A long, long time ago – at least in Internet years – the way to drive traffic to your site was write a blog. Check. Then we sent you a newsletter – opt in of course. You read it once or twice and you stopped reading. Don’t you love us? We linked to our business contacts on LinkedIn. Seems you already knew us. Then we were supposed to join MySpace. Check – met lot of twenty somethings, but not a lot of marketing bang for the buck. Then it was Facebook. Check – now we spend unthinkable amount of time trying to make what we are doing now sound interesting – do you really care that I am staring at my computer? Now, the rage is to Tweet on Twitter, really?
What works and what doesn’t? I guess it depends on your audience. Our blogs and newsletter are content we create, which tend to get read and drive traffic. The other sites tend be popular until the next shiny object come along. Right now, we get a fair am amount of visibility from Facebook and Twitter – but that will likely change in six months.
A very long time ago – especially in Internet years – I belonged to a business exchange group. We met twice a month and actually at down face to face. I still get business from that group. Call it doing business the old fashion way, but it works. Sure, online social networking can drive traffic to your site, but in the long run it’s the people that you do business with. So, back away from the laptop and go out and talk to a real live body – you may be surprised – you might even get some business!
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January 12th, 2009 at 12:06 am
An interesting piece. We have recreated a business exchange group on the web through WeCanDo.BIZ – a social network for sales leads and business referrals. I agree that it is people that you do business with and once your existing network has been tapped you need to build new contacts. That is where social networks can be great, if they are focused towards the needs of business people. Ultimately you’ll probably want face to face contact to build a real relationship before business starts getting done, but WeCanDo.BIZ is a great place to spread the net to start get the introductions in the first place. Plus people are getting increasingly comfortable doing business remotely.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz