Here's a traffic generation question / comment from Kenny that was spot on!
Rosalind, it is inconceivable that you have time to utilize all the techniques in your ebook.
So, in an effort to follow your lead, so to speak, if you were to narrow down the five most consistently effective marketing / promotion / advertising processes that you use primarily, what would you say those were?
In advance, thanks.
Kenny Love
GREAT question, Kenny!
You're absolutely right – I'd go bonkers if I tried to do ALL of the marketing techniques ALL of the time.
So, here are the 5 traffic generation or marketing methods that I use most consistently:
- Blogging for Search Engine Placement
- List / Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing & Community Activity
- Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC)
- Article Distribution & Marketing
Blogging for Search Engine Placement
Essentially, my first priority is to publish fresh content to my blogs on a regular basis (some of which are more regular than others). Although I don't engage in keyword stuffing, (which makes for horrible reading), the content of each blog post has to be tightly focused on one subject so that keywords and keyword phrases in the article are closely aligned and thus the post is more likely to get picked up and listed by the search engines, resulting in free traffic.
List / Email Marketing
The post is then distributed by email to the relevant subscriber list either through a blog broadcast (using Aweber / Feedburner combined) or through a link in a weekly newsletter.
Social Media Marketing & Community Activity
Engaging the audience personally through either blog commenting, forum posting or social media marketing comes next. I will respond to comments and answer any questions posted by my own blog readers and subscribers, which enhances information contained in the article and adds still more ‘fodder' for the search engines to notice. My social media marketing efforts are fairly scant – using applications like TwitterFeed to broadcast the post's title and link to Twitter for some more free traffic. From time to time, I'll post a comment to a high-profile blog or forum in response to a topic relevant to my original article, along with a link to that article.
Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC)
Depending on the response from blog readers and subscribers, I may incorporate PPC marketing at that point. If the conversion rate is better than average for the audience, I'll do the math to assess whether it's worth driving traffic to that particular post or page with PPC, starting with Google Adwords and/or Yahoo! Search Marketing depending on the demographic. If the response is just ‘good', PPC may still be worth the effort if enough of that traffic joins the list.
Article Distribution & Marketing
Article marketing comes in 5th and last, because I don't post the same articles to my site as I would distribute to article directories so they require some re-writing, which takes time. Furthermore, the traffic isn't as targeted as it is with your own list or with PPC marketing… but it's traffic none-the-less and every click counts for something… eventually.
After that's all said and done, it's probably time to write another post — or more likely, take another vacation. 🙂