My good friend Merrin Wake emailed me the other day for some advice on getting traffic through to her blog secretsofmotherhood after reading a few pages I established that identifying the readership in this situation would be slightly different than I am used to as the users are not business users and not consumers. Merrin said that the blog was set up with social media tools, in this situation is key to go an extra mile when talking to your readers. Establish your voice and create conversations with your readers, this way passive absorbers of your information start to become your brand advocates. It only takes a couple of power users of your website pushing your message to feel like you have a mini marketing team working for you and you are laying down the foundations to facilitate some viral marketing.
Remember that no two people browse the Internet in the same way! We all have our favorite platforms, our favorite browser plugins and we all use social media in different ways so make sure your blog caters for as many of these people as possible not just your preferences. Share buttons with limited clicks is essential for the reader to spread the word. Subscribe Fields for those who wish to be sent a email digest. Follow and Like Buttons for those who passively watch you through social media platforms. RSS feeds (in particular Feedburner) for those who will watch you from their email client.
Link exchange,
Obviously, search engine optimization should be at the for front of your mind not just during site design but on every post, every keyword and every heading. Link exchange is vital to your SEO and I don’t just mean sending out annoying emails to similar sites asking to swap links I mean, where are your potential readers? Are they on Facebook? If so, have they joined a group in which you can start a discussion that links back to your pages, can you get them discussing and spreading the conversation to various other platforms such as digg, delicious, yahoo buzz etc? Inbound links are important not just for traffic but also for search engine bots to find your site. Outbound links have to quality sites have similar effects.
The paid way
If your site is making some money then the quick way is to incorporate some pay per click adverting or direct advertising on websites you would like to be seen. There is an art to this so don’t take it on lightly but here are some starting points to get you thinking. See my Digital Marketing posts.
