Step by Step

Network, Wait and Watch

Like the picture on this front page, you have to step onto each rock, to get to the other side.  I suppose you could jump over but you might lose your footing and fall into the water. Besides, if you’re carrying a load with you, you definitely need to take it step by step.

Look at how many ways you can bring traffic to your web site. There are paid ads, pay per click ads, signs on your car, business cards, and the best….social networking.

More and more social sites pop up every day. There must be a good reason, don’t you think? We’ll start there.

Join Facebook, Twitter and MySpace to get started. Be sure to pay attention to your profile, adding all the information you can about yourself and your product. Then start talking about it.

Let’s say you’re a potter and have pottery for sale. You’ve got a web site all set up. So on facebook, talk about it. “My latest pit firing”. Those are what we call, ‘keywords’. In this case, ‘pit firing’. In every update or post or blog, cover those daywords, “clay” or ‘pottery’ or ‘ceramics’ and so forth.

Let’s say you type in an update, “I’ve been working on my ceramics” and somebody else comes along, trying to find others who like ceramics and he/she types in ‘ceramics’. Guess what! Your name will pop up in their search results. So they visit your page and find a fellow potter. Yea! Put in for a ‘friend connect’ and just like that, you both have a new fan. She visits your web page and you visit hers.

While she’s making a comment on your page, her comment shows up on her own page and her friends come along and think, “Who’s this, she’s buddies with?” and out of curiosity they visit your profile and find, Wow….a potter and I love her work. She has a friend who is just nuts over pottery and collects it so she sends her friend to visit your profile.

It’s called ‘viral’, because it begins to spread slowly then expands and goes to places unknown.

Twitter is another odd curiosity and when you learn to use it, you find yourself getting followers and you following others and short messages constantly go on between you all. The same happens there – you post a short message saying you’ve just unloaded the kiln, along with a web address. Your followers think  it might be interesting to their own followers and they ‘re-tweet’ and your message winds up getting past along to folks you don’t even know exist.

See how that works? So go sign up and start tweeting and updating your Facebook and watch what happens.

We Start Today

Networking and Meeting New Friends

So you wonder how it is, some web sites seem to always be on the top of the list in searches and yours never does. We’ll examine some of those reasons and as we do, you will also see how you can help your own website to be found.

If you have a website that’s meant only for family and friends, you hardly worry about being found. If you are selling something, it’s a whole other matter.

Just like with anything selling, if people don’t know about it, you’re going no place fast.  Imagine a small store in the middle of the California desert, not near any major highway and no signs. It’s going to sit there and look pretty while it rots away and never sees a visitor.

But if that little store has something of interest and plants plenty of signs on the nearest major highway, plus as yellow pages ad and commercials on the radio and TV, it’s going to see plenty of visitors.

Apply that to the internet and you get a better picture of what you’re up against.  Especially, considering the millions of websites, most of them huge compared to yours.

How are you ever going to found? It’s time to think like a politician and get out there and shake some hands. That’s why they call it a campaign. It’s an all out effort, driving toward a goal.

We will spend more time on each possible avenue for traffic, as we go along.

Why am I doing this? I guess it’s to help others plow through the millions of competitors, to find their own little nitch on the internet.