Posted by Craig Moore on August 17, 2009
It seems that when people talk about driving traffic to their website, they immediately focus on two methods – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC). While these both can give you amazing results, they are only two of a number of ways to drive people to your website.
Search Traffic – Pros and Cons
With both PPC and SEO, you wait for people to seek you out. You simply wait around for someone to type the exact keyword that is going to link to you website then hope that the user clicks on your link. This is a passive way to get traffic but much better than print advertising if for no other reason than you can get reports outlining your campaigns effectiveness. But if you can also take a more active approach, instead of waiting for the traffic to come to you, why not go for it?
Join the Chain through LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great place to become a Local Area Expert (LAE) to your target audience. Even if you target audience is the luxury market or Foreclosures. Quick fact, LinkedIn states that “Every one of the Fortune 500 companies has at least one executive on the LinkedIn network.”
Aren’t Social Networks are only for Teens and Grand Mothers!
6-7 years ago MySpace was all the rage with high-schoolers and 20 something’s but now some of those people are buying homes. Today the actual demographics for social media users is much different. On FaceBook the average age of its users is 39 years old.
Twitter is growing at an amazing rate and is a great tool to reach many potential clients for free and its fun too!
Being Creative Will Land More Clients
The key is to get creative and use the power of social networks to catch your target audience early on in the game. For example, “Nearly 90 percent of real estate buyers used the Internet in support of their real estate searches” NAR. Many of these people will perform searches on FaceBook or twitter for their destination to see what people are saying in that are an if your name is subtly worked based on “generic” postings, it will further validate you. For example, “As a Realtor in ANYCITY, I frequently take my clients to [cool place in your town]”. Suddenly, the potential home buyer looking to buy has a trusted resource who didn’t try to hard sell them but was the information resource.
