Let’s start 2010 with a bang, and dive right into helping you and your business get found online. Today and every Thursday this year, you’ll find one or more quick link building tips. Apply them as you receive them and I guarantee that at this time next year you won’t still be wondering how to get people to your site.
Yes, you can reap faster results, but in keeping with our theme of 30-minute tips … and remembering that the slow and steady tortoise won the race, let’s commit to executing at least one of these tips each week.
With that steady progress in mind, I encourage you to subscribe via email so that you don’t miss any of our weekly link building tips.
How Many Times Will They Find You Online?
An advertising rule of thumb is that a customer needs to be exposed to your message 7 – 9 times before they will act. Our advertising methods have changed over time (with the Internet being the great equalizer, making entry affordable for any size business), but the premise of advertising frequency remains valid. Your online prospects research and visit numerous sites before making a buying decision.
So my question to you is, will your online prospect be exposed to your message once, multiple times or not at all in the search engine results? You’ll need more than your web site or blog to achieve multiple top-ten listings for your company name or keyword phrase in the search results. Thankfully, a number of popular sites allow you to create an account or a page online – each known to perform well in the search engines. Our goal is for you and links to your company web site to be found on each of them.
Social Media Profiles to the Rescue
Let’s begin with Twitter. Everybody’s heard of it and Google, Bing, and other search engines index your profile and your tweets. In fact, Google and Bing rate it highly. Even if you think it’s a complete waste of time, sign up, create a profile for yourself and link it back to your web site. Of course, I hope that you’ll do much more than that. You CAN contribute to the conversation (thereby creating links back to your site), make friends, and find new customers on Twitter. It doesn’t have to be a time-consuming monster. Set the timer for 15-minutes and engage. Repeat daily.
If you’d like more information, Susan Hamilton covers the most crucial Twitter details in her post, How to Twitter – 7 Easy Steps.
Today’s assignment:
If you’re not already on Twitter, sign up, create your profile and link back to your web site. If you have a Twitter account, but you’ve been inactive, sign back in and take another look at your profile. Does it need to be freshened up? Have you uploaded a photo? Does it include a link back to your web site? And if you’re active on Twitter and we’re not yet connected, give me a shout @ShariV. Just like I hope you do, I’m committing to engaging on Twitter for at least 15-minutes per day in 2010.
Image Credit: Eagle102.net on flickr
Shari – yeah for Thursdays!
I just signed up for your list and I look forward to learning some new tips from you.
I’ve been using a timer for Twitter for several months now and I have a few people who laugh at me but more that think “wow, that’s a great idea!”. I mainly do it so that I actually get OFF of Twitter in a set amount of time or I could be there all day!
P.S. Hope to meet you IRL at a TweetUp (we are having one at Noodles in Feb).
Michelle – Thanks for signing up!
Using a timer for Twitter is a great idea. I’m tracking my overall social media time with toggl.com for the same reason. I can’t afford to invest large chunks of time on Twitter, Facebook, or even blog commenting. Each of those activities are so important, but client work even more so!
Hope to meet you at next month’s TweetUp.
I have read a lot about using Twitter build up traffic to your website but have not been doing it consistently. Perhaps it time to do so now. Shall start putting aside an hour a day for a start.
Hi Ann – It’s tough to do. I’ll be the first to admit that I struggle with Twitter. Michelle’s comment about using a timer is great because it helps both with budgeting enough time for the task, as well as keeping Twitter from eating large chunks of time that really need to be spent elsewhere. Thanks for your comments!