Traffic Generation – Social Networking

Traffic Generation – Social Networking

Have you heard of MySpace.com? If not, it means that you’ve been living in a cave somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with no access to any news what-soever. Seriously - MySpace is the most popular social networking site in existence, and it’s one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet today.

What does this mean for you? It means that you can use it to drive traffic to your AdSense site. You can take advantage of all of the traffic that MySpace gets. It’s sitting there waiting for you to come and get it!
Social Networking is an element of Web 2.0 that has really gained in popularity over the years. Everyone is doing it, and this is a great way to find and drive traffic. Simply go to http://www.myspace.com/ and set up your profile. It’s free. You can find a multitude of free layouts for your MySpace page, and really dress it up. Once your page is ready to go, start networking with other people. Visit other people’s pages, and request to be added to their friends list. When you are on their friends list, they are on yours. Build your friends list. MySpace will provide you with a blog. Blog about various topics within your niche, and be sure to use your keywords. This gets indexed in the search engines. In all blog posts, point to your website. You will also be building inbound links to your site for search engine optimization purposes. Post comments on other people’s pages. This is similar to visiting other people’s blogs and posting comments for the purpose of driving traffic to your own blog, but you will be driving traffic to your own profile page instead and ultimately to your website.

Next, join groups that relate to your topic. Post messages to the group, and use your signature file. This is much like forum marketing. You can also send broadcasts out to your friends through MySpace. Be sure to post your website as your favorite website on your profile as well! The
one thing that you must not do is advertise to your friends. You will lose them very quickly. You can even get banned from MySpace for being a ‘spammer.’ MySpace is geared towards young adults. If your topic wouldn’t be of any interest to them, find a different networking site. There are numerous such sites out there. Ecademy.com and LinkedIn.com are two such examples. facE-Book.com is also quite popular.

The key is to be active. Each week, post to the blog on your social networking profile. Send out a broadcast, post a message to your groups, post comments on your friend’s pages, and find new friends as well. You can find more information about social networking, and more social networking sites, by typing in ‘social networking’ in your favorite search engine. Social networking is big. It’s where people are going when they log on to their personal computers and often their computers at work.

Traffic comes from traffic. You get traffic from the search engines not only because you rank high, but because that search engine gets traffic. You get traffic from forum marketing because the forums that you participate in get traffic. Since traffic essentially comes from traffic, you need to make social networking a part of your overall traffic generation strategy because the social networking sites have tons of traffic.

Be careful! Social Networking is fun, and you can find that you spend too much time doing it, and not pay attention to other promotional techniques. This is a mistake. Make sure that you participate regularly, but on a schedule. Have a starting and stopping time before you login to the site! Remember your purpose.

Traffic Generation -marketing

Traffic Generation - Forum marketing

Forum Marketing has been around as long as forums have existed. Forums are known by a variety of names: bulletin boards and message boards are common names. A forum is essentially where people with an interest in a specific topic post messages, where other people who are members of that forum can reply to them. It’s a great way to share and learn information about a topic of interest.

Forum marketing is a great way to drive traffic to your site. Now, before you run to the nearest forum that relates to your topic and post a message about your wonderful website, you need to know that the quality forums (the forums that you want to participate in) are not going to allow you to do that. So, how can you advertise your AdSense site in the forums, without advertising?
You use a signature file. This is allowed in most forums. A signature file is essentially text that has your name, your website address, and maybe a small slogan. It looks like this:

First and Last Name http://www.yourwebsite.com
Everything You Wanted To Know About Your Topic – And Then Some. You use your signature file at the bottom of all of your posts. Some forums allow you to set up your signature file in your profile, and every time you make a post, it will automatically be inserted at the bottom. Now, there are several ways that you can use the forums. First, you can seek out posts that you can reply to.
Second, you can post questions that others reply to. You can also just post pertinent information.

To find forums that relate to your topic, go to any search engine, and type in your topic discussion. If your topic is fishing, you would type in fishing discussion. You will get a huge number of results.
You want to pick out about five forums to actively participate in. Ideally, you will make at least one post per day in each forum that you participate in, so choose a number of forums that you have time to post in each day. When looking at the forums, you want forums where there are a large number of members – 500 to 1000 are good. You also want one that is active. Look at the dates of the most recent posts. Were they today or yesterday? If not, the forum isn’t active enough for your purposes.

You want to avoid forums where all of the posts are advertisements, where http://www.freeadvertisingforum.com/ is the perfect example. They may have a huge number of members, and it may be active, but nobody is reading the posts. Instead, they are just posting advertisements.

Make sure that your posts are relevant and stay on topic. Failing to do so can get you banned from the forum, and it can also quickly ruin your reputation within your niche. When you make a post, make sure that it is grammatically correct, and that everything is spelled correctly. Never, ever ‘flame’ people in the forums. When you flame someone, you are essentially starting a fight. This won’t be tolerated. It is, however, okay to disagree with someone in the forums, as long as it is done in a civil and polite way. Always remember your purpose – to drive traffic to your website. When you see a post that relates to specific information on your site, you can drive people to that page within your post. This is not advertising, because you aren’t selling anything.

There is another way to use forums to your advantage. Set up a forum on your own website. You can publish your AdSense ads there, and you can build up a following. These people will visit your forum on a regular basis, because they are interested in the topic, and they want to communicate with others who are interested in the topic.