Alex Designs Blog » traffic http://www.alexthinks.com Blog from Alex Harris - Alex Designs LLC Sat, 22 Jan 2011 21:12:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Automatically Improve Traffic from Social Networking Websites http://www.alexthinks.com/automatically-improve-traffic-from-social-networking-websites.html http://www.alexthinks.com/automatically-improve-traffic-from-social-networking-websites.html#comments Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:14:00 +0000 alexdesigns http://www.alexthinks.com/automatically-improve-traffic-from-social-networking-websites.html improve social network trafficAre you getting (non paid) web traffic and leads from social networking websites? I am working on a comprehensive strategy to improve “Referring Social Network Traffic”. The business goals of using social sites include building brand exposure, creating customer relationships and bringing traffic back to the original website. This works the same for personal branding and corporate web marketing plans. Now you can automate the delivery of content to each of the social networking websites and stay consistently activate. This results in improving your “Referring Social Network Traffic”. The key is to make it really easy for customers to connect (friend) and find you on ALL of the social networks so the audience consistently increases. I think, all of your personal and/or business profiles need a consistent look and feel to ensure brand consistency.

Here are some things to think about:

  1. Your website or blog needs to have a “Social Networking” section. This area should be very easy to find and include clickable icons with text links. You can also use Lijit and automate the icons that show up on your website, plus track those subscriptions.

  2. Make sure your company or brand is easy to find in a search query on the popular social networking sites. This can be done by using target keyword phrases or tags in the personal profiles, business profiles and groups you create. Example: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and ect should all have a consistent about me section in the profile messaging that includes target keywords.

  3. Companies need to move marketing dollars into video. This is especially important since YouTube is owned by Google. Video is an essential part of universal search. Naming and tagging your videos with keywords make them show up better in search results. Tip – Try TubeMogul and you can upload one video, then distribute it to ten sites at once, plus tag and track them all in once place.

  4. Automate the content updates for ALL social networking sites. For example, with Twitter you can update your status on Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr, SocialThing, FriendFeed and more. You can also automatically make your new YouTube videos show up on Facebook. Plus automate your blog posts, events, Flickr photos to show up on your profile(s). This makes the company look active and keeps your audience’s attention.

  5. Connect with your audience with automated marketing research. For example, with TweetScan you can track keywords on Twitter and create RSS feeds out of that content. So, you can be notified automatically (web or sms) when someone talks about your brand or even a competitors. Also, Google and Yahoo alerts are extremely helpful to track blogs, news and ect.

  6. Create viral content that is easily shareable. The biggest traffic drivers for me have been controversial articles that attract a lot of comments or people to Digg or Stumble.

  7. A custom email signature is an easy way to express that you are using social sites. Having this on your personal or business emails will help increase your fans and friends.

  8. [Addition] Widgets are great tools also, suggested by Justin Thorp. Widgets are a great way to deliver automated content, games and applications for a company or brand. Example: A health brand can create a widget for their audience to use on their desktop, Facebook, MySpace and personal start page or websites. Clicking links in widget and forwarding of applications will result in more traffic back to your site.

Who else is thinking about this?

Have you see other blog posts about the automation of content for social networking sites? Are you generating traffic from your social networking websites? Please post your ideas or feedback here.

I am testing this strategy across the web with corporate and personal websites to see which social networking sites bring the most traffic back to the original websites. Plus, I am experimenting with the best ways to get brand exposure, plus find ways to monitor the success in traffic, leads and conversions.

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