Should You Just Forget About Driving Traffic to Your Web Site? (5 Things You Should Know)

With so many people on social media sites nowadays, it's tempting to ask yourself if you should forget about driving traffic to your Web site and just focus on marketing elsewhere. Why not go where people are already instead of making what can seem like a herculean effort to drive traffic to your site?

The answer to this question is that yes, you should go where others congregate, but yes, you should also invite, bribe, entice, and otherwise encourage others to your Web site. Here's why:

Social networking sites own your list of friends and followers. You don't. If one of them goes out of business, it won't matter that you have 4,000 followers. They're gone, along with all that time, energy and sacrifice you put into building your list. By contrast, the list you build on your Web site belongs to you.
People need to know where you live. If you're spread thin across social networks without a strong central hub, your brand will be ineffective at best.
If your site becomes one of those places people gather, they'll come to you. This takes a great deal of work up front, but after that it pays off.
The more traffic your Web site has, the higher it ranks in the search engines. Being higher in search engines means people may find you near the top of some searches. This generates "free" traffic for your site.
Once you give friends and followers a valid reason to come to your site, you can then offer your own products to them without the competition of other offers. You can't abuse this privilege, so use it with care.

Ask yourself this question: Do all of my social media accounts point to my Web site? If not, I suggest you change that as soon as possible.

© 2010 Janalyn Voigt

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