Why Tell a Friend? How Viral Marketing Can Generate More Traffic to Your Site

As a webmaster and I guess every top seo services or webmaster would agree that it would be a great thing if you could get every web visitor to ‘tell-a-friend’ about your web-site. Basically it would mean that for every ‘told friend’ you’ll be getting a FREE visitor, even better, one that had been ‘pre-sold’ to a certain degree, because their friend had recommended, or pre-sold, your site..

Even better if that friend told many others, not just one.

By the way, how do you achieve this? By having an attractive website design? Or is it something else? Because in theory, it is possible to create a money machine that automatically gives you profit, if you can get each visitor telling more than 1 friend about your site. Actually, it’s a little more complicated that that because each visitor has to generate more than 1 visitor (and not all the people he/she recommends will end up visiting the site).

So, how on Earth do you achieve all that? Basically, what you need to do is to get every visitor to tell not just one friend, but all his friends.

Let’s assume that most of those ‘many’ friends then come along and visit and become recommenders of your site, then you have just hit the jackpot. BUt how on Earth do you get people to not just tell ONE friend, but tell many friends? How do you encourage word of mouth marketing? We all know it’s the best viral marketing out there, but it is just so difficult to do.

The answer? INCENTIVES

Yes, Most of them would ask:What’s in it for ME? Is the old FM radio station and it’s still playing nice and loudly today. If you can offer your visitors incentives to tell their friends then assuming that the incentive is something that they desire, they will tell their friend. Give them more desirable incentives to tell more friends and they will tell more friends. It’s as simple as that.

But not quite.

The incentives have to be incremental. It is no good if you say, for example, tell 5 friends and get this most people will be put off by having to input 5 addresses which is very annoying, by the way. However, if the incentives are incremental, for example, tell one friend and get this, tell two friends and get this as well, tell three friends and get this as well, and so on. I’m sure you get the idea it is not just incentive that works, it is the incremental incentive that is the magic ingredient in this formula.

Do that right and yes indeed, you have created a self perpetuating money making machine.

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This post was written by Robjohn on June 15, 2009

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Content That Will Sell

You have spent enormous amount of money to build it and optimize your website, but don’t see the amount of customer you expected? You may have spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars by now and are about to give up because you just don’t get the conversions you were hoping for. If you have consulted seo firm, they would have explained you that the reason for this is that pictures and SEO alone do not sell. Google Analytics will prove it.
Do you want to know what does sell though? Content sell, and that is why you need to read this article and learn the principles of creating content that will convert.
The major key in creating great sales copy is understanding the behavior of people. People are not driven to action by logic, their emotion is what drives them. Not only that, why does anyone wish to buy your product and help you out? Just like you, they prefer to know what’s their benefit first. This means that if you want anyone to take some action, you have to sell them on an emotional benefit instead of a feature. Avoid telling everyone how wonderful your product is, it’s too annoying. Instead, tell people how this product is going to help them or how will they feel.
Another principle of good copywriting is getting into the reader’s mind. This means that while reading your article they should hear the words spoken in their minds. This gives you direct access to the command center of their brain and is going to make it easier for you to get them to take action. This does not mean that they will do whatever you ask. You need to write in the language of the people. A conversational style is much better than complicated and formal one. People don’t talk that way or think that way, so it is not going to lead them to take action. It is much better to keep it simple and fluent, just like your speech.
The third rule is to write to one person you know instead of to a lot of people you don’t know. Pretend that you are sitting down with a friend of yours and telling them about your product or service. You don’t need to sell; you are explaining how it can help them and conveying your passion and enthusiasm as a helpful friend. The only way to do this in relation to your visitor is to anchor to someone you are already familiar with. If you picture yourself writing to a stranger, it is going to come out in your writing and you are going to appear artificial. If you still doubt you can do it, make a telephone call to your friend, tell them about your business and record the conversation.
If you follow these principles and are able to create copy that is error free you ought to be able to convert more of your visitors into customers. The best way to become a great writer is to practice and make sure that you are always rewriting your work as your skills develop. View writing as a process more than a finished product and soon you will get comfortable with it. Then you understand that writing is the king when it comes to seo of your website.

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This post was written by Robjohn on June 12, 2009

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