Engage with Your Audience

Generating a positive buzz about your domain is more effective than simply generating website traffic.

Buzz allows you to gain traffic through natural linking and discussion instead of paid advertising. It also helps free you from the Google algorithm treadmill. Here are a few ways to increase traffic, improve conversions and get people to want to come and see what your social networking site has going on.

Add Video

By adding relevant product videos, retailer Stacks & Stacks was able to increase conversion up to 144 percent. When adding videos to your site, be sure to keep a couple of things in mind: The content should be relevant and entertaining, and it should wait for the viewer to hit the play button. Auto play is annoying, to say the least.

Get Real

Yes, spam can be a big problem for those who post their real email addresses onto their sites. Unfortunately, the fact that people don’t like to fill out anonymous forms or use mysterious “sales@” addresses are a bigger problem. If you need to encourage leads to email you, use an address with a real person’s name and add a good spam filter to keep the junk under control. Better yet, provide a phone number. Even when people don’t actually use it, they’ll feel more confident knowing that you’re willing to talk.

Control Your Online Reputation

It’s still hard to say how companies are using reputation management services, but major industry players say clients fall into two camps. Some want to understand and respond to customer complaints; others often just want negative posts to go away. A highly-ranked bad review can do your company an injustice when it’s not warranted. Let a company like Reputation.com make sure that good reviews are what people see when they put your company name into a search engine.

Control Your Anger

This couples with the prior point. While many say that it’s important to respond to complaints, it’s even more important to keep a cool head. Step away from the computer before typing anything if a complaint has made you angry. “Flaming” the other person or trying to discredit them will make you look like the bad guy. However, if a complainer is being patently ridiculous, feel free to ignore the “common wisdom” and just don’t respond at all. You’ll just get dragged through the mud if you try to engage a person who’s attacking just for the sake of it.

Keep Personal Views to Yourself

Politics, religion, hot issues and other things are subjects that will cause you to lose business if discussed. Remember that, in most elections, Democrats and Republicans turn out to be nearly evenly split. That means that to avoid blowing your business right out the window, don’t take sides. The same principle works for all other emotionally-charged subjects. Exception: If your business is specifically targeting a particular interest group, it can be a good thing to state your beliefs long and loud because the “other side” won’t be shopping at your site anyway.

Improve SEO results

SEO still counts even with a buzz-generating strategy in mind. Before you can generate that positive buzz, people need to know you exist. Hire a PR firm to help with your organic search results if your site doesn’t already rank highly.

There are many other things that can be done to get people talking about your business in a positive way, but these six tips will give you a strong start.