Increase Internet Traffic Through Social Media Marketing

While my friends were all posting fun photos of themselves and updating their status on facebook, I thought that they were all wasting their time. Little did I know about the power of social media. They were solidifying their current friendships and forming online relationships with other people. Why is this even important? Because as people, we tend to try things that our friends like. We will explore a new restaurant if it receives a recommendation from someone with whom we have established trust.

Nowdays on facebook, you can become a fan of something. You can share your interests with friends. Each time you update your status or post a video, everyone who is on your friend list gets notified. Which means if you write an article and want people to read it, just post it on your status update.

Blogging is like journal writing for everyone to view. Some people blog to update their friends and family on their lives. Others blog because to promote a product or service. Unlike the standard website, blogs are updated frequently. They are fluid documents. Most of them allow readers to post comments and opinions about the blog articles. Blogs can be linked to other social media networks like facebook and twitter thereby increasing the number of people who can view the content. Writing multiple blog posts can create more traffic. This creates more content that is found by search engines and it generates interest to the current readers.

Twitter is microblogging. You need to get your message across in 140 characters or less. If you've written an article you want people to read, write a tweet in twitter, include the link and instantly thousands of people have access to your article. Will they read it? If they have built a relationship of trust with you, most likely they will check it out.

Youtube is another social media marketing site that allows people to share their own personal videos free. Creating an informational video is one way to generate traffic to your website and get people interested in what type of product you have to offer. Youtube also lets people comment on your video creating an interactive environment for the users. Add a link to your business website and those individuals who viewed it and are interested in what you have to offer will go to your website.

Writing informational articles is yet another social media marketing tool. By researching a topic and establishing yourself as an expert, you gain the trust of readers. They might like your writing style and want to read more from you. Add a link to your website at the end of the article for the readers to check out. Articles sites are a popular way to gain some readership, but they can also get you fast traffic from the search engines. With most article sites, your content can be published in less than a day, which will gain you backlinks more quickly. Some examples of article sites include; Associated Content, Helium and Ehow. To use them for traffic, simply write an article with a link to your website. You can also ping the article’s url using Pingomatic or Pingler.com.

Hubsites will get your message across as well. People can read content that you've written and comment on it. Hubsites work like article directories, only you can get faster results in shorter amount of time. Some popular hubsites are; Hubpages, Xomba and Squidoo. With hubpages, your link will be dofollow, which will get more attention from the search engines. Xomba and Squidoo have a ‘nofollow’ tag, but they can still boost your page rank to your website.

You can utilize forums to direct traffic to your website. Make sure that the content is related to the forum. For example, I went to a forum that discussed a medical condition that I currently blog about. I informed readers of the forum that if they were interested in reading my personal experiences they could follow along and provided the blog's website. In only a few days, the website has gotten 113 views.