How to Use Online Social Networking to Market – Part 3

When You Use Social Networking Here’s Where The Traffic Comes From

In part 3 of my series on how to use online social networking to get traffic to your website we’re going to talk where the traffic comes from.

Now the first thing you need to know is that to use social networking to get traffic you must actually network. In other words joining online communities and having your own community will not give you any traffic if you don’t get involved.

Yes, you may learn some very useful information by joining other social networks however if you never share any comments or information no one will ever know about you.

Have you ever heard the expression, “the squeeky wheel gets the oil”?

Well if you’re in a networking community and you want people to know about you and your site you’ve got to be a squeeky wheel – just not too squeeky.  You’ve got to take some time several times a week and say something of value to the community. Leave comments when you really like or dislike something and be sure to explain why and possibly give an example.

To  see a good example of what I’m talking about read the comment Dan left for my article “Unacceptable Customer Service.” After reading the comment we all know a little more about Dan and his business philosophy. And interesting comments that people either agree with or even disagree with will get you some traffic.

Yes, commenting on other people’s blogs is a form of social networking and the free traffic from blog comments is highly targeted traffic. When you read a blog you’re interested in so are others who have the same interest you do. So let your light shine and start making some interesting and insightful comments to capture the interest of other readers. As Carole, 1 of my subscribers told me in a message last week,

“Social sites? I’m on Facebook and Twitter (@carolesrants), but I don’t have a lot of time to spend on them. I actually get more traffic from blog commenting.”

And right now I totally agree with Carole since that’s where most of my social networking traffic is coming from. However using sites like Facebook and Twitter to get traffic is very much like getting traffic through a blog. You’ve got to join other communities, interact to get known, and give interesting comments that add value.

Getting traffic from your own community is much like getting blog comment traffic. Sure some of your subscribers may join your community and you want to stay in touch with them however your also trying to expand your business by attracting new people who don’t know much about you. Therefore you must be involved with your own community and provide interesting and useful information there too.

Remember, social networking is all about being an active participant in a community.  It’s about providing good information often enough so people will begin to recognize you as an authority and check out your community profile or website.

Now getting traffic from social networking does take time. It takes time to do and it takes time for you to become recognized. And while it takes time to start getting traffic the traffic you’ll get is very good because these people are already interested in what you have to say.

From my experience with social networking it isn’t hard. In fact the hardest part is learning how to use the networking sites since they are all different. That’s why I suggest you start with 1 or 2 and only join others after you’ve become comfortable with them.

NOTE: I started social networking with blog comments and Twitter because they are the easiest. Blog comments only require a few moments of reading and sharing and Twitter is pretty much the same. Also, I don’t use any of the automatic software to send messages or automatically follow new followers because saavy Twitter users recognize automatic messages for what they are and I don’t want my Twitter page full of useless tweets about things I’m not interested in. However I do check the pages of my followers and am following those who provide good information about things I am interested in knowing more about.

The bottom line is that to get traffic from social networking you must first be active in other people’s communities,  provide good information on a regular basis and post your link where people who like what you’ve said can learn more about you. And while there are not usually any rules on the types of links used in your community comments, links to sales pages should only be used HTML clipboardoccasionally. Leaving a link to you site, blog or community profile however is good because then people can learn more about you and decide if they would like to become a member of your network.

Now that you know that the traffic you get from social networking is by being active in other people’s networking site I invite you to become an active member in this social networking site and leave a comment. Just know that I do monitor all comments to control spam so it may take a little while for your comment to appear.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. This morning I read an interesting article about Optimizing Your Social Media Profile for the search engines you may want to know about.

Tags: blog traffic, how to use social networking to advertise, using online social networking to market, why do people use online social networking

Posted in Social Networking,Traffic 1 Comment