You many often come across blogs and articles telling you how to get spikes of traffic by writing content that pulls people towards your website or blog. They advise you to use “highly compelling” titles and submitting your link to social networking and social bookmarking websites such as FaceBook, Twitter, Digg and Delicious. I wonder how much this sort of traffic helps your business. Mind you I’m not questioning the process and I’m not even suggesting you not to indulge in such activities, I’m just thinking about it.
For instance I provide online writing services, so I would, ideally, like to draw traffic that can fetch me more business. This doesn’t mean I don’t want other people to visit my website. After all I share my thoughts on various subjects on this blog for instance, and I’d love it if people from all over the world access my blog and participate in various conversations. I feel good when all of a sudden 200 extra visitors come to my website and 5 among them subscribe to my RSS feeds or my e-mail updates. Even if they never do business with me, it is exhilarating to see the number rising day bay day. The good doesn’t always come from prospective clients.
When more people, let’s say 2000 in a day, visit your website and read your blog post or article, all of a sudden so many people are made aware of your existence and what you do. If you somehow keep on generating such spikes this number keeps on increasing. Get 4-5 traffic spikes every month and you can easily become a known person.
Does becoming known get you more business? It certainly does. As they say, success begets success. Similarly, traffic begets traffic, popularity begets popularity and trustworthiness begets trustworthiness, and all this is needed to generate more business.
When people know you, they eagerly link to you. I’ve seen even dumbest posts by popular bloggers getting popular. They bookmark you, they forward your links, they follow you on Twitter (want to follow me? It’s @amrithallan) and they add you as a friend in FaceBook. All of a sudden, heavy traffic becomes a regular affair because even the search engines begin sending you 1000s of visitors every day. All this helps you build your brand.
Having said that, slow and steady wins the race. You don’t have to prove anything as long as you meeting your business goals. Just be regular and share your experiences sincerely. The traffic will magically pick up.