A few months ago, a long-time friends, M, complained to me that one of his (newer) niche websites was not receiving too much traffic. My response…”Quit spending so much time on Facebook, and other social media sites, and channel some of that activity into your own sites.”
We were at lunch at the time, catching up with each others lives, family, and each others online ventures (we both have online business and personal sites).
Social media can be a great way to promote your business/personal site. And if you think about it, your business site, or personal site, can be a form of social media too.
But, the problem I see is that some people, like M, put social networking sites ahead of their own. Which doesn’t make sense to me since you’re actively promoting your work on another business site. And doing nothing to make your own virtual space more appealing to visitors. Social media sites can change their rules at any time, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Facebook has done this now and again, and a lot of their changes I wasn’t thrilled about, but since most of my time is spent on my own sites; it hasn’t affected me.
Personally, I always find it disappointing when I see business/person has done a lot of interaction via other social media sources, but you go to their business/personal site, and it’s obvious it isn’t receiving too much attention.
I do interact on other social media sites, and some are extremely effective for my personal sites. But, the majority of my online time, is still spent on the sites that I own.
M did take my advice, and while he does promote his site on Facebook, and other social media sites, most of his attention is focused on his own “social media websites,” which is how it should be for the goals he’s trying to achieve. The good news is that his traffic, and online income for that site, started to increase.
Interesting read: Since when are blogs not social media?
Nice write-up and advice! Sure…I like to cross-promote on social media but you are right! We also have to treat each site as a stand alone!
Jennifer recently posted..Fredericksburg Peach from Zhi Tea
@Jennifer, Cross promotion is good, in my friends case, his promotion switched to social chatting about any and everything, which is fine if you just want to be chatty, but not effective if your goal is to generate traffic to your site. It was kind of funny, since he already knows this. But I guess he was so wrapped up in the chatty aspect he wasn’t looking at the bigger picture, too much socializing was taking traffic/time away from his own sites.
Some people get wrapped up in how many comments their site generates, and that’s not the only way one can tell how popular a site is. Some of my favorite sites don’t receive too many comments, but they still generate high traffic and have great PR, and some of them that monetize their sites do quite well. This site is doing ok monetarily, since I started paying attention to it. In about a year it should do even better.
These days I’m not on Facebook that much, for me personally, it was too much of a time waster, and the results weren’t that great, since my time is limited. I’m much better using that time on other social media sites, and visiting people at their own sites, and commenting their; not on a site that they don’t own. Facebook is back to the check in when family/friends send me a personal note. 😉
Aynaria recently posted..Knitting: How to make increases
Hiya! I just read your comment about my art journaling page! Thank you SO MUCH! Totally made my day! Tell your daughter to start looking for some shout outs specifically for her! 🙂 I have LOTS on tap but have only been posting about twice a week! I am going to start posting more than that again 🙂 She’s a wonderful little lady 🙂
Jennifer recently posted..A Perfect Day – Art Journaling Page
@Jennifer, Well that’s great, glad to hear that you’ll be posting more, but I can understand how hard it can be to do that. Sometimes it’s a struggle for me to keep up with all my sites too. Business sites have never been an issues to maintain, but personal sites, such as this one, has always been my biggest challenge.
Aynaria recently posted..Temptation: Pattern testing; to test or not to test?
I ended up stepping down from several teams and haven’t had as many deadlines – I did like keeping busy and posting at least one project almost every day! BUT…then when I left I didn’t have those deadlines! I’m good at deadlines but sometimes when I don’t have deadlines I tend not to post on my own! LOL 🙂
Jennifer recently posted..A Perfect Day – Art Journaling Page
[…] I must say that Im proud of one of my friends. I talked about M in a recent post… […]
I agree with this post, I personally know a lot of people trying to promote their blogs or websites through Facebook and Twitter, but when I go to their actual pages, they are usually pretty bland looking and don’t keep my attention for long. I think sometimes people get so wrapped up in getting their names out there that they sacrifice quality for quantity.