Website + Social Media for Building Traffic

I often get asked about the advantages of having both a website AND using online social networking – Facebook, LinkedIN, and other social media.

Also – is an email newsletter effective in building traffic.

The way that i visualize it is with this diagram:

The WEB of website + Social Media

Your own WEB consists of multiple internet based tools and publishing areas.  Each contributes to building traffic, interactivity, collaboration and network building.

Having a Facebook Page (your business page), articles, blog, listings and postings on professional portals, a YouTube channel for video, FLICKR area for photos, postings from press releases and news sites all potentially bring traffic to your website and also give people the opportunity to “like”, post comments and questions and interact with you.  All these activities help you in building your network and list of interested contacts.

An email newsletter similarly is a simple “call to action” that people can sign up for on your website or from other entry points. People who sign up are interested in continuing to receive information from you.  Constant Contact provides social networking links from the emails that you send out – and also you can publish an archive on your website.

Develop a plan and strategy on how to use Social Media. Include a timeline and also a plan on how to reuse / republish information in different formats so that you get multiple uses without a lot of extra work.

Your Social Networking sites can all be integrated with your website.  You or your web developer gets the code and adds the code to one or more places on the website.

Examples:

• Http://www.alephconsulting.org – the home page integrates the Aleph Consulting Facebook page and blog.  Various other locations on the website include integrations e.g. in the publications area which includes a newsletter integration and articles integration from ezine Articles
• http://www.eckova.com – the home page integrates the Facebook Page

Denise Davies is an Internet and media consultant with Aleph Consulting.  She works with nonprofit organizations and small businesses to maximize their effective use of the Internet to build their organization and achieve their objectives.  If you have questions or would like to learn more contact by email at davies@alephinc.com