It’s sad and disappointing. My friend and colleague Sam spent some big bucks on a fancy new website, that included an attractive design, a flash banner, nice pictures and ten pages of text… only no one was finding him.
Hardly any traffic at all. He tried using his name on some of the search engines but he could hardly even find himself.
I told him he needed a blog, so he had his web people add a blog page, but he really didn’t do much better. A few months later, over coffee and a phone call, Sam confided his frustrations:
- The only comments he gets are spammers: “Nice post, visiting my site for Viagra/insurance/poker, etc.
- He’s in a competitive market with well-established players/bloggers
- He has no idea how to get the attention of his ideal clients
- He fears his clients don’t read blogs
- He’s baffled by his low traffic, and Google analytics seem like Greek to him
- He tried going over to Twitter and came away with a headache
- He’s recently discovered an Internet Marketing Millionaire Guru site and is about ready to invest in an expensive Traffic program
When I heard that, I yelled into the phone, “STOP right there, bubba! Don’t you dare throw your hard-earned money at this problem and expect it to be fixed. First off, you don’t have a traffic problem.”
Sam woke up when I said that. “I don’t? But my stats are so low, and nobody can find me on the Web.”
“Sam,” I said, “you don’t have a traffic problem. You’ve got big Web problems, but none of them are traffic problems.”
What’s really going on with Sam, like so many other smart professionals who are new to marketing themselves on the Internet, is that he’s not clear on:
- Who his market really is, who his ideal clients are
- What problem he solves for them
- What traditional solutions have been and why they’re not working any more
- What’s unique and different about what he has to offer
- What his ideal clients’ hopes and fears are
- What triggers them to click on a link
- How search engines work on the Web
I’m telling you Sam’s story because maybe you find yourself with similar frustrations. Maybe you have a traffic problem AND you aren’t entirely clear on your business marketing identity as listed above.
Before you can tackle your traffic issues, you’ve got to get clear on these key factors that will guide your marketing and blogging efforts.
- What is the problem you solve?
- Why is this important to your market/clients?
- What are their fantasies about solving this?
- What are their worst nightmares about failing?
- Why hasn’t this been solved?
- What’s new/different/unique about you and your services?
- How are you going to gain their trust?
I’m curious if this makes sense to you readers, or if this is old news, you know this already.
What kind of questions do you have about your traffic problems?
Do you have 3 minutes to answer 6 questions about traffic problems? I’d like to hear from you. What would you like to learn about getting more blog traffic?
Can you please take this survey?
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/getmoreblogtraffic
I’ll try to address your issues in the coming weeks.
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