How to grow traffic to your website without growing your costs
Be sociable
Socialising online can be a great way to grow your online presence and traffic. Social media is now an established and cost-effective way to grow your business. Yes it can appear to bit baffling for the uninitiated - but it doesn’t have to be. So here are some top tips to up your website traffic without upping your costs.
Socialising online can be a great way to grow your online presence and traffic. Social media is now an established and cost-effective way to grow your business. Yes it can appear to bit baffling for the uninitiated - but it doesn’t have to be. So here are some top tips to up your website traffic without upping your costs.
Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are
the big daddies of the social media world and each can be used in
different ways to raise the profile of your website and create an
engaged community.
Twitter has grown hugely in the last few years and is a great way to get useful information out quickly to your followers. The golden rule for any social media
channel is to give people useful content that they will use and share
with their friends and colleagues. Don’t just bombard potential users
with the same old sell, sell, sell messages.
Share and share alike
In Facebook the social currency is ‘likes’ – and the clue is in the
name. Users need to like what you are doing and what you are offering.
Providing exclusive discounts or promotions to Facebook users or access
to free videos, guides or introductory products can work wonders.
Take a step back and ask yourself if
you didn’t know your website or brand what you would like and what you
would share. And regularly change your offers and coming up with new or
innovative ideas.
Don’t forget to get social on your
website. Link your Facebook page and your Twitter comments to your
website (both Facebook and Twitter have information on how to do this on
their websites) – and encourage people to engage with you and spread
the word by offering exclusive discounts and offers.
If you play this right you can build
up an army of online supporters that spread the word and do your
marketing for you. And kick things off by spreading the word across your
own network – encouraging them to share.
Writing interesting, engaging and even controversial blogs on your
website and promoting these through social media can also be a good way
of making an impact and getting user feedback or services.
In the world of social media fresh ideas can bring you fresh new users.
Tip: Use Facebook's 'Friends of Connections'
option to target users whose friends are connected to a page, group,
event or application
Make sure your advertising adds up
If initial Facebook activity goes well and you hit across a message or
promotion that works you may consider paid for advertising -
www.facebook.com/Ads. You should always look to try and target this as
much as possible and try an initial test budget to see if it working for
you.
There are a few money saving tips if
you are considering Facebook ads.
Firstly if you buy advertising on Facebook, link the ad to a page within
Facebook and your cost per click will be lower. Because Facebook want
users to stay within the site, this is a mutually beneficial tactic that
saves you money while generating traffic to your Facebook page. Secondly try different messages and
offers and compare and contrast the results. Don’t be afraid to get a
bit scientific about this and remove your emotion or affiliation to a
particular campaign. The stats will tell you pretty quickly what is
working and what isn’t. Again remember to rotate your ads so
that you keep things fresh – and you can even automate this process with
simple tools on Facebook.
Finally a little-known tip to target a
wider user base is to use Facebook’s 'Friends of Connections' targeting
option. This allows you to target users whose friends are connected to a
page, group, event or application and can drastically increase your
market reach.
And you can still feel you need to get some help it doesn't need to cost
the earth.
Another link in the chain
LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com)
acts more of a professional network rather than a social network. But
you can still use its free features to promote your business.
For example you can send direct
messages to your contacts and ask them to spread the work to their
contacts. You can also set up groups through your Linked In profile and
encourage people to join – and use this group forum to share the latest
news and information about you and your website. If you are selling to other businesses or professionals you may also
consider LinkedIn advertising. You can target by occupation – so it can
be a useful way of getting the right decision makers to decide to take
your product. Services like Experian or e-Location provide lists of relevant business contacts from their expansive databases and could be a good alternative.
Here are some other quick top tips that can help to publicise your website:
Swap shop
Consider swapping advertising or links with other friendly and relevant websites or services to cross-promote each other.
Affiliate to accumulate
Go one step further and launch an
affiliate programme – where you pay by performance if another website or
partner promotes your products. This can be done on a one to one basis
with partners you want to target. Or you could use affiliate networks
where you set up an account, let third parties know about your products
and what ‘cut’ they can get if they promote and sell them for you.
