The Invisible Elephant for Getting Web Traffic

Standard Methods of Going After Web Traffic
Most people rely on two main strategies to drive traffic to their websites:

1. Onsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. Pay Per Click (PPC)

...but the sad truth is that if these are the only tools in your kit, you will have a hard time unless you are serving a very exclusive niche market.

Moving up a level, many people rely on:

1. An Opt-In Email List/Newsletter
2. List Spamming (Announcements to groups)
   
3. Blogging
4. Cross-Marketing (with other websites and their email lists)
5. Link Bait (Reasons for other sites to link to you)
6. Directory Listings
   

...and this helps, but the scope is not large enough to dominate a market. What's required is a much larger vision of what you're up to and then a concerted campaign to implement that vision.

The Invisible Elephant for Getting Web Traffic & Why I Call It That
Almost everyone remembers the story of the blind men and the elephant: Each one comes away with a different description based on their limited experience and understanding of the creature. One touches the trunk and says "it's like a snake," another touches the leg and says "it's like a tree," etc. In the case of getting web traffic, the elephant is a multi-phase internet presence campaign. Most people get a piece of it, and think they have the whole concept...but they don't.

What's needed is a comprehensive approach and correct implementation of all the various parts such that they work together. When that happens, the website owner becomes like the boy who befriends the giant creature, rides it and moves heavy objects...something that would have been impossible with a limited understanding.

The nasty part of it is that it is possible to mess up with certain mistaken notions. For example: People post their events on Tribe.net. It works a bit and then less and less. What happened? Simple. They forgot the purpose of Tribe.net.

Tribe (and quite a few other social networking sites) are like Student Unions at universities. You can sit at the technogeek table, the mathwhiz table, the artist's table or the sports fan's table but if you stand on a chair and yell, "Vote for me for student body President!" you run the risk of being considered an obnoxious jerk and losing your electability. If instead, you had made a point of being a quiet and helpful drop-in at several tables, and later on let it slip that you were running, you might fare better at the polls.

In subsequent posts we will be going over the many different parts of the elephant and how to integrate them.

© Copyright 2008, New Earth Arts: fostering personal product development and promotion via the digital media production & internet marketing partnership of Wes Wolcott & Mead Rose serving human potential, spiritual transformation & complementary alternative medicine communities.