All webmasters naturally hope that their sites will attract a visitor or two. Catching the public’s attention, though, can present a challenge. Despite a website’s enticing headlines and provocative linkbacks, the expected traffic often fails to arrive.
This is when a bit of creativity can come to the rescue. For the webmaster who’s not afraid to try something new, wonderful things can happen. Here are five lesser-known methods of raising a website’s popularity quotient.
1. Colouring Outside the Lines
Sometimes, a great website simply gets lost in the crowd of marketing competition. The entrepreneur who chooses the alternative of focusing their advertising efforts on somewhat smaller networks often meets with greater success. Followers of these lesser-known venues frequently profess a keen enthusiasm for a specific subject or field of endeavour.
Three of the best alternatives are:
– Tumblr: Recently acquired by Yahoo, this microblogging site attracts a younger crowd with a particular interest in cutting-edge, niche-market content.
– Quora: This network’s Q-and-A format aligns with the interests of the business and academic worlds. Its user community controls all aspects of its content, and that makes the venue particularly unique.
– Empire Avenue: Billed as the antithesis of the traditional social network, Empire’s fan base includes a mix of bloggers, business people and media professionals. Its wide dispersal of games, media analysis and networking tools across the full spectrum of the Internet provide the broad reach desired for optimal marketing results.
2. Create an Audio Spot with Dubbler
While everyone knows that the eyes have it, the same could be said of the ears. A short audio introduction to a site can catch the attention of the most disinterested browser. Dubbler make it easy for anyone to record an enthusiastic audio spot and enhance it with an image and a URL. The completed sound bite is easy to share with users of Twitter, Facebook and, of course, Dubbler.
3. Use Vine to Generate a Looping Video
Given its active and ever-growing user base, the Vine iPhone app can reward the webmaster with a few golden eggs of their own. This Twitter-owned network not only provides the tools needed to create a six-second looping video complete with hash tags and URL, but also permits its instant display. A simple tweet will do it, and Vine-tweeted videos can easily make the rounds.
4. Spread the Word on SlideShare
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a well-positioned slide show could speak volumes. Boasting over 51 million visitors each month, the SlideShare network garners five times more business traffic than its social media counterparts do over a similar period. Easy access to linkbacks and cross-promotional features makes a SlideShare presentation easily searchable and freely shareable with such major sites as Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
5. Post Images on Pinterest and Instagram
While an attention-getting image can help promote your website, it can only do so with a bit of good exposure. Pinterest and Instagram will see that it gets some.
Pinterest allows the user to pin an image on the boards of contributors as well as on those of individuals, and this increases the chances that their followers will also see it. However, the pinned image must be more than eye-catching. The inclusion of applicable keywords and hash tags will make it easy to find in a search. Instagram, another beneficial picture-posting site, continually updates its image feed, and with over 100 million users a month, it can serve as another great means of attracting traffic to a blog.
There’s no need to choose one venue over the other. Posting the same image on both Pinterest and Instagram will multiply its effectiveness.
In today’s varied technological climate, there is only one limit to website promotion, and that is the imagination of the marketer themselves. Some of the above ideas may not click immediately. Others may not click at all. The intelligent webmaster will continue to tweak and try again until they hit upon the one method that resonates with the users in their particular niche. After that, the rest could be history.
Digital Pacific, based in Sydney and founded in 2000, provides domain name registration and carbon neutral scalable web hosting solutions to individuals, small to medium sized businesses and corporations. For further information the various services offered at Digital Pacific, visit our website or call 1300 MY HOST.
