Time is tight but bloggers still need to drive traffic and customers. This article covers the top 7 traffic and conversion strategies every busy blogger and web publisher may use to leverage time. Results, as in quality of traffic and customers, are very likely comparable to other more costly and more time consuming strategies you’ve seen so far.
Consider yourself lucky if you are always in control about what you are doing and get things done on time. Well, you probably have done your homework and work very hard in the past to achieve this productive state.
However, everyone still can make use of several traffic strategies that can help him or her save time.
1. Focus on Quality
Quality doesn’t have to mean lengthy or comprehensive. If part of your blogging strategies is to break news as quickly as possible, timing is important.
Whichever your strategy is, you should maintain the quality instead of focusing on quantity. I mean, you can write a short post in 5 minutes if you want but if it simply is a rehash of old stuff, you will have a hard time pulling traffic.
Spend some time producing really good content. It may take a few days — a few hours per day — to do so, but if you can only publish once or twice per week, you audience will be more than happy with what they receive by subscribing to your blog’s RSS feed.
Besides that, it also gives the visitors another reason why they should not leave without subscribing to your blog.
Admittedly this may or may not save you time. That depends on your topic but in my experience the time spent on researching a topic in-depth is faster than doing the research in various other topics.
2. Create and Distribute Viral E-books
How is it going to save you time if you are able to produce once and drive traffic and customers repeatedly? Sounds good? Here’s how to do it.
Find a topic that your readers will happily pay for. Perhaps a problem they so desperately want to solve. Write an e-book and give it away for free.
Nowadays you can download PDF generation software at zero cost. It may even come with your favorite word processor. Don’t worry too much about the design, if you can’t afford it. Just get the content out.
It may take a little more effort to distribute and promote your content especially if you haven’t yet established a significant audience on your blog. But the time and effort will be well worth it.
3. Exchange Blog Posts
Guest blogging is one of the most effective strategies to drive traffic. If you pick the right niche audience and topic to contribute, you are doing the blogger a service and in return you are allowed to steal traffic and readers from them. Well, most likely their readers will subscribe to read both the host’s and your blogs.
Writing a post is one thing, turning the visitors from the host’s blog to site traffic is another thing though… so obviously you need to spend some time to update your blog and write for other blogs. How could that save you time?
The idea is to put a bit of a twist. Exchange blog posts. Write for the blogger and have them contribute back to your blog. Of course, your blogs have to be about the same size — in terms of audience — for this kind of partnership to be fair.
With this, you will be able to get content but still able to tap into other people’s traffic. Only a few things get any better than this.
4. Promote When You Can
In the midst of everyday’s mundane tasks, there are a few promotion opportunities that you may have missed. Although you may not be able to drive significant traffic with this method, you never know what will happen with those handful of visitors.
If you are in a service business, a highly qualified prospect may end up as a client for years, bringing you thousands of dollars worth of revenue.
Immerse in marketing, and you will start seeing more of such opportunities:
- Link to your blog in your email signature. People rarely read email signature but some of them still do. With personal communication, you are also more likely to get more qualified traffic.
- Link back to your blog. Whether it is from your social media profiles or other sites. If you participate in a forum or two, include a link in the signature.
- Share links to your posts. Google Reader allows you to share RSS items. By including your posts, you can drive people on your friends list to your blog.
- Don’t forget your business card. Include a URL to your blog and a reason why people should visit your blog. If you’ve made a good reason, people will visit it, especially because they have met and known you before the business card exchanges hands.
A lot of online marketers claim that article marketing no longer works. If you are still using old strategy, that previous statement is true.
With so many articles already out there, you may have difficulties in getting thousands of visitors with just one article but still it is possible to drive very qualified traffic to your site.
Personally I use article marketing to drive tens of subscribers to your email list every day. Some of them will turn into customers soon. Others will take some time. Overall, the time writing articles and promoting them is worth it though.
Article marketing will continue to work as long as people still need information. Think about how you can fit in by contributing that information. Brainstorm ways on how to reach new groups of people online.
6. Combine with Email Marketing
The five strategies above have solely been responsible for driving traffic. What to do after they arrive? If you are selling advertising space on your blog, perhaps the increase in page views and visitors already mean something to you. However, you may want to increase the value per visitor by offering your product or service as well.
For this, you also need a lead nurturing system. Even if you are in a retail business, you can make use of lead nurturing to convert more of the traffic and prospects into customers.
Email, despite having its own problems, still is one of the most effective tools to follow up and engage with your prospects.
Use the automatic follow up mechanism to send information. You also want to personally update the subscribers on a regular basis to establish relationship and trust.
Email marketing is a huge subject of its own. Use it in combination with blogging. They will make your online marketing effort much more effective.
7. Select Social Media Channels Carefully
Nowadays such article will not be complete if I don’t mention about social media. Much of it is hype, as most marketers try to sell their product or service using traditional tactics, but on its own social media is still a solid strategy.
After all, people have always been connecting with each others. And relationship works in marketing, so there’s no reason social media won’t. In fact I personally think people should not refer to it as social media anymore. It is just about communication and relationship as we know it elsewhere.
Social media may take time to develop. Spend some time to think about your goals with the new media. Who you want to connect with determines which platforms or channels you should participate in. As with the first point above, focus on quality of relationship instead of quantity.
Connecting with industry influencers allows you to reach their audience once they decide that you are able to help them help their customers or clients.
Pick your battle, know it inside out, and win.
Remember that choosing the right things to do and make use of your time effectively are two main ingredients to thrive with your blog.
0 comments :
Post a Comment