The Silent Avatar Speaks

Imagine you have become the proud owner of a new web site, with a lovely webdesign.

The very next thing to do is to bring in visitors, and social media offers an interesting place to begin.

There are a few social media sites on the net, and their number is growing daily. But the three main ones are Myspace, Twitter and Facebook. If you have our own business, it is critical that you start blogging or submitting entries on a social networking site. In case you need a blog or content management systeem attached to your website, ask your webdesigner for help. This way, you can advertise your business to thousands of folks that are also attached to the social media site. These sites also supply you with instant communication, and these sites are free to join.

The only way to make the maximum of the social media advantage is to line up an account with all three social networking sites, particularly Facebook. Facebook is one of the swiftest growing social networking web sites in the world, so you are going to be able to draw in clients outside your country, which is particularly ideal if you are running an internet business. You may use the ‘notes’ section of Facebook to explain the function and goals of your business. You can include as many folk in the note as you want, so that prospective partners and backers can find out more about your company.

After you create an account with these social media sources, you must start to make chums on each of these sites. You can start by inviting your acquaintances and family to join the site, and then connecting to their common friends. This may help your network to grow, since you will be stunned what quantity of friends you know. If the members that you’ve sent buddy requests to have their own companies as well, it is probable that your request will be accepted quicker.

You may post info about any business-related events that you are going to be having. You can invite friends to visit the event, and can create an RSVP list, so you may know exactly how many are interested to get ready for. Remember to be consistent when you are using social media. You must check back on the site a couple of times a day to update your standing and add more chums, and to keep your network updated about the pro progress you are making. This way you may have a successful web site in a brief period of time. At Silent Avatar Business Solutions you can get more data if making internet sites isn’t your thing.

I’m the silent avatar and I have spoken

Tags: Social Networking by the silent avatar
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Driving traffic to your website easy?

Today I came across a “cartoon video” from Jim Edwards.

The cut and thrust of the video is not to put all your advertising eggs in one basket when it comes to your focus on getting traffic to your website.

In fact if you are just starting out on an online business you need to start planning out where you are going to get your website traffic from now. If you don’t do this you are going to encounter problems in the future. Maybe not next week, but maybe in months or years time, you are going to experience problems when the one area you have focused on for your traffic dries up.

Diversifying your traffic opportunities comes in 3 main ways:

• Buying – You pay up front for traffic to be driven to your site (eg Adwords)
  
• Borrowing - You pay for traffic afterwards t (by enlisting affiliates)

• Building - you rely on traffic being sent to your site through the search engines or other people’s Blogs

Let’s face it, who doesn’t need more traffic? It’s the biggest problem website owner’s face – getting targeted traffic!

There’s no problem that can’t be solved by getting more traffic to your site. Period. And the #1 question people ask around the globe – is how to get traffic to their site – and particularly free traffic. But getting free traffic requires you to do something.

Jim Edwards and Armand Morin are conducting a webinar to show you how to get more traffic. Once you know the strategies for getting traffic to your website, you can use these strategies over and over again. In essence it takes knowing “where to fish and how to fish” to successfully drive traffic to your site. They claim they are going to show you strategies they both in their business right now to get traffic to their sites.

Bottom line is if there is one thing they want o drum home to us all is this:
Get more than one source of traffic working in your business!

Go to MoreTrafficWebinar.com to check out their sales page. Only the first 1000 people are being let in the doors. If you can’t make the live webinars, they are going to put them all on CD Rom sent by mail. It’s 3 jam packed days of information starting May 6^th.

And the cost? US$297. It wants to be good for that price, (though they do back it up with a 30 day money back guarantee).

Tags: Traffic Generation by the silent avatar
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Successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:

1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox

When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers — all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Start a web log (blog)

Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Carry out polls or surveys

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games

Just think about how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5) Update frequently with fresh content

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something new to read on your site. Without a doubt this is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, however due to laziness of webmasters this is also the least carried out one. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

Tags: Business Tips by the silent avatar
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Finding free or low cost website advertising is not nearly as impossible as you may think. If you search the internet however you’ll discover there are several tools available to you which only require your time.

I’ve listed here are some ideas that you can use to assist you bringing traffic to your website.

1. Do a Google Search- Let me state the obvious (though surprising how often this is overlooked). Type in Google “free advertising”, and then work through first page of the results. To target your adverting put in free advertising (and then your field) eg; Free Advertising Web Design”

2.Viral Marketing is always a good way to spread your message quickly. Put together an email for your friends and ask them to pass it on to their friends, and they in turn will pass it on to their friends. This is the viral effect – just make sure your email is a good read and uses all the known elements to get people to open their emails.

3. Writing Articles can also put your promoting efforts into overdrive. It really is simple to write articles so website owners can use them for content. Try joining http://groups.google.com and http://groups.yahoo.com . A good site to check out is ezinearticles.com

Do a search for groups that accept articles for publication and follow their guidelines. You can also submit articles for free. Just Google “submit free articles” and you will be presented with a smorgasboard of links to get you going.

Do a web search for other sites whether niche or general that accept articles too. This website will help you get started. Click here (new window opens).

4. Free Ezine Advertising is another great option. Most ezine publishers will give you a free ad if you subscribe to their free ezine. Visit http://subscribeme.net You can also search for Ezine Directories where you will find scores of free publications which may have similar offers. Additionally, some ezine publishers may also feature your article if you contact them directly.

5. Write a Press Release. You can write a press release and submit it for consideration at prweb,com Newspaper reporters and other journalist are always looking for fresh news that they can publish. Research how to write a good press release to help insure your story and website info will be featured for free.

6. Start Page Traffic Exchanges can help you generate exposure to your site. You set your browser to open into the surf page then you view other sites in the exchange as others do the same. Google

7. Banner Exchanges work on the same principle. Place the exchange code on your website and earn placement of your banner on other sites within the exchange. I’m not keen on banner exchanges as I don’t like the idea of having someone else’s banner on my site (unless of course it is realted in some eay to my site and I have checked out their credibility).

8. Forums, Message Boards and Chat Rooms are excellent ways to interact with people and spread the news about your website. Search the internet for places that fit with the theme of your site. Be sure to visit sites like http://delphiforums.com. It’s a good place to start. Remember to participate in the discussions and follow the accepted form to pitch your site. SPAM only causes you problems and is best avoided.

9. Blogging can be an excellent way to promote your website and offer valuable information to surfers. Remember most people surf the internet seeking information first. As a rule of thumb providing information or relevant content will bring people searching for what you have to offer. So add a Blog to your site and keep posting content.

10. Use An Email Signature. This is a simple highly effective way to advertise your business. Create an email signature with your name/ website /and tagline incorporating a a “call to action”, ie, “Click here now to get a free XYZ to help increase your business”, or “Click here now to see my latest creations at unbelieveable prices” You get the idea? Make sure you tell (in your tagline) what your business is about.

11. Link Exchanges can help you boost traffic to your site. Try trafficswarm. Check out Google search for “traffic exchanges”. Additionally you can join a free desktop advertising exchange service here.

12. Get an optin email list. The easiest way to send your promotional material via email safely is to join an optin list. I recommend Your Lucky List

13. Spread the word through communities like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

As you can see, there are a variety of methods to effectively and inexpensively promote your website.

Be proactive and research ideas to help get the word out. You might be pleasantly surprised to discover promoting doesn’t cost that much if you are willing to put in the extra time and effort necessary to see that happen.

Tags: Advertising by the silent avatar
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