Tag Archives: LinkedIn
You’ve launched your company website and followed these tips for optimizing your online presence. So why aren’t your traffic numbers through the roof yet? If I knew the answer to that question, I would be a very rich woman. Unfortunately, search engines are constantly changing the way they index and rank website in their search results. So depending solely on Google to help boost your website visitors isn’t necessarily the smartest idea. That doesn’t mean I want you to stop optimizing your site – keep at it! But there are a few other things you could be doing to help drive traffic to your Chatham-Kent company website. Here are just a few useful tips.
5 Tips to Help Drive Visitors to Your Company Website
1. Add a link in your email signature.
This is a great way to subtly remind your contacts of your online presence. Most professional email applications, like Outlook, have an option for creating an email signature readily available. If you’re using a web-based email provider, like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or Windows Live, check out WiseStamp. This cool application lets you create a visually appealing signature complete with social networking icons (check out mine in the picture!).
2. Add share buttons on important articles.
You’ve spent valuable time and energy writing and publishing unique content and useful articles to your company website, why not encourage people to share this content with friends or on social networks? There are various plug-ins and add-ons out there that enable you to add buttons on your website that make sharing content a snap. The best place to insert sharing buttons are either at the top or bottom of your article posting.
3. Conduct a survey or poll on your site.
Make the content on your company website interactive with a survey or poll feature. Visitors will have the opportunity to really interact with your information, providing their opinion in a useful manner. More often than not, visitors who respond to your poll will want to spread the word to their friends.
4. Syndicate your content to your social networks.
Share your content with friends, followers, and coworkers using easy syndication tools for sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. These applications will automatically post a link to your latest published post on your social media profiles, helping spread the word quickly and easily.
5. Let users subscribe in a variety of ways.
Driving new visitors to your website is important, but so is encouraging visitors to return time and time again. One of the easiest ways to do this is to provide visitors with a number of different ways to subscribe to your site. An RSS feed is the simplest format, but you can also offer an email subscription via services like Feedburner. This will send an enrolled visitor an email message with the full text of your latest website posting.
It boggles my mind that small business owners are still under the impression that a pretty looking website will automatically attract traffic and boost sales. Having a successful company site takes work, and lots of it! Employing a number of tactics to help draw visitors to your site is a great way to get the most mileage out of your content and encourage customers to keep coming back for more.
How do you drive customers to your company website?
Getting positive PR for your small business isn’t easy. Writing, distributing, and following up on press releases takes time, energy, and an awful lot of patience, especially if you’re pitching to a major publication or website. Luckily, social media has provided small business owners with a new platform for seeking out and interacting with journalist from all walks of life. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a fashion designer in New York or a salon stylist in Chatham-Kent, if you have a product or service that’s fantastic, social media can help you get your company the media coverage you deserve.
Three Ways to Get the Word Out Using Social Media
1) Tweet Breaking News
If you’re only distributing your press release to local media outlets you’re missing out on major marketing opportunities. The local paper might not understand or appreciate the impact of your new environmentally-friendly line of hair care products, but a specialty green magazine in Toronto will definitely want to learn more. To make the most of Twitter, start following important influencers in your industry. Engage with others, and eventually you’ll have some quality followers interested in learning and spreading your company news to potential media contacts. It also doesn’t hurt to tweet a hashtag keyword with a link to your press release – journalists monitor hashtags and trending topics to see what’s popular and/or unique right now.
2) Learn to Love LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the Facebook of professional networking. Here, you can connect with colleagues and business associates in order to grow your list of contacts. A closer investigation of your contact list could uncover some potentially useful connections. Small business owners can also join various groups on the networking site in order to meet new people and cultivate new relationships.
3) Have You Heard of HARO?
HARO, or Help A Report Out, is a great service for businesses in search of media coverage. The site, which was recently acquired by the Software-as-a-Service company, Vocus, is a service that connects reports with reliable story sources quickly and easily. The system, which began as a Facebook group, lets businesses sign up as “sources” for free. Once signed up, you’ll receive a handful of HARO emails every weekday, each overflowing with queries from deadline driven journalists. And we’re not talking about your local reporter – HARO has a database of more than 29,000 journalists, including writers from The New York Times, ABC News, and the HuffingtonPost. Think your company is a perfect match for one of the queries? Well, what are you waiting for, respond! HARO is 100% free for sources, so really, what have you go to lose by signing up? Businesses of all sizes are welcome on HARO, just beware – if you’re caught spamming a journalist you’re immediately booted from the system.
How do you spread company news to media sources? Do you have an alternative method to the traditional press release? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
