Tag: traffic

How To Use Email Marketing To Drive More Traffic And Get More Sales

Post author By Jon Rognerud
Post date November 13, 2015

Why Email Marketing?

Email marketing is an online business strategy that involves sending a series of specific messages (emails) to a list of existing subscribers (a segment) or potential customers. You may be informing them of new products or services available for them to try/buy, or build a relationship with them to create interest.

Marketers use these emails to solicit sales, donations or even send ads to targeted audiences. The main purpose is to create brand awareness, build trust and loyalty among customers, as well as increase the customer base & purchase patterns.

An email list is however needed to make this marketing campaign a success and fruitful. In addition to this, the marketer needs to have a creative way of crafting the promotional emails to attract the target audience’s attention and get the message through.

Although it may seem like a simple marketing strategy, many factors have to be considered to make it a success.

It is for this reason one needs to be creative enough to make the most out of an email list.

Outlined below are a few tips and tricks on how to use email marketing to drive more traffic to your business to record higher sales and profits.

10 Ways On How to Drive More Traffic Using Email Marketing:

1. Encourage people to subscribe to promotional emails:

The first step in email marketing is collecting email addresses from interested potential customers. Collecting viable and credible email addresses to use in a marketing campaign is one of the toughest tasks marketers have to undertake. Discussed below are a few tips and trick on how to encourage prospects to subscribe to your promotional newsletters.

a. Use your Facebook accounts: Social media marketing is another powerful marketing strategy that every marketer should use. If you already have a Facebook page for your business, you can then use it to collect more viable emails from interested audiences and friends. Allowing your target audience to subscribe to newsletters while on Facebook can help you generate more leads than you anticipated. They can sign up directly, or via a landing page that you send them to.

b. Use blogs and forums: Blogs have a huge influence on the online market today – this is especially important for blogs offering informative content for the online community. Most people search for information on blogs and other informative sites they can find online. If you already have a blog linked to your business website, you can then use it to collect email addresses from visiting viewers and audiences. You however should make sure the blog contains informative content, and what the target audience wants, for them to feel obliged to provide an email address. Often you can capture this via a freemium, an offer that has value to them, in exchange for an email. We call this an ‘ethical bribe’.

c. Use promotional or explainer videos: Although most marketers are yet to realize this, you can collect tons of email addressing by uploading a promotional video – or an explainer or funny video clip with a call to action button on video hosting sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. YouTube has over a billion users and creates massive traffic every day from all corners of the world. You can therefore tap into its traffic and even collect email addresses from the same. As mentioned earlier, you need to give these subscribers a reason to subscribe to your newsletters and other promotional content for them to provide you with their personal email addresses.

2. Tell subscribers what to expect:

Most people focus too much on acquiring a potential customer’s email address without telling them what to expect from the process. One of the basic principles of email marketing is making it known to these subscribers why you need their email addresses. None one will just hand you their personal address without a good reason to.

Telling these subscribers what to expect from you gives them a peace of mind – this means they will most probably open the promotional email and read through the mail. You however need to be careful not to send too many emails, as some of the audience may be annoyed and hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button. You can easily manage this by watching your statistics. Their engagement (clicks, responses) will tell you when to break up the frequency of email messages.

3. Make the emails scannable:

Most people are too busy to read long lines of text, which is the reason why you should strive to keep your emails short and precise. Make sure the reader can scan through the email with one glimpse and get the idea behind the text without having to read through the text. (Note: this can obviously vary depending on the market. If you are an educational center for example, more detail may be ok.)

Including graphic images and including subheadings can greatly help how fast a reader can comprehend the mail hence saving his/her time. You also need to include a call to action link to help interested customers to click to make a purchase or order easily.

4. Use mobile-friendly emails:

Many people today use their smartphones, tablets, iPads, and other handheld devices to surf the internet and access their personal emails.

It is for this reason you should ensure all promotional emails send are mobile-friendly and easy to read in limited screen sizes. Many of these handheld devices use inbuilt emailing apps to deliver messages to the user, which is another reason you need to ensure the text is readable across multiple emailing platforms and apps.

If all your target audiences in your mailing list are able to open and read the emails with ease, you can then be assured that most of them will make orders or even log into your business website.

5. Use video email marketing:

Video email marketing is the newest marketing kid on the block. As mentioned earlier, most people lead busy lives and rarely get time to read long blocks of text in their emails.

Nonetheless, the reading time can be reduced to a few seconds by simply using a promotional, high quality and informative video clip as the main message.

You however should make sure the video quality is exceptionally good but lightweight to enable fast loading even on emailing programs. HTML5 video clips are mostly recommended as they load very fast even on slow networks. Showing a video player graphic with your smiling face on it, and a link to the actual video on a landing page is also best practice.

Audio visual content is more converting than written content in that, it is easier to comprehend – it only takes less than 15 seconds to deliver the intended message. The best thing about this is that, most smartphones, tablets and iPads support 3G and 4G networks, which means viewing these videos on these devices is a breeze and present a smooth viewing experience.

6. Send personalized emails:

Both loyal and potential customers will greatly appreciate if you send them personalized emails custom designed for their needs. This means you have to categorize your emailing list according to customer preferences and needs. This ensures the recipients get mails related to their needs and what may appear to them as “spammy” mails.

It would be more advantageous to inject personalized recommendations for your clients for an ultimate one-on-one communication. Although sending personalized emails may be time-consuming, your business or website should receive at least 25% higher conversions and even higher traffic from the same. The returns on investment on sending personalized emails are much higher than sending one message to thousands of recipients.

If you use dynamic responses to email clicks and events, you can make it work in this way.

7. Ensure the landing page is properly optimized:

Although investing in a promising and effective email marketing campaign is recommended, it would be advisable to ensure your business’ landing page is optimized properly. Most businesses lose potential high-value customers simply because their websites aren’t presentable or optimized (high value messaging, offers and speed of loading).

For more return visits (and for potential customers to refer their friends to your website) it would be wise to ensure your business website is optimized and designed properly. The website should be very easy to use and navigate. A presentable, informative, and easy to use website attracts more return visits than an unresponsive website. Tools like leadpages and unbounce can help get the process started.

8. Automate post-purchase messages:

A strong website, positive customer experience, and effective email marketing campaigns form a stable footing for your business and interactive marketing. You however shouldn’t take your customers, whether one-time or loyal customers, for granted.

Provide them with exclusive and attractive deals to encourage them to buy more, or even refer their friends to your website.

Taking some time to thank them after a purchase (through a personalized automated message) can be uplifting to them. This paves way for more return visits hence increased traffic and more sales. Psychologically, you are also “training” and preparing them for future interactions with you. The first email they get is the most important for establishing trust and good relationship from the outset.

9. Be friendly:

Although using a casual tone in promotional emails is recommended, it wouldn’t hurt to use an informal but friendly tone especially to loyal customers. It is by being friendly that you can break the ice with new audiences and customers.

This also creates a tighter relationship which makes potential customers want to try your services or products.

10. Respond to email replies:

Some of the potential customers (on your mailing list) may have questions/queries they need to be answered or cleared before they can make an order. Be sure to respond to their emails professionally by providing them with the answers they need to clear their doubts.

Do not be like any other marketer who uses a certain email address to mail potential leads and never checks emails or what the recipients hand to say.

Responding to a customer’s mail builds confidence and trust thus increasing their chances of visiting your official website, or better still, make an order.

In Summary:

Your business can benefit greatly from proper and well-executed email campaigns. As long as you do everything right, and aren’t too nagging or use a sales-pitchy tone in the emails, you should then expect some returns from the same. (Note: Certain times in the email sequence, it’s ok to be more direct. Don’t be shy about asking for the sale). Be sure to monitor the emailing address you use to contact the target audiences as you never know what they have to say, or what good it will do to your business.

BONUS: Get the free lead generation guide that will show you how to quickly get more leads from traffic. Includes 2 bonus strategies not found in this post.

Tags Email marketing, sales, traffic

SEO

SEO For Blogger: 10 Essential Elements To Skyrocket Your Blog Traffic

Post author By Jon Rognerud
Post date November 12, 2015

As a blogger, your main goal is to get your thoughts and ideas out to a specific community.

You may even hope to make a nice side income off your content through ad networks and affiliate commissions.

READ: “How to create a blog site with 7 simple steps”

If you are a corporate content marketer and building out your company blog, you can implement strategies from this post to attract the right buying audience and get more downloads for your whitepapers, webinars and software trials.

This cannot happen if you only have a trickle of traffic coming into your site.

This SEO for blogger post will show you 10 SEO strategies you can use to drive more traffic for your blog.

The vast majority of bloggers will fail and give up.

Their website ending up in a great wasteland of ideas and failed projects. What many of these bloggers did not know is they could have been successful if they had just had the right audience.

It does not matter how good of a website you can create. If there is not an audience to read and share that content it is only as good as a blank page. As a blogger, your job is not only to create engaging content but drive traffic to that same content.

If your website is not getting an influx of traffic, it is time to rethink your strategy.

I would like to share a basic checklist that I use on my own sites that has helped me bring a surge of visitors to my site on a monthly basis.

If you choose not to follow these simple tips, you might as well stop paying for your hosting and move on to something else! 🙂

Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site.

1. Know Your Audiences Keywords

At the core of any website should be a specific set of keywords that your audience is searching for. Your keywords have to find their moment of zen if you will.

There has to be a balance between keywords that are offering large volumes of traffic and keywords that are going to target specific segments of the audience.

For example, you can not just target “gamers” and hope to hit the traffic jackpot. You need to start small and work your way up. By targeting a keyword like “Best Games For Players Who Experience Rage Modes” you are zeroing in on a specific group of gamers. As you begin to blend these types of keywords your site will begin to flourish with hundreds of long-tail traffic keywords.

TIP: If you are in the B2B marketplace (we have many clients there), where often there are low volume keyword traffic and/or not plenty of related keywords, look to develop a content strategy with “shoulder-topics” and write about those. You can always make a connection to your niche that way. Your true audience will filter themselves out or in.

Part of this process is going to involve learning the language of your audience. While keyword tools are the bread and butter of a content marketer’s life, they do not give us the insight into the nuances of our audiences minds. In order to achieve this, we have to visit places they hang out at and learn their language.

By using their slang and specific keywords, you will be achieving the upper hand on your competition. We call this “topic relevance” and “audience targeting”.

2. Have You Optimized?

A well-optimized site (your blog) is one that typically gets the lion’s share of the traffic. If you have never looked at your alt tags (attributes) or meta descriptions, you are letting vital traffic slip right through your hands.

This is not the way you want to save bandwidth costs!

Your first priority is going to have to be a website audit (which is out of the scope if this article). You will need to examine the on-page and off-page factors of your site. We are referring to “content” and “links”, and the quality and reputation of the environment you are creating.

On-page optimization, might include checking over your meta descriptions, add your keyword into the title and use it within the first 100 words if possible, and use SEO-friendly permalinks. Make sure your technical SEO is in check too – and revisited every week or monthly. (servers, redirection, robots, spider-ability, analytics, tag manager, webmaster tools, etc).

Simple tweaks like this will help the search engines discover content, pages – and human visitors reading that content. These are things you can get started with right away. But, depending on you marketplace, levels of competitiveness and your unique angle in your space, it may only move the needle slightly. You need more.

Your off-page optimization efforts will include making sure you are getting relevant and high-quality backlinks. This includes managing content and links internally on your site. You can control this.

Remember in this stage of the SEO game it is no longer about getting thousands of backlinks. Look for quality and make sure to pursue a natural velocity of links attraction. No spam if you are serious.

3) Guest Post And Guest Post Again

While it may be true that everyone and their neighbor has guest posted somewhere on the Internet it is still a formidable way to increase traffic. This is especially true if you are able to get a post on a highly trafficked blog or site.

If you are unsure where to start with guest posting, it all starts off with a simple email, or even direct phone call (how 2005 of me!).

Find relevant blogs in your niche that are not your direct competition and ask to do a post. Simply ask for a link back or two to your site. This will not only generate direct traffic but will be looked at favorably by the search engines. This process can be automated, and you might consider contacting an agency that can do this for you. (that’s a plug!)

4) What Does Your Content Say About You

While I understand the importance of pen names online I have always hated how easy it is to hide behind them. I feel if people had to post content to their blogs under their real names they would not be so tempted to upload garbage. Users like it too, and search engines tend to follow user behavior. Makes sense, right?

It is important that the content you create holds up to a high standard and it would be something you would be proud to show your mom or English teacher for that matter. High-quality content gets shared much more than spun material.

Always remember to have your content written for your audience and not the search engines. If the content is good and it is relevant to the keywords you are targeting, the search engines will find it. Humans first. Then Non-Humans.

5) Write Often

If you have decided to take on the role of a blogger your main goal is to create content.

I run across many blogs a day that only get updated once or twice a year and I find that absolutely lethargic!

Visitors want to come to a blog that is active with content and comments. A blog should not only be about you, but the visitors problems and concerns. If you can build a vibrant community, even better. I am seeing many bloggers turning off comments, because of the negative impact of productivity and frankly, it’s been overused as a spam technique. (“comment spam”)

The added benefit to writing a lot is the search engines will begin to pick you up for all of those long tail keywords that we talked about earlier.

If you find that you have a hard time blogging or simply forget to do it, you need to set time aside each day or week.

A proper schedule will not only help your blog grow, but it will make it easier to write a post each time. And, be sure to set up a calendar, and if you use WordPress (like we do), you can use tools like Co-Schedule to help set that up, and configure auto-posting into social networks for you. And, it’s easy to do on a schedule.

6) How Social Are You?

If you have taken care of making sure the search engines will be crawling your every page and words with proper optimization, you need to set the social media channels on fire. By having a strong persona on social media, you have the opportunity to pull traffic into your site on a whim.

While you want to find out where your audience engages the most, it is important to try and be almost everywhere. This includes LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. However, take the time and focus on where your audience is first and then post to the others.

7) Make Your Content Work Harder

As we have discussed already, content is a popular part of the equation of getting traffic to your site.

However, if someone has never visited your blog, they may never see that wonderful, thought-provoking article you created. You also must consider outreach as mentioned before.

In desperate times, you have to take desperate measures and bundle that piece of content into something else and give it life once more.

One of the best ways is to create a PDF, slideshow, or even a video. Once you have “created” this new piece of content is can then be shared to Slideshare, and Youtube respectively.

8) What Do You Want From Your Visitors?

Are you looking for your visitors to comment below the post or share to their favorite social media platform?

If you never tell your audience what to do, they will never do it. You have to end your content with a strong call to action and tell them what to do next.

If not they are simply going to close out the screen or hit the dreaded back button.

Do not feel as though you are being too forward with this request. Website users want to know what their next action should be.

Tell them to share or comment. Also, ask them to sign up to your email list, which brings us to our next tip.

9) Yep, The Money Is In The List

I have to be honest with you, at one point I was ready to bang my head across my laptop because I had read that phrase so many times.

Is it true, though? Yes, without a doubt. The money is in the (warm, relationship-based) list as is the potential to drive unlimited amounts of traffic to your blog on a whim.

If you have been building up a list over the years, you have one of the most valuable resources online. You have a built-in audience that wants to know when you have something to say.

All that is needed is to fill out a broadcast message in your autoresponder account and let your audience know that you have just uploaded a new post.

Even better: Create dynamic behavioral response email content, where you track where and what your list members are clicking, and tailor the message to that. (Infusionsoft, Hubspot, Marketo, for example.)

10) Give Your Audience A Reason To Come Back

Many individuals get into building blogs because they were told it is easy and a way to make a lot of money. In fact, it is just the opposite. Blogging is very hard and it takes dedication to make an income or create an impact.

Blogging can not be about using your audience as the proverbial cash cow. You have to be willing to solve a problem that your audience is having without the need for a monetary reward.

If you come across as a friend and are approachable, your name will begin to circulate in your audiences online world.

In short, you will become a celebrity in those circles and your traffic will grow very quickly.

Final Thoughts

Blogging is one of the best ways to connect with an audience and share your thoughts and ideas about a topic.

It is hard work and traffic (usually) never comes overnight. For many bloggers, that traffic will never come and they simply give up. They “throw in the towel” too soon. That’s a mistake.

By using just a few of these ideas you are giving your blog another day to find its audience.

With work and dedication, it is possible to get those traffic surges you only dream about now.

Take just one idea from above and implement it today and see what happens. I would love to know what you choose and the results you experienced.

Find me on Twitter and let’s connect

NEED SOME HELP? Contact Us Here and schedule your time.

Tags blogger, SEO, seo for blogger, traffic

SEO

How To Create a New Website That Sells

Post author By Jon Rognerud
Post date September 3, 2015

We’ve Created and Researched Thousands of High Performance Websites In The Last 18 Years And Spent Over $100k A Year Implementing & Tracking Results. Here Are 10 Key Things We’ve Learned.

As a webmaster and entrepreneur, the ultimate goal is to create a natural, quality visitor attraction — so you can get & qualify new opportunities and more sales. This way, you’ll boost revenue for your business and via your online venture.

Using existing personal and business networks — referrals and direct outreach (telemarketing) works for many.

It is very possible to do all this without a website and an ‘online process’, but it is extremely difficult – therefore, our goal is to create an environment in which your business is easy to discover and that sells – all online.

The three things we are going to go over are:

Site Design
Hosting
Marketing

Our goal is to create a website that motivates the buyer to instantly respond.

What do you want your visitor to do as soon as they visit your website?

Set up a phone or office appointment?
Submit full/quality contact information?
Join an upcoming event, workshop or webcast?
Register for a FREE online training course?

Knowing how to set up a web site that sells is the key to increasing leads and sales for your industry this year.

#1 – Purchase a Domain name

Do you already have a name in mind? If you haven’t registered your business name with the state – this is a good way to test what the name of the website should be. If you have already chosen your organization name, then simply put it into GoDaddy’s or NameCheap’s search bar and begin. (GoDaddy orNameCheap)

Hint: Keep in mind that GoDaddy upsells a lot during the domain registration process – if you do not want extra features, NameCheap.com has a more streamlined process.

Here are some tips when trying to find a great name for your high performance website:

Aim for a “.com”
Don’t worry too much if your first domain name idea is taken.
Hold off on GoDaddy’s “website builder offer” for now – we have a great tutorial on how to make a great website that sells!
Find a name that you feel your audience will trust.

#2 – Get a Hosting Account

Now that we have purchased a domain name, we need somewhere to “host” this domain name. Think of the domain name as the “sign of the store”, and the hosting as building that contains the actual “store”. By purchasing a hosting solution, we will have a platform that contains your business’ identity! (Popular hosting: HostGator)

Once this information is completed – we can go ahead and re-direct the GoDaddy’s name servers towards your HostGator account. For name servers, HostGator will e-mail you this information. This step is easier than it sounds as HostGator has a beginner’s guide on how to accomplish this .

#3 – Create an Easy To Manage Website & Blog

There are many website hosting platforms out there. Why did we choose HostGator? Besides their excellent customer service, you will also gain the ability to create a WordPress website quite easily. While WordPress is associated with blogs it offers you, the entrepreneur, the ability to create a high quality website, and give you the ability to easily update it without hassle in the future. Not only that – but the process is streamlined on HostGator so that you can do it with minimal instruction.

Hint: You do NOT have to go to WordPress.com in order to create a WordPress website. You can do it directly from HostGator’s website. Just a quick summarization just in case you are confused on how to accomplish this:

Buy a domain name
Purchase hosting
Forward domain
Install WordPress

After these brief steps, you are good to go! Now it’s time to get a great looking website designed!

#4 – Let’s Get the Website Designed – 99Designs.Com

You want to have everything in place before you go to 99designs.com. By having a domain name, hosting platform and WordPress already installed – you will set the foundation for your online vision.

Just think of 99designs.com as EBay for web design, only, graphic designers are bidding their work for your money. This competition means that you’ll receive a top notch product. If you like the design, you can pay them, if not, then delete and move on to the next project!

Hint: if you do not want to go through the bidding process, you can just go to the “winning designs” section and find designs that you like.

After that, just go to the winning designer and ask for their business.

#5 – Fill Out the Information on 99Designs.com

Now, as the title promises, we want to create a website that sells! It is recommended to go for at least the silver package so that you can attract a fair amount of designers to your project.

Now, when you fill out your information, it is critical that you are extremely descriptive.

Here are some quick tips when filling out the information for your high performance website:

Briefly Describe What Your Website Does & Your Target Audience – The goal of this website is to motivate prospects to input their information. We are targeting people who are looking to _________ (insert your niche here). We may want to mention that we want a dedicated section for sub-areas of that niche as well.

What Ideas do you have for the style/theme of your design? – It’s a great idea to go visit other websites. You want your business to seem friendly, professional, and authoritative. Also, you want the website to go along with your company colors. Also mention that you want a place where your target audience has a place to input their e-mail & phone information.

You will also be asked to link to a website for inspiration. After you complete this information, you’ll be ask to input contest & payment information!

#6 – Take the Design to a “PSD to WordPress” Expert

The 99designs process can take about a week or so. After this process, you should have a high quality web design that blows people away! After this, you will receive designs in the form of Photoshop files. These aren’t that useful by themselves, therefore, you will want to have someone program this design and convert it to a website. Someone like PSD2HTML will do this for you, and for a small extra fee – they will install the programmed design into your WordPress website (remember the one that we installed in step 3?).

#7 – Attach a Blog to It

It’s quite easy to attach a blog to the WordPress website. We simply need to go to HostGator and:

Go into our CPanel.
Find the “Fantastico” section.
Go to the WordPress section.
Fill out the information.
Install the blog (we can even set the URL to say, “yourwebsite.com/blog”)

These two blogs are going to serve two different purposes. The 1^st WordPress that we created in steps 3-6 are going to be used primarily to convert visitors into leads. The second blog that we’ve created is so that we can begin writing blog posts. By writing blog posts every single day or even weekly, we can actually attract more visitors to our website!

#8 – Get an AWeber Account

In step #5 – we mentioned that we wanted the customer to input their e-mail information and phone number. Why? A lot of our business is going to be based on lead nurturing, consulting, and last but not least, eventual closing. For this reason, it is critical that we use a tool like AWeber.

We can install this on our website and have visitors put in their personal information. We can also maintain a database of e-mail address/phone numbers to help keep track of all of our leads. This is why it’s critical in step 5 to ask the design to allow the user to input their information! You may not be in a business where sales are immediate (example: e-commerce). The sales cycles may be much longer. For example, in the consulting business – it can be from a week, 30 days to 6 months! So it’s critical that you have a way of keeping up with your customer base from one central location.

#9 – Make Sure Your Website is SEO Optimized (Google Friendly)!

Design is important and so is search engine optimization (SEO). To put it simply, SEO done right helps determine if your website ranks high in websites like Google, Bing, & Yahoo. This, along with paid search is a KEY way to beat your competition! Therefore, by using these strategies, you can make sure your website ranks high.

If you want to quickly rank your website, then it is always highly recommended to seek the guidance of an SEO expert. Search engine optimization is the single most important aspect of online marketing as it gives you an unfair advantage ahead of your competition!

#10 – Begin the Marketing Campaign!

As a professional business, a lot of your time is going to be dedicated to trying to close quality deals. Your main goal is to be seen as “trusted advisor”, “knowledgeable”, “personal”, “innovative”, “different” to help buyers get what they need at a competitive price + awesome customer support.

This includes things like planning for workshops (online or off), producing and distributing quality content and information, establishing relationships with others in your industry, and much more. Therefore, when it comes to online marketing, it may be a great idea to outsource certain “busy-work” so that you can focus on your unique ability. Think about the 80/20 rule – what produces the best results (80%) based on 20% of your work? That outsourced work includes things website development, direct response copy, search engine optimization, social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and more.

Tags performance, SEO, traffic, websites

Content Marketing General

12 Strategic Content Types That Drives Targeted Web Traffic

Post author By Jon Rognerud
Post date June 2, 2015

content types that drive targeted traffic

If you want targeted web traffic, you need to have a content strategy.

Below is an extensive list of 12 strategic content types that you should consider to acquire those targeted web visitors.

1. Original and Informative Blog Posts

Blog posts are an important part of you content strategy for several reasons.

When women and men browse the internet, they are often searching for useful content.
When you create blog posts, make sure to write with a purpose, whether you are telling a story or trying to help educate others on a specific topic.
Use your knowledge and some research to create engaging blog posts.
Never copy something that someone else has written.

Keep your paragraph shorts and keep the content looking clean with subheadings. If it is engaging enough and looks good, there are people who are going to share it and continue to read other blog posts you have written.

For SEO, make sure to have a keyword map and keyword research in place.

2. Creative and Useful Videos

When you want to learn how to do something, do you prefer reading a tutorial or watching one?

Even though written content is often engaging and informative, videos add a sense of personalization.

Create a video where you are discussing your niche.
Provide tips that people probably want to know about or show them how to do something.
While recording your videos, make eye contact with the camera.
Show a softer, friendlier side.

If you are funny and kind in your videos, people will relate to you, and they will keep on watching.

If your videos are interesting enough, they could even go viral.

Even Bill Gates (twitter) went viral with this video:

3. Accurate and Relevant Infographics

Infographics give you the perfect opportunity to combine facts with images.

You may be able to easily create your own using a photo editing software program.
Gather the statistics for the one you are creating
Research the information several times to make sure the statistics are accurate
Turn them into an infographic using images and fun text.

If you have never made an infographic before, you may not even know where to start.

Consider using a search engine to look at others that are already on the web.

They may give you some inspiration for how your infographic should look in terms of size and color.

Start with infographic creation tools like piktochart and infogr.am

4. Captivating Professional Images

Some pictures really do tell a story, so why not share them?

Instead of using pictures that belong to others, take your own with a professional camera to ensure your images look their best. Tie the pictures you have taken in with your niche.

Post them on social media accounts, especially Instagram and Pinterest, and allow people to share them.

5. Frequently Asked Questions Section

Whether you are selling certain types of products or services, having a frequently asked questions section will work in your favor.

It allows you to address some of the most common questions people tend to ask you about your business without constantly repeating yourself.

And, you can include essential keywords into some of those questions and answers, which will help you with search engine optimization.

6. Honest and Meaningful Reviews

Are there companies sending products out to you in exchange for an honest review?

Even if they are not sending the products to you, it would be wise to add a review section in which you discuss different products you have tried.

Your customers and followers will read the reviews and may follow your suggestions.

For example, there may be a certain product that makes life more convenient.

You could discuss what you like most about it. If your followers buy it, you are helping them out. And, if they end up loving it as much as you do, it will help build a trust between you and them.

7. Fun and Interesting Audio Series

If you are successful at what you do, why not share advice with others?

People can choose to listen to the audio series whenever they want to, whether they are on their way to work or sitting at home.

Create your own audio series in the form of a podcast.
The audio should certainly be entertaining and interesting because you do want people to continue listening.
Always offer something new if you want people to enjoy the podcast.

Podcast hosting here if you want to get started today.

8. Promotion via Email Messages

Quality content is not just important for your website.

While marketing for your business, the content in your promotional email messages should be engaging, fun and short. You do not have to write multiple paragraphs.

Instead, write out a few catchy sentences, offer some type of deal to your mailing list and add an image on the side.

Start simple, and work into deeper content for your members and clients. (special email segment)

Email messages are not nearly as complicated as some people think.

And, they are an essential component for your content strategy.

9. Interactive Poll

Make sure that you are inviting your followers to communicate and interact with you.

Add a poll or quiz to your website and social media accounts to ask for opinions from these followers. It shows that their opinions are important to you, but it also helps you figure out what types of improvements you need to make.

Polldaddy and Surveymonkey are great tools to help you here.

10. Monthly Business Update

There are many people who enjoy reading about progress.

Create a monthly business update that discusses some details about expansion.
Talk about improvements that you have made and goals that you have managed to reach throughout the month.

These updates may inspire others.

11. Professional Guest Posts

If you are creating guest posts for other websites, you are on the right track. However, do not forget to allow people to guest post on your website.

Of course, you get to decide who you want to allow to write these posts.

Consider selecting those who have a large following (to help push your message too) or a fantastic message to spread.

12. Current News Spot Light

Keep up with topics that are trending by including a current news spotlight that updates people about things that are going on in the world and with different celebrities.

Not only does this allow for a discussion between different people, but it keeps people on your website for a longer period of time.

If you use these types of content, there should be absolutely no problem driving traffic to your website.

Finally – total success from content marketing for corporations requires buy-in, as well as an ongoing, creative process for handling it.

Here are additional success factors: (from Content Marketing Institute)

WANT US TO HELP YOU? Take a look here.

Tags Content, SEO, traffic

online marketing

9 Ideas For Building Traffic To Your Website From Pinterest

Post author By Jon Rognerud
Post date May 21, 2013

Pinterest has grown to be a major social networking site that has the potential to greatly increase the traffic to any website. That’s why it is important, especially for new and pioneering businesses, to incorporate this social networking site to their online marketing strategy.

Although using Pinterest itself is already an effective habit, knowing and applying these nine ideas for building traffic to your website is something that will accelerate your success.

1. Generate Original Ideas

Posting original content within Pinterest is going to be the key to your success, so make sure you always have new and great ideas. You have the option of repinning, but becoming truly influential means also posting your own ideas. The key is to express your message effectively and making it interesting at the same time. Posting effective and enticing content regularly will earn you a loyal following.

2. Get Great Visuals

Visuals are key because there needs to be something worth pinning and re-pinning in the first place. Enticing the eyes of your users is the most effective way to get their attention. This is where finding awesome contributing photographers and illustrators to work for you come to play. It’s also good to mix up your content by pinning videos on your board.

3. Add Pin-It Buttons to Your Site

The easiest way to get your site content shared is to install a widget on your site. Don’t underestimate the power a Pin-it button has in getting your content out there. Before you add one, you need to determine whether adding such a button is beneficial for you. If your site has a number of different widgets, it might be better to remove one first and replace it with the Pin-It button so you don’t clog up your site.

4. Pin Up Blog Posts

Like any social media site, you shouldn’t go overboard when posting your own content. You should always focus on providing good content for your users that they can share with their followers and friends. Make sure the topic of your blog post matches the board you’re pinning it up to. Ensure that the image you’re using is of high quality because it is the first thing users will see.

5. Link Your Pinterest Page to Everything Else

Linking your profile to your business website, your other social networking sites, and pages filled with related content gives you the opportunity to gain as much exposure as possible. With them all linked together, viewers of your Pinterest profile will have access to any website you want them to look at, which increases your chances of sales. Doing this will benefit you because after acquiring a decent size following, your other sites are all put in the spotlight for your followers to view.

6. Cozy Up to Big Brands by Showing off Your Content

Most big, well-known brands suck at Pinterest. They may have a solid following, but they’re still trying to figure it out. You may not know it, but you can help them. If you’re consistently sharing awesome visuals that lead to quality content on a topic that’s relevant to their audience, they will re-pin your stuff over and over again. In turn, you will get exposed to their audience and grab some of them to follow you too.

7. Organize Your Pinboards

Believe it or not, users may not want to follow every topic or category you cover. Let them pick and choose, don’t have too many of them. If a user has to scroll to see more boards, they likely won’t. Focus on well-curated boards with defined categories so you could make things easier for your followers to choose.

8. Name Your Pinboards Wisely

Don’t over-complicate your pinboard names with clever names. Pinterest users make a split-second decision to follow you or not follow you and never return. Going too generic isn’t advantageous as well. Naming your pinboards somewhere between generic and overly creative is something important you must learn overtime.

9. Spread Out Your Pinning Across All Boards

It’s not good to focus all your attention on only one board. It may overwhelm those following that single board and turn off those following the other boards. Even if it’s a board you can’t find much content for, it’s better to update it every so often than to leave it dormant. Take the time to update your boards at least once a week to keep things fresh for your followers.

Pinterest takes some time to get used to, but once you have enough followers, seeing the numbers drastically increase is a great reward. Provided that you keep posting good content, your followers will start recommending you and repinning your content. This allows more people to stumble upon your profile and see your posts for themselves. It is a great cycle that just needs to be fueled by top quality content, so make sure you don’t leave it out of your online marketing strategy.

Tags ideas, pinterest, tips, traffic