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If your small business uses and relies on blogging for awareness or sales then one

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of your most pressing issues is how do you get traffic to your blog. Apart from great content that includes keywords that your customers are searching for, your blog needs ‘backlinks‘ to push your website up in the search engine rankings. This gets more visibility, which should result in more traffic. Using social media can be cost effective in how do you get traffic to your blog. Warning though, social media can drain time that could be used more effectively. Most businesses are familiar with facebook and twitter, in this article by SANDIPAN MUKHERJEE we share some get tips on channels of social media to get traffic to your blog.

How do you get traffic to your blog using social media

…. We promote our articles for two reasons – Traffic and Backlinks. Time is something which depends from person to person. Most of us are part-time bloggers; so time is a constraint for us.

So we must select methods in such a way so that our aim of getting traffic and building backlinks are satisfied and at the same time, we do not invest too much of time.

Today I am going to share with you some proven methods which will satisfy the above needs.

Social Networks

Apart from Facebook and Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn are two other social networks which can used for article promotion.

Google+

Google+ is the new social networking site of Google. It is new compared to Facebook and Twitter. However, it has huge potential. It started on 28th June 2011 and so far has 90 million registered users according to Wikipedia.

Google+ has a new concept of “Circle”. Circle! What is it? The concept of Circle gives us the opportunity to create different groups like friends, family, etc.

So you can create a Circle and add people who like the niche of your blog. You can now promote your articles to that circle. This concept is very useful as you are not sharing it with everyone and thus will not be considered as a spammer.

Google has introduced the “+1” concept something similar to the “Like” concept of Facebook. If you share something on Google+, people can +1 it. Thus it gets virally promoted. For example, if your friend +1 your post, it gets shared with his friends, who can again +1 it and so on.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is another popular social network and is the world’s largest professional network. It has almost 135 million registered users according to Wikipedia.

Bloggers should promote their articles in LinkedIn. This may not be helpful in building backlinks, but can be useful for getting traffic.

Video Promotion

Video promotion can also be useful in promoting your articles. Creating videos is not a problem these days. There are a lot of online and offline softwares available on the internet for creating videos. Just create a video that contains the summary of the article. Also try to create them with catchy titles. This will attract visitors.

I recommend you to go for YouTube only for Video promotion.

You Tube

You Tube gets millions of views everyday. So why not conquer this huge traffic bank. Create some videos and share them on this site. It is not necessary to create a video for each and every article. Create one or two videos per week and add the link of the article in the description part. If visitors like your writing style and content, they will bookmark your blog and visit it again and again.

There are some advantages of video promotion. Videos gets indexed quickly in the search engines. Also people like to watch videos rather than reading the articles. If they like the content of your video, they will definitely visit your blog to read the full article.

Blog Communities

Blog communities can play an important role in article promotion. Here you will find many like minded people. Blog Engage and Blokube are the recommended ones.

Blog Engage is a very popular community of Bloggers. I started using it from August 2011. Believe me it is an awesome community. I promoted my articles in this community and received good amount of traffic. Not only that; my blog became a Page Rank 1 blog within 2 months. I give the total credit for my success to this community.This community is highly recommended.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites help you to get traffic as well as build backlinks. There are a number of social bookmarking sites on the internet. But I recommend you not to waste time in all of them.

The recommended ones are Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. These 3 sites are very popular.

One of the biggest things to remember is the time commitment in liking/stumbling/ linking/sharing/goggle+ ing your posts. Once you have done your part you really want friends, customers, associates to do the same to really get your blog post visible in the top rankings on the search engines, so more traffic. It is true that you can get get into a routine of doing so quite quickly, your time may be better served elsewhere. This is how to get traffic to your blog by using social media.

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Well I must confess I am still confused about the Google+ feature. I’m still in the process of digesting the info. So here are some perceived pros & cons based on the answers of 50 small business owners as reported on the American Express Forum for Small Business.

Pros

1. Get an SEO boost….business joined Google+ because relies on Google search referrals for sales conversions. “Google+ influences search for all the people who have included my business in their circle,” ….. This is a great way to get free promotion from people who like the product to people with similar interests.”

2. Host a hangout. “Hangouts offer an amazing opportunity for businesses to engage in a highly personal way with clients, customers and industry thought leaders,”…… locations can hold team meetings to brainstorm with one another from an interface that affords them immediate and easy access to share and collaborate on most of the information materials they might need, such as documents and spreadsheets.”

3. Expand content distribution. …..Google+ is a great platform for expanding a publication’s content distribution. “It took us almost a year to get 1,000 Likes on our Facebook Page, and three days on G+ to get that number to Circle us,….

4. Connect with early adopters. If your business falls in the Internet or technology industries, Google+ could be a great place to connect a tech-savvy audience……”When we look at what defines an ‘ideal customer’ for our products, that criteria is certainly high on our list.”

5. Segment your audience. “The obvious benefit of Google+ is that it allows us to share select content with specific audiences,”……

6. Use Google+ to network. ……. he uses his personal Google+ page to network and gather contact data and research the “personal side” of relevant contacts, such as journalists and potential clients, so that he can better create a connection with them.

7. Just explore. …… It is still a niche platform, but quickly growing and with a platform giant behind it…… I want to start early using this platform to be prepared when this inflection point arises.”

Cons

1. Administration is difficult. “The pages need to be created from an individual’s Google+ account, and you cannot add admins or any other users to manage the account,”…

2. Facebook and Twitter reign. Many of the small businesses we spoke with pointed out that they maintain engaged audiences on Twitter and Facebook, but most of their customers and clients don’t use Google+…..

3. Social dashboards don’t integrate Google+ yet. …….many social dashboard services on the market do not enable users to post to Google+……

4. Google side projects are unreliable. ……he’s not certain that the social network will pan out. “Google keeps starting and shutting down products—Buzz, Wave and Hotpot, to name a few—and I’m not entirely convinced the same thing won’t happen with Plus,” he says. “Given the time and cost of engaging followers, I think the effort is better spent on Facebook.”

5. Growth is small. …sees potential in Google+, but that growth has been small for her company. “The biggest drawback to Google+ so far is that it’s hard to grow a fan base, since businesses can only add other businesses to their Circles, and not individuals, the way you can on Twitter (until they add you, that is),” she says. “It will definitely be a lot more fun once more people start using Google+.”

Of course we have all these pros & cons before with the introduction or facebook, twitter, linkedin etc….ahhhhh…. help…. I’m going to have to do more research

Small Business Help – How do you get traffic to your blog

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