Auto Tweets

by John Eberhard

I’ve been using the Tweet Adder software for some time now to add more followers for my own Twitter account and those of a number of my clients. It has an “auto tweet” function that allows you to set up messages that you want to go out to your Twitter followers on an automated basis.

Tweet Adder also allows you to set up an automated email message that goes out to people saying “Hey thanks for following me” when they follow you. I think that’s one of the worst cases of wasted bits and bytes in the history of computing so I’m not talking about that.

The feature I’m talking about allows you to set up automated messages to go out to all your Twitter followers. You can set up as many as you want, and then determine how many of them will go out per day.

I had never used this feature until a friend told me he was doing it and it was causing significant traffic to his web site. So I decided to give it a try, and I’ve been running automated tweets for my own account and five other accounts, for a couple of weeks. And I see after checking Google Analytics that it is starting to generate traffic.

On one of the accounts I’ve got around 40 auto tweets set up, and then it is set so that 20 of them show per day. So that way they cycle through every other day, not the same ones every day. You can also set the time between the messages so I set that at 15 minutes.

The question some people may ask is “Doesn’t that make it look like those messages are automated? Can’t people tell it is a bot doing it?” Well yeah, that’s possible. But I doubt that most people would be on Twitter long enough or frequently enough to notice that. Especially if you keep adding more messages over time so there is less frequent repetition of the messages.

So the next question would be, “What type of messages should I send out?” Always the helpful soul, I have come up with a list of the types of things you should send out.

1. Link to Articles: If you have a blog or information articles on your web site, then just write out the title of the article in quotes, then a link to the article. For the link use a URL shortener like www.goo.gl, because you only get 140 characters on Twitter. If you have lots of articles you have written, do one auto tweet for each.

2. Link to Free Reports or White Papers: If you have any free reports or white papers that you are offering, then say something like “Download my free white paper “Marketing with Social Media” http://goo.gl/Vqx6N”.

3. Links to Your Email Newsletter Signup: If you offer a free email newsletter, promote it via Twitter, with a little blurb explaining what the newsletter is about and a link to the signup page. Remember, only 140 characters.

4. Links to Videos: If you have some videos about your company on YouTube, write a short blurb about the video and include a link to it.

5. Products or Services: Do an auto tweet for each of your products or services. Write a short explanatory blurb about the product or service, then include a link to the page on your web site that is about that.

6. Testimonials: Do an auto tweet linking to your testimonials page.

7. Facebook: Ask your Twitter followers to be your Facebook friend or to like your fan page and include a link to your Facebook profile or fan page.

8. LinkedIn: Ask people to connect to you on LinkedIn.

9. Events: if you’re holding some special event like a seminar or webinar or something like that, do an auto tweet, but make sure to take it out of your list after the event is over.

That’s not meant to be a complete list, but it can definitely get you going. Then let the traffic begin. Good luck with your social media marketing.

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How to Increase Traffic to a Web Site

by John Eberhard

You have a web site, and you have Google Analytics running on the site, so now you know how many visitors you’re getting. And let’s say you find out that it’s not very much traffic. What do you do?

First let’s define how much is not very much traffic. This is relative, and subject to opinion. It also depends on whether the site is a specialized business to business (B2B) site or a more general business to consumer (B2C) site. But we can say without too much risk that if you’re getting less than, say, 300 visitors to your site per month, then that’s not very much.

In my earlier article, “Web Site Conversions,” I covered what to do if you find you have decent amounts of traffic coming to the site, but a low number of people filling out your forms and giving you their name and email.

This is now the other side of the coin. What do you do when you discover you’re just getting very low traffic?

I would say that web site traffic generation falls mainly into these categories:

1. Email marketing
2. Pay per click advertising
3. Social media marketing
4. Blogging
5. SEO and link building

Email Marketing

This can be a very effective way of driving traffic to a web site. The most effective method is to build up your in-house list of prospects and customers, and to mail to it regularly.

I have had some success from purchased lists or from compiling lists myself from various web sites, such as state and local associations of various professions that list the emails of their members. Of course you have to be aware of the laws regarding emailing and follow them fully.

If you use an in-house list or purchased or compiled lists, you can email aggressively and drive traffic inexpensively.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay per click advertising (PPC) through Google AdWords, MSN Ad Center or Facebook, is very effective in driving traffic to a web site. Of course it costs money, so I usually recommend it for companies that are already a going concern and can afford to put a certain amount of budget towards it. I usually recommend companies to put at least $1,000 per month into the budget.

But PPC advertising is very effective and can be set up and running in a relatively short period of time.

Social Media Marketing

Social media web sites can be used very effectively to drive traffic to your site. The two key actions are 1) build up a large list of friends/followers/connections, and 2) create an effective strategy of communicating regularly to those lists.

I have written at length elsewhere on effective social media strategies so I won’t cover them here. One important thing to know is that social media can be used to market a business, and relatively inexpensively. But it does usually involve a commitment of time, either by you or in paying someone to do it for you.

Blogging

Most people don’t realize that a blog can be used to drive traffic. I run several blogs, and write an article on marketing once a week throughout the year. That blog drives more traffic to my site than any other single source, including Google.

The key is to write something regularly (once a week or more), and ensure that a “ping” is sent to the blog search engines after every single post you make (Wordpress does this automatically). Then make sure you have items in your sidebars that link back to your main web site. The idea is that the search engines drive people to the blog, then links on the blog will send them to your main site.

SEO and Link Building

Search engine optimization (SEO) means to select keywords that have decent traffic but not much competition, then put those keywords into all the areas of your web site where it is acceptable to do so. Link building means to build up links on other web sites linking back to pages on your site. Google says that their main criteria for deciding how high to rank your site is the number of links to it from other sites, so this is important.

SEO and link building, both together, are perhaps the most important action in building consistent traffic to a web site. But the thing is, it takes a definite commitment and a bit of time (6 months to a year or more) to do it. And it takes a budget. We are doing this for several of our clients. But it is not necessarily something I recommend for a small business.

Summary
The primary actions to build web site traffic are:

1. Email marketing
2. Pay per click advertising
3. Social media marketing
4. Blogging
5. SEO and link building

For the small business with a limited budget, I’d recommend email marketing, social media marketing, and blogging.

For the medium sized to larger business, I’d recommend all of the above actions.

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Growing Your Email List

by John Eberhard

I started doing email marketing about 10-11 years ago. Back then, we rented a lot of email lists and were very successful with it. But the heavy proliferation of spam a few years later ruined the rented email list market, and most of the time, rented lists do not work anymore.

But what DOES work is to build up an in-house email list of customers and prospects, and send a variety of emails to them regularly. That clutter of email spam is still there, but if you build a relationship with people, you will break through that clutter and people will open and read your emails.

Building the List

Let’s start with how to build your list.

1. Contact Form: the first thing you should definitely have on your site is a contact form. It should ask minimally for the person’s name, email, and phone number, and usually include a “comments/questions” field. This is mainly for people who are interested in your product or service, and of course this is one of the most valuable reaches you will get, when someone fills out this form.

1. Newsletter Subscription: If your company does not offer an email newsletter, you should consider it. It’s a great way to build your list, and a great free offering. Of course you have to then actually create a newsletter and send it out regularly and write interesting and informative material to put in it. If you are just starting with offering an email newsletter, then you should do it monthly or quarterly.

1. Free Report: You can also create a “free report” (sometimes called a “white paper”) on some topic related to your industry. Then you offer that for free on your web site, but you make people fill out a form and give you their name and email address in order to get it. The idea is that if the report is on some topic that relates directly to the product or service that you sell, then the only people who would ask for it would likely be prospects for your company. I have used this strategy successfully with quite a few companies over the years. Of course you want to pick a topic that will be hot and will attract a lot of people to request the report. See my earlier article on this.

There are other things you could offer, such as software demos if you sell software. But the key is that you are offering several free things on your web site that will entice people to fill out that form and give you their name and email address. That way, you collect the names of people who are your prospects but who are not ready to buy something right now. If you are only offering one of the above, you should consider adding more to the mix.

Email Services

It really makes sense to set up an account with one of the online email services (like Aweber, Mailchimp, or Constant Contact) and have those people who fill out the forms on your web site dumped into an online database. It’s easier to send email to a list if it is stored in one of the online email services, and you can also set up an autoresponder to send them several emails selling your services. Plus it is automated in terms of people signing up and also unsubscribing, so you don’t have to do that manually.

I have used all these services, and Aweber and Mailchimp are the best. Constant Contact is the worst, in terms of the options it gives you.

What to Send

Now you have an email list and are gradually increasing the size of the list. So what do you send to it?

1. Email Newsletter: As discussed above, this is a good thing to send to your list.
2. Testimonials: Put together emails containing success stories from happy clients.
3. General Sales Pieces: You can put together sales emails, one apiece on all your various products or services, and including a link to where they can buy the item or get more info on it on your web site.
4. Sales or Specials: Whenever you put something on sale or have a special, you should definitely send out emails about it, probably more than once over the course of the special.
5. Announcements: If you have something to announce, such as a new product or service, send out an email on it.

Frequency

A big question is how often do you send to the list? How much is too much?

Well I definitely believe in being aggressive and sending to an email list often. You may have to experiment a bit to see what works for you, and watch how many people are unsubscribing. If you are getting a lot of people unsubscribing from the list, you may be pushing the envelope too much.

Generally I think sending email to a list between 2 and 8 times per month is acceptable. I send to my prospect and client list about 4-6 times per month. I talked to one organization recently that is sending out 5 emails per week or 20 per month. That’s a lot. But it is working for them and they don’t get too many people asking to be off the list. So you have to see what works for you.

Good luck with website marketing via your in-house email list.

Thanks to Jane Milan for the suggestion of this topic.

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