I was surfing Reddit and found an interesting topic on /r/Entrepreneur. The original poster, GordonBuffet, was asking how to direct traffic towards his eCommerce site. And although the question itself was niche, the answers given could be applied to most any other type of business.
The answers I’d like to focus for this post were by redditor, MarkShopify. Mark had 8 points.
- “Tactfully post your site / story to the appropriate subreddit”
- “Find influential instagram accounts in your niche and pay them to post your product / account. Look for accounts with email addresses in the bio – this usually means they accept paid posts”
- “Write a link bait blog post and then reach out letting people know you wrote about them. E.G. “10 Great Fashion Blogs You Should Subscribe To”, or “30 Mommy Bloggers You Should Be Following on Twitter””.
- “Send free product samples to bloggers”
- “Use https://www.funnelfeed.io/ to auto-favorite tweets related to your products and industry”
- “Do keyword research and create content to help you rank in search engines so you can start to generate organic search traffic.”
- “Interview experts in your industry – a great way to get content created and tap into their audience.”
- “And of course Facebook Ads and Adwords – the success of these will depend on your products and your expertise.”
Let’s talk about them.
“Tactfully post your site / story to the appropriate subreddit”
The first note is about finding the appropriate subreddit and posting there. If you’re not familiar with Reddit, which you should, it’s comprised of hundreds of categories called subreddits, with thousands of conversations or threads happening inside them. No matter the nature of your business or product, I’m sure you’ll be able to find a subreddit that fits your needs, whether it be /r/babyanimals, /r/space, or something in between.
Another thing worth noting about Reddit are the ones that help all of us as entrepreneurs. My favourites are /r/Entrepreneur, /r/startups, and /r/marketing. It would make sense to follow /r/business by the name alone, but it’s filled with business news like if some huge company bought out a potential competitor or if stocks are rising. I recently checked our /r/businesshub, and it seems to be a pretty good subreddit.
“Find influential instagram accounts in your niche and pay them to post your product / account. Look for accounts with email addresses in the bio – this usually means they accept paid posts”
The next point about Instagram wasn’t something I really thought deeply about before, but it makes sense. Instagram does have the option of videos now, but its main focus still lies on images, which happen to have a much higher chance of getting viral, than video posts or text posts. But connecting to Instagram accounts does not mean being stuck to that site alone. Usually, Instagram posts are automatically shared to corresponding Twitter and Facebook accounts.
I find the tidbit about email addresses interesting. It’s new information to me, and I’d like to try it myself.
A reply to this point by cjbarber leads to an interesting startup called NeoReach, which acts like a talent scouting service for influencers. Interesting service. I might check out their free trial one of these days.
“Write a link bait blog post and then reach out letting people know you wrote about them. … . Send free product samples to bloggers”
These two points are about getting acquainted with bloggers that might blog about your product, and hopefully becoming memorable enough for them. As a writer, I can tell you that one of our greatest challenges is coming up with a steady flow of topics with available yet obscure information. So my guess is that if you send a small tech blog your new iPhone case for free and it seems interesting enough, they’d be glad to blog about it. Being mentioned in a link bait post may also seem cheap, but it increases the blog’s authority which helps both the blogger and you.
“Use https://www.funnelfeed.io/ to auto-favorite tweets related to your products and industry”
I checked Funnelfeedrecently. They still seem to be active, but their video in the home page has been deleted. I’d also suggest to not search funnelfeed on Youtube, unless pureed dinner mush is your thing. But the service itself is great. It’s basically a keyword campaign manager for social media rather than search engines.
<h2″Do keyword research and create content to help you rank in search engines so you can start to generate organic search traffic.”
The next point is about SEO, or search engine optimization. You wanna give your name the best spot on the internet, so that just in case people don’t know about you, they still see you. Plus, being on the first page of Google acts like a divine seal of approval. You’d have to be really terrible for you to be on the first page, and still not be trusted.
“Interview experts in your industry – a great way to get content created and tap into their audience.”
Now, about talking to industry experts. I’ve said this before: successful people want others to be successful too. Go out and look for people, and I’m sure they’d be excited to have a new friend and competitor. It just makes life more exciting. What is stopping you from talking to them is that they can get really busy and their minds can be locked on certain tasks. So when you’re being ignored, you’re less likely to be snobbed for the sake of snob, but rather, they feel that these seconds could be spent on more profitable things than talking to you. It’s nothing personal.
“And of course Facebook Ads and Adwords – the success of these will depend on your products and your expertise.”
The last point is really important, but often dismissed by young people due to the notion that ads make your site look dirty. However, that’s usually a problem with web design and not making ad spots the perfect balance of barely-there and “hey. this thing exists!” But in a post about eCommerce, why would you want ads? You’re already making money, right? That is the mindset of mediocrity. You need to have multiple flows of income, not only to make more, but for security. You should find as much ways to get income from one project without disturbing the customer. (If you have a screen-sized pop-up or something just as stupid, people hate you.)
photocredit: floyduk; fosforix; zergev; danielfoster