10 years ago you could hit publish on a blog post, sit back, and watch the traffic roll in…
But in 2017 things are different.
Even with the growing emphasis on content promotion and social media distribution, it’s still getting harder and harder to consistently generate website traffic organically.
It’s more competitive to rank in search engines, and social media sites all tend to be going down the Facebook path of “pay to play.” Organic traffic just isn’t what it used to be.
Does that mean that we should all just give up and throw in the towel?
Absolutely not.
With increased noise and competition for everyone’s attention comes unique opportunities to be different. To find new and exciting ways to deliver value to a very targeted audience and achieve your goals in the process.
Here are 5 unique ways of driving highly targeted traffic in 2017:
1. Adopt smart advertising techniques
As I mentioned in the introduction, organic reach on social media is slowly deteriorating into nothingness.
If you want to connect and engage with your audience, even if they follow your account, you need to consider certain advertising techniques. The challenging part is that advertising can get very expensive, very quickly if you don’t know what you are doing.
Whether you are a seasoned advertiser or are just getting started, there are two smart techniques that reduce this risk significantly…
Targeted ad networks
There are a number of self-service advertising platforms that allow you to get your message in front of a new audience in unique new ways.
Infolinks, for example, is not just your average “banner ad” network where you pay per impression and leak money.
With the Infolinks AdShop platform you pay per click, which means you only pay for what you get. They also have a very cool targeting algorithm that helps them standout from other advertising platforms and makes sure you are displaying the right message at the right time to your prospects, with both image and text ads.
Get started with Infolinks AdShop for as little as $25 to get access to their platform of thousands of high-quality sites, and get a free $100 coupon with the code: AdShopJeffBullas
Note: The coupon will double every dollar spent advertising on AdShop up until $100 once for new users only. This offer is valid until May 31st, 2017, terms and conditions apply.
Note: Infolinks also has a great referral program where you can get 10% of any advertisers spend that you refer.
Remarketing
It’s not new, but remarketing is another low-cost advertising technique you need in your arsenal for the year ahead.
The brilliance of remarketing is that you are delivering advertisements to people that have already expressed interest in your business or website. Whether it’s on Facebook or through Google AdWords, remarketing can be a great way to “dip your toe” into advertising and start converting more web traffic into sales.
2. Leverage curated calls-to-action
Are you regularly curating the content of others on social media?
Why not make the most of this generosity by directing some of that traffic back to your own website. Snip.ly allows you to add a call-to-action to every link you share by creating a new unique URL. When someone clicks on that link to visit the content you have just shared, they get a little popup with a targeted call-to-action sending them back to a page on your website.
3. Get featured on podcasts
Podcasting is what written blog posts were like about 15 years ago. There are less people doing it, but they have this highly engaged and growing audience of listeners ready to take action.
Instead of starting your own podcast (which can be time consuming) you can focus your efforts on being featured on other already established shows.
By building relationships with podcasting influencers in your industry you will start to get invited onto their shows. Getting featured on a podcast with a lot of influencers has a huge amount of benefits, one of which is targeted traffic back to your website.
Read this article on prospecting podcast interviews for more information.
For example if you search for my name on iTunes you will see a list of podcasts I’ve been featured on:
4. Don’t forget about social media automation
Social media automation is one of the biggest time savers in my week. But that’s not the only reason I use it…
By using tools to automate my Twitter follower growth and redistribute blog content, social media automation has consistently delivered this website a significant amount of traffic over the years. And seeing that traffic is coming from an already engaged audience it is super-targeted.
The two tools used to make this possible are Social Quant for follower growth, and Social Oomph for redistributing blog content.
5. Repurpose and syndicate your content
Creating compelling written content is time-consuming and can be a drain on your resources and sanity. So if you’re going to put in all of that effort, you may as well make the most of it.
Repurposing your best written content into other formats, or syndicating it on other platforms, is a great way to generate additional targeted traffic to your website.
For example, you could turn a blog post into a SlideShare or video and share it on YouTube. And sites like LinkedIn, Medium and Flipboard are ready-built for syndication of your content.
Here is a screenshot of my Flipboard:
Wrap
Traditional traffic building techniques may be becoming less effective than they used to be. But for those of us that are willing to adapt, learn and test a unique set of new ways to connect with our audience, it presents an opportunity to stand out.
How willing are you to be different? What unique ways will you use to drive targeted traffic to your website in 2017?
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