like to do? Can they provide references?
- Can you afford to lose your investment? If the course costs more than you can afford to lose, discuss your options with friends and advisers before making a decision. Listen carefully to their recommendations.
You should be able to apply the same or similar criteria to evaluate affiliate marketing, network marketing, search engine marketing or SEO courses.
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Sep
23
Social Marketing Leverage
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Outside the Box, Web Marketing | 15 Comments
A lever gives us the ability or leverage to move heavy objects with relative ease. Metaphorically speaking, the same is true of any tool that can empower us to perform a function more effectively.The Internet gives us the ability to transfer information with relative ease, and it is also enables a great variety of online tools to provide us with virtual leverage.
Web-Based Tools
Here are six web-based tools that we’ve come to rely upon to save us time or money or to help us be more effective:
- Internet-based mail - e-mail, autoresponders and PDF Files
- Live communication - VOIP phone, chat and webinars
- Digital media - websites, blogs and micro-blogging sites such as Twitter
- Social networking sites - Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn, etc.
- Content sharing sites - YouTube, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, etc.
- Search engines - Google, Bing, etc.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve had some experience with each of them, and this is a very partial list.
What Can Go Wrong
I probably don’t have to tell you that things don’t always go right. Here are the three obstacles that can most easily sidetrack you:
- Using the wrong tool - Download a large file using dial-up Internet, and by the time it finishes downloading, you’ll forget why to wanted it in the first place. Use a shabby autoresponder, and most of your e-mails will end up in recipients’ spam folders.
- Using the tool wrong - Social media tools and search engines have steep learning curves, and learning how to use them properly is typically a big undertaking. Misunderstand or misuse social media or SEO techniques, and your work can be set back by months.
- The tool breaks - Your Internet connection goes down for a week, your Facebook gets phished, or your blog gets corrupted. You’ll be pulling out your hair, unless of course you’re fortunate enough to be bald.
Many marketers contact me for help because they’ve been using the wrong tool or using the tool wrong.
An Ounce of Prevention
So — choose the right tools, learn to use your tools properly, and develop good contingency plans for when Murphy’s Law does strike — because it most certainly will, and at the worst possible moment.
What do you think?
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Sep
15
10 Reasons You Must Use Ning
Filed Under Ning Sites, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 18 Comments
Chris Patterson, President & CEO of Interchanges.com and founder of inSocialMedia, is one of the busy people with whom I strive to keep in touch. He’s very enthusiastic about social media and a great people person as well.
When speaking with Chris last week about inSocialMedia, the 3,200 member Ning network he started to enable practitioners to discuss social media strategies, I agreed to join his site’s team. An avid social media strategist myself, to work on inSocialMedia is very exciting.
I’ll continue to moderate and develop several of my own Ning sites, Beyond Business Coaching, Let’s Follow Each Other and Online Kosher Networking.
Reasons You Must Use Ning
Knowing my passion for Twitter and Facebook, you might think I’d lose interest in Ning. I’ll explain now why this isn’t at all the case. These reasons (not in order of importance) are based upon my own personal experience and feedback I’ve received from other Ning users:
- Create a Community - Ning enables you to create your own social network, and Ning is free. There are also premium features which site owners can purchase if and when they want them.
- Use Ning with Ease - Ning is fairly intuitive and easy to use. Ning collects your basic personal information such as name, location, e-mail, password, and photo one time, and that information is used automatically at each Ning site you join.
- Customize Your Ning - Ning sites, and to a lesser extent members’ profile pages, can be easily customized without any programming. However, the Ning program code is open, so that site owners can achieve even greater customization with the help of a programmer or by installing plug-ins.
- Build a Niche - Ning sites are built around niches. Site members tend to share a common interest or characteristic. As the site grows, it retains its niche orientation.
- Publish a Blog - Ning lets you post and syndicate internal blog entries, and lets you import external RSS feeds as well.
- Form a Group - Groups within Ning can serve as forums or as mini-blogs. They can also help segment a site and bring together members according to various interests or characteristics.
- Share Content - You can make friends across Ning sites and share content with them across sites. This happens to be my favorite feature, since it ties in with my macro approach to online social networking. UPDATE: NING HAS DROPPED THIS IMPORTANT FEATURE
- Link Out - As far as I can tell, all Ning links are “do follow” and your SEO can benefit from pointing them back to your website or blog.
- Communicate - Ning offers a variety of communication modes such as profile comments, forum and group discussions, blog and blog comments, photos, videos, events, status updates and private messages. Site creators also have the option to enable chatting.
- Control Your Ning - Ning site administrators can choose which members and content to feature or to ban.
Since you’re reading this article, you must be interested in social media, so click here to join us at inSocialMedia. See you there.
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Sep
9
Doesn’t My Website Deserve to Get Traffic?
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Web Marketing | 24 Comments
We discussed in Why Doesn’t My Website Generate Sales? four different aspects of poor website performance: too little website traffic, the wrong website traffic, insufficient stickiness and poor conversion.Today we shall examine the all too common problem of too little website traffic and answer three important questions:
- Doesn’t my website deserve to get traffic?
- Why doesn’t my website get traffic?
- How can I create traffic to my website?
Doesn’t My Website Deserve to Get Traffic?
If your website offers useful information or creates value for visitors in some way, it deserves traffic.
It’s really that simple.
Why Doesn’t My Website Get Traffic?
Deserving traffic is one thing, and getting it is another. I believe that most websites deserve traffic. They were put on the web to present information or create value for visitors in some other fashion. Nevertheless, most websites sit and collect dust to the disappointment of their owners.
Here are a few reasons for the lack of traffic to deserving websites:
- Lacking web marketing savvy - Most website owners do not know how to market their sites and generate traffic to them. This is alright as long this shortcoming is adequately compensated for which is usually not the case.
- Assuming that web developers know marketing - Many website owners hold the mistaken belief that web developers will optimize their sites to attract traffic from the search engines. When the site is finished, there is often a keyword expression such as the company’s name that shows up on the first page of the search engines, but that keyword expression is trivial and doesn’t bring much traffic if any. This mistake is pretty common and very sad. It’s a major cause of the following problem.
- Negativity - Too many website owners don’t appreciate the great marketing potential of the web or don’t believe that the web’s suitable for their business. This is a good example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
How Can I Create Traffic to My Website?
Here are four ways to generate traffic to your website:
- Buy advertising - Your best options are print, radio and Internet. You may need a copywriter to develop an effective ad for the media you choose. Before you spend much on advertising, satisfy yourself with an experiment that your ad works and that your site can convert visitors into buyers. If you don’t take this precaution, you may end up throwing away money on advertising that doesn’t produce results.
- Connect with your target audience on the web- Online social networking is a path to free website traffic. Building your audience and your brand online is the main focus of this blog. Find the time to explore my site map and read a whole bunch of my articles. Use comments to ask questions. Social networking sites can be very useful, or they can be a very big waste of time. Knowing how to use networking sites effectively makes all the difference.
- Learn search engine optimization - You can read some books and optimize your site by yourself, just as I have done. There is an SEO learning curve, but in my opinion, it’s not as steep as the social media learning curve. Good website content and good SEO can attract thousands of free search engine visitors to your site.
- Get marketing help - find a web marketing consultant to guide you or do everything for you. That person could be me, or it could be somebody else who’s knowledgeable.
This is your website traffic road map. It’s up to you to choose the route and destination that are best for you.
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