For many budding internet entrepreneurs, the first brick wall they hit is often the problem of driving traffic to their website and generating leads and sales from this traffic.
I’m not going to cover the conversion of leads into sales here, as that’s another subject entirely, and reading up on effective copy writing.
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising can become expensive, and many a budding internet millionaire has failed to build their business, with the added insult of having lost large amounts of money to advertising that didn’t work.
Fortunately, there now exists a newer breed of website where users create the content along with whole thriving communities of people looking for the same thing.
Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, Digg and numerous other social networking sites provide an ideal ground to build an effective online marketing campaign that will bring the revenue in. However, a larger amount of work is involved in regularly connecting with new ‘friends’, joined discussion groups, creating your own discussions groups and generally creating content related to the business that you’re in. Of course, as long as you’re playing by the forum or discussion group rules, you would always make mention of your blog or website which will in turn also generate more ‘link backs’ to your site.
Facebook is a very good example where a number of different things can be done to promote your website and also generate valuable content. Aside from contributing to your ‘self branding’ activities, your profile page is a very good place to generate traffic to your website or blog. Make sure your website address is added into the section beneath your profile picture where you can write something about yourself, and also in the ‘information’ section further down. Make sure you’ve also checked the ‘website’ check box which shows when you click the edit button in your profile (if the website isn’t showing of course).
Surfing the discussion groups as well a those you’ve created yourself, will provide a good source for adding new ‘friends’. However, try to temper the number you add in one go, as people have been known to get kicked off Facebook for this. I find adding a note in discussion forums for people to follow you for more information as good method (this way they’re adding you instead).
Once you’re connected to people, then their walls are a good place to post information as all their friends will see it too. However, make sure that the content is useful as you don’t want to get known as a ‘spammer’. Regular status updates will also be seen by your friends, although keep this in check too as people can ‘hide’ you from their news-feed if they get sick of seeing too many updates clogging their homepage.
The same sort of things apply to Squidoo where placing articles in ‘Lenses’ and creating new ‘Lenses’ with the obvious links to your websites is another good source of traffic.
I don’t want to go through all the options for each social networking site. However, it is in these environments, that you’re ideally placed to demonstrate your expertise by making valuable contributions to forums and discussion groups, and helping others in their quest for success online. If you read a previous article of mine, ‘Don’t Sell, Attract!’ which can also be found on my blog, it is precisely this kind of activity that will set yourself up as a leader in your field. A leader who will attract other prospects looking for a business opportunity in network marketing.
