Showing posts with label traffic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label traffic. Show all posts

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Talking to People is More Important Than Anything Else You Do

There is so much concern about getting traffic to your blog. This is how you get people to your blog: Talk to people!

When you talk to people and become a valuable part of the conversation in your space…wherever that is, you will get traffic to your site. Now, KEEPING that traffic, getting subscriptions and actually selling, monetizing and so on and so forth are all essential elements as well, but the point I want to make here as succinctly as possible is this: Talking to people is the number one most important thing you are going to do to build the success of your blog.

So Where Can I Find These People You Speak Of?

People are everywhere, aren’t they? They’re not hard to find! There are a lot of tips I’ve read about where to go, and the TRUTH is that they ALL work…if you’re talking to people, you’re doing it right. The better the quality of the conversation, the more valuable it is for all concerned, the better it is for your business. You are branding when you talk to people.

You Are a Salesperson

It might seem scary, but you are a salesperson. Yes, YOU. You are in sales, and you may never have wanted to be in sales, but the world has changed, and to make it in business, you have to be able to make it online, and to make it online, you have become a good salesperson.

Lucky for you, I’ve been a sales trainer for years, and I have a very important fact I’ve learned that I hope will help you with this:

Sales comes naturally to very few people, but ANYONE can learn it. And with practice, EVERYONE can benefit massively from learning sales skills.

This the essence of why I started Next Level Blogger. To teach sales skills. I’m not about big media, and I’m truly not a techy guy. I’m a salesman, and I’ve learned how to apply sales principles to internet marketing. And one of the first things you learn in sales is that if you’re not face to face with a prospect, you’re unemployed. If you want to make it, you have to engage people.

Talking with people is key. It is absolutely mandatory. It doesn’t matter if you’re on Yahoo Answers, some Facebook group or a forum you just joined…it’s all essentially the same. Ideally, do them all! There is not one place that’s better than any other. The point is that you’re getting out there, networking and engaging people on a personal level as much as you can.

What Are You Doing Right Now to Grow Your Business?

Do you spend more time tweaking your site than you do networking? Do you spend more time creating content than you do networking? Do you spend more time reading about how to blog than you do networking? If so, you are doing it backwards!

The fact is that tweaking your site is important. So is creating content and reading content. I recommend all of them, but if you want people coming to your site, the number one most important thing you can do is to simply talk with people. A lot of them. Every day.

Google is Gravy – Why I Refuse to Depend on Google

Have you ever heard of the “Google dance“? When it comes to business, I don’t dance. Google is a beautiful thing, and it sends me good quality traffic. I’ll take it. I’ll even take reasonable measures to make sure I get plenty of traffic from Google and other search engines. The principles of SEO are fairly simple to learn, and you don’t need to get overly complicated with it. But I refuse to base my business around Google.

I Don’t Control Google. Neither Do You!

Why? I don’t own Google. I don’t control Google. Neither do you. And if we have no control over something, why would we base the success of our businesses on it? I encourage Next Level bloggers everywhere to take this stance. Blogging is essential for every business owner, and that is why I’m writing this blog. Let SEO be what it is…gravy. Traffic is a cool thing. It greases the wheels. But don’t build a business that is dependent upon something you cannot truly control.

Don’t get me wrong, you CAN build a powerful blog that gets tons of traffic from search. There is nothing wrong with that. Go ahead and get tons of traffic, make money from advertising. It’s a good thing! But let me ask you a question…what happens when Google drops you from their index…for whatever reason?

Do you think it won’t happen to you? It happens to the best of us. And when it happens, what is your back up plan? If your business is dependent on search traffic…you have no recourse but to sit and wait. Like I said, when it comes to business, I don’t dance!

Business the Traffic are Two Separate Things

All I’m saying is that my BUSINESS and my TRAFFIC are two separate things. I encourage you to think of them as separate as well. Your traffic is something that comes in on a daily basis from a number of different sources; I hope eanestly that you do the work to establish traffic streams from many sources, not just search.

Additionally, your BUSINESS is something else entirely. Your business is:

  • Your database of leads and past customers
  • Email subscribers
  • Contacts
  • Relationships

If all my traffic from Google went away, I would still have a business. A considerable one. I appreciate the traffic Google sends me, and I’m going to continue working to get traffic from Google, but I refuse to have my business depend on it.

What if Google disappeared tomorrow? What would you do? Would you still have a business?