Adbeau Productions Inc.

With the basics of traffic generation down, and your autoresponder in place to collect the names and email addresses of customers and potential customers, you may be ready to increase your traffic-getting efforts by adding an additional method to your traffic generation strategies.

One way to do this, if you truly have something valuable to say that you know many potential customers would like to know, is by starting a blog for your business website.

What is a “blog?”

When blogs first appeared online, the word “blog” was short for “web log” which was initially a type of online diary or journal in which people posted their thoughts. Their web log or “blog” was often updated daily.

Today, a blog would more accurately be defined as a chronological log of frequently updated information, published on a website.

Blogs Can Be Indistinguishable From Other Kinds of Websites In Appearance, Yet Offer More Features

When it comes to appearance, a blog such as those created by the Wordpress content management system, can be easily set up to look like a regular website.  Blogs come with a multitude of  potential functionalities from plugins.  Some plugins will add photo galleries to your blog, some can add a forum to your site. Pretty much anything you can imagine, there is probably a plugin for it.

Why would you want to use a blog in conjunction with your business website?

Just like with an autoresponder, your blog is used to provide your visitors with information … specific, relevant information about the products and/or services offered by your business. Your blog posts would be targeted to the wants and needs of your specific visitors and when used correctly, maintaining a blog will naturally create a feeling of authority and additional credibility for your business.

You would link from your blog posts to relevant products or services on your site, thus increasing traffic to your main website and potentially driving up sales.

Blogs Are Search Engine Optimized Right From the Get-Go

Another reason you might consider having a blog for your business is that blogs are better optimized straight out of the box for making your information easy to find online via the search engines.

I’ve had a number of my websites indexed by Google within 15 minutes simply by adding a blog to my website and posting to it.

Blogs Are Easily Well-Organized

Yet another reason you may want to utilize a blog for providing information to your visitors is because the information posted to your blog is well-organized.

The regular format of a blog it makes it easy for yourself and others to find information you’ve published, almost automatically, because your blog posts are organized by date, by category, and by post title.

Blogs Enable You to Quickly Connect to Your Target Market

When you realize that the faster you can get information about your products or services to your prospective buyers, the faster you will make sales, having a blog makes perfect business sense.

Blogs not only make disseminating information to your potential clients and customers simple and easy, they also give you the ability to do so super-fast.

Now that you have your new website online and have completed basic steps to make sure people can find you when they search by placing meta-tags on each of your web pages and a site map on your website, you may want to consider setting up a method that allows you to collect a list of names and email addresses from those people who are interested in receiving more information about the products or services you offer.

Online, this is called “list-building” and it really is nothing more than what it says:
building a list of contact names and email addresses to whom you have permission to mail information and offers.

Now, before you get the idea to start adding everyone and anyone to a list and start blasting out emails about your products or services, you should know there’s a law in effect which says you can’t just add people to a list like this. People have to request to be added, and also give you permission to contact them again later. Further, if anyone asks to be removed from your list, you must remove them.

List-building isn’t difficult. All you’ll need is an autoresponder service (for easier management of your contact list).

The cost is relatively inexpensive (about $19 a month or so) and the return on investment (from the ability to make additional sales you may not have made without having a list to contact and make offers to) makes using an autoresponder service well worth the investment – usually many times over.

Your autoresponder service provider will provide you with a bit of HTML code for you to place in the HTML of your web pages. Your webmaster can easily put this code on your web pages for you.

What the code does is make a “form” (called an “opt-in box”) show up on your website pages into
which your visitor can enter their name and email address, and it has a button for them to click that sends their information to your autoresponder service. Their information is added to a database for you to access later, when you are ready to contact your list.

By providing your visitors an “opt-in box” on every one of the pages in your website (or if this is not feasible, on every page where it makes sense) you are offering your visitor a chance to let you know they wish to receive more information from you about your products or services via email.

What information could you send them? Notices about a special you are having, or information such as a “Skin Care Basics” report, or Top 10 Beauty Tips to Enhance Your Natural Beauty tip sheet. There really is no limit to what you can send to your list as long as it is relevant.

One of the great things about using an autoresponder service and staying in contact with your list is that you’re able to include an offer in every email you send out. For example, if you were to send out a tips email like the one mentioned above, you might include an offer for Raw Mineral cosmetics at the bottom of that email with a link to Raw Mineral cosmetic products on your website where visitors could come for more information and to purchase Raw Mineral cosmetics.

You can do this for any product you carry or service you offer, and I am sure you will, now that you can easily see how doing so would increase your chances to make additional sales.