Category: Start Up Online Business

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9 Proven Ways to Increase Website Traffic

Your online business is useless without traffic. Website traffic is important for your overall business growth. You can use traffic to gather audience insights, improve search engine credibility, and gain more customers.

These are some of the proven ways to increase website traffic.

Perform Keyword Research

Make sure you include target keywords in your content. Before you create content, you need to find out what other people are looking for.

There are many tools that can help you with keyword research. Some of the tools include Google Planner, Ahrefs, Semrush, and Similarweb. These tools can also help you find keywords you can use for Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns.

It is advisable to add keywords naturally to your content. You should avoid keyword stuffing as search engines can penalise your site. Also, keyword stuffing distracts the reader.

Publish High-Quality Content

Posting content is not enough, you should focus on creating high-quality content. Memorable and useful content is a great way of increasing website traffic.

You can easily find questions people are seeking answers for. As a result, your content should provide accurate and detailed answers to these questions.

Make sure you add content regularly to increase the freshness of your site. By providing detailed content, you easily built authority in your niche. This will make it easier for you to rank higher on search engine result pages.

Update Outdated Content

It is normal for old articles to start losing rankings. The best thing to do is to update them. Search engines can perceive some articles not to be evergreen. For instance, if you have articles on your website optimised for the past year, you should update them accordingly.

Remember that search engine optimisation is not a set-and-forget task. It does not matter whether you are ranking for a given target keyword, your competitors can outrank you with better content. Hence, you should keep your content up-to-date and fresh.

Try Email Marketing

Email marketing is a tried and proven method of generating website traffic. In fact, it is a powerful tool you can use to inform and target your audience. Also, you can use it to drive traffic to certain pages of your website.

You can send promotional emails whereby you highlight specific events and sales. In addition, you can send periodic email newsletters. These feature useful promotions and information.

Build Social Media Pages

Social media is equally an important tool. Since it is free, it plays a critical role in driving traffic. However, you need to have a social media marketing strategy.

For the start, you can focus on using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. With the right strategies, you can drive social media users into your website and turn them into potential customers.

It is advisable to create high-quality, engaging, and sharable content. However, it is not enough to create content and post it on your social media pages. You need to engage and participate. When you engage more, you can gain a lot of exposure.

Utilise Digital Ads

Many businesses are already using digital ads. There are many ad networks, such as Google Ads, Mediavine, and Ezoic. You can use them to promote everything you want online. These ads are designed to drive traffic to your website or landing pages.

Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter also run ads. The good thing about these ads is that you can target specific demographics, such as gender, age, education level, and interests. If you do not have experience with digital ads, you can hire an agency.

Create a Blog

A blog is a great way to acquire traffic for your website and get leads. Recent studies have shown that websites with blogs get a lot of traffic.

Make sure you create a well-written, up-to-date blog that addresses the interests and problems of the target audience. This will ensure your website visitors keep coming back for more.

Write Guest Posts

Another way to drive traffic to your website is through guest posting. Also, it helps you generate backlinks and boost your rankings on search engines.

Make sure you write guest posts for websites in your niche or industry. Evaluate the content of the website and ensure it is of high quality. Make sure you share your published guest posts on your social media pages.

Build Backlinks

This might not be an easier task if you are new to it. There are digital outreach services that can help you. Start by reaching out to relevant websites. If you find the right partners, you can acquire lots of links and improve your search rankings.

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11 Ways To Get Free Website Traffic From Social Media

Many online entrepreneurs fail to utilise social media to promote their products. When social media is used correctly, it can drive traffic to your website, increase brand engagement, awareness, and lead generation.

These are some of the proven 11 ways to get free website traffic from social media.

Optimise Your Profiles

Your social media profiles have a role to play when it comes to brand recognition and building. The right social media profile can drive traffic to your site. Therefore, there is a need to optimise your social media profiles.

You should ensure the social media profiles are optimised with relevant keywords. Moreover, you should not miss crucial information when filling in profile details.

Engage Your Audience

The good thing about social media is that it helps you to connect with the target audience directly. As a result, you can interact with the audience, improve customer experience, and get feedback.

Make sure you engage with your audience regularly. In this way, you can boost traffic to your website. Also, you can take into account the opinions of your target audience in your content.

Remember social media is not a one-way communication platform. Rather, it is a two-way platform. This means you should not ignore your audience. Make sure you keep it engaged.

Post Regularly

As a social media marketer, you want to build a list of loyal followers. You can achieve this by posting regularly. There are several factors to guide you when posting. These include your target audience, content, profile bios, hashtags, and time zone.

Keep checking what other brands are doing. If your competitors are posting regularly, you should also do the same.

Create Viral Content

Viral content is common with social media. If you find content that is enticing, relatable to your audience, and unique, you can post it to acquire more traffic. Viral content can help you increase website traffic with minimal effort.

You should note that not all posts will become viral. Ideally, viral content should make others share and spread it to reach more people. Some examples of viral content include memes and short videos.

Share Visual Content

Visual content will get more shares and likes than ordinary content. You should invest your time and resources in creating visuals. Your visuals should be unique to attract your audience. Also, you should share your visual content with your target audience.

The good thing about visual content is that it increases social media visibility. Make sure you use visuals that tell stories and deliver information.

Research Your Competitors

The right marketing strategy must take into account what your competitors are doing. There are various online tools you can leverage to get performance and insights. Other than analysing traffic, you can gather performance metrics and ideas.

Before you start posting and sharing your content, you should analyse the performance of your competitors. This will help you come up with strategies to beat them.

Use Hashtags Effectively

When you use hashtags correctly, you can expose your content to many people. However, make sure you use them ethically. Only use hashtags that are related to your niche, industry, and brand.

Avoid Over Promoting Your Products

Most businesses post only about their services and products. This is likely to bore your audience. Instead, you should make your posts useful and interesting for them. Remember your aim is to retain followers and then convert them into potential customers.

Partner with Social Media Influencers

Social media influencers have created a huge impact in the digital space. Ideally, they are internet celebrities. You can benefit from their immense popularity and followers count on social media.

These celebrities are known to influence how their followers think. Usually, they have a huge network of followers and fans through their social media accounts, blogs, YouTube, and more.

You do not have to work with every influencer out there. Instead, find one with whom your target audience resonates. The idea is to find an influencer who can endorse your products and brand.

Measure Results

There are many tools you can use to measure your results. You should keep a record of visitors from the social network and then analyze its performance. This will help you understand the best social media networks suitable for your business.

There are also tools you can use to publish or schedule your social media posts. You should always keep monitoring the performance of your content across different social media platforms.

Participate in Groups

It is advisable to join several active community groups. Look for groups with people you share the same interests. Such groups can help you drive traffic to your website.

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12 Social Media Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

Social media marketing offers a huge potential to businesses when it is done right. It can help you grow your brand, improve your revenue, and grow your customer base.

However, if you are making certain social media mistakes, then your efforts can be futile. These are the 12 social media mistakes to avoid.

Dismissing Social Media Marketing

Some marketers believe social media is not effective for their industry or demographic. This is attributed to the misconception that social media is only for tech-savvy teenagers. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Social media is now being used by all classes of people. If you have an effective social media marketing strategy, you can beat your competition hands down.

Not Having a Plan

No matter what you are doing, without a plan, you are likely to fail. This is also the case with social media marketing. Many marketers fall into this trap.

You need to approach social media the same way you do planning for other product promotional campaigns. Make sure there are specific goals, a budget, and a solid plan. The plan will outline what you want to achieve.

Failure to Network

Social media is not only about sharing posts. Having thousands of followers who are not your target market will have no impact on your results.

Instead, you should attract and engage people who have the same interests and views as yours. This will help you build and expand your network. In this way, you can increase the exposure of your content to millions of people.

Opening Too Many Accounts

Many marketers make the mistake of opening too many accounts on every social media network. Managing these accounts requires a lot of resources. It stretches the marketing budget and produces little results.

If you have a small budget, you should focus on the top social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. It is advisable to allocate more resources to the social network with promising results.

Using Irrelevant Hashtags

Before you use hashtags, make sure they are relevant to your brand. Using hashtags will increase the exposure of your content. However, you should only use hashtags your audience is following.

When creating content, make sure you research hashtags. This will ensure the content you produce is relevant.

Being Too Promotional

Customers are easily turned off by overly promotional marketing campaigns. Although you need to highlight your services and products, you should find a balance between value and promotional content.

It is advisable to build online relationships with your audience. As a result, you will engage them more.

Using Low-Quality Visuals

Studies have shown that customers move past social media posts with low-quality images or videos. Remember you have a few seconds to catch the attention of the target audience. Thus, you cannot afford to post bad visuals.

Graphics, images, and videos ought to be part of your strategy. Consider hiring an expert who specializes in creating visual content.

Not Responding to Customers

Recent studies have shown that customers are likely to buy your products if you respond to their questions on social media. Also, you are likely to build loyalty and some customers can share their positive experiences on their profiles.

You should make it imperative to respond to questions faster. As you know, customers are naturally impatient. If you delay answering them, they can lose confidence in your brand. You can use social monitoring tools to know when people have asked questions about your brand.

Not Tracking Your Performance

The good thing about social media marketing is that you can track your performance. When you track your results, you can make appropriate strategic changes in your target audience and campaigns.

For instance, if there is a non-performing ad, you can stop it. This will save you the money you can spend on other performing ads.

Remember it takes time and a lot of testing to get the desired results. Therefore, keep tracking and optimizing your social media campaigns.

Treating All Social Media Networks as Same

This is another social media marketing mistake to avoid. A lot of businesses post the same content on all their social platforms. Ideally, they copy-paste the same content.

Each social media network is unique in several ways. Also, they vary in terms of marketing tools, features, behaviors, interests, and demographics. You should take into account your marketing strategies and updates for social media networks.

Buying Followers

Buying social media followers is not even a mistake, it is a sin. Many brands have been caught buying followers or participating in exchange programs. Unfortunately, this does not bring any meaningful results. It only soothes the brand’s ego. Some brands have been banned forever for engaging in this activity. 

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6 Ways To Overcome The Fear Of Failure In Online Business

As an online entrepreneur, failure is inevitable. You should note that failure is part of life, and this includes online business failure. However, the way you deal with it determines whether you succeed or not.

Many people fail to start their online businesses because of fear of failure. These are six ways to overcome the fear of failure in online business.

Prepare to Succeed

Before you even start your online business, you need to prepare to succeed. This means you first learn how to do your business. Well, you know how to fail. Ideally, you can fail by not doing anything or doing stupid things.

Therefore, you need to find exactly what should be done to be successful. Acquiring knowledge will ensure you achieve success.

For instance, you need to know people who will buy your products and services. Make sure you offer a price and quality that is competitive enough to encourage people to purchase it.

Make sure you have a business plan. This will help fill in your knowledge gaps and provide you with steps you will follow. Think of your business plan as a blueprint for success.

Change Your Attitude

You need to figure out what scares you from starting an online business. Many people are terrified by fear because it makes one feel bad and you can end up losing your investment.

The truth is fear cannot change your personality. Therefore, even if you fail, you do not become a bad person. Failure will affect your actions negatively.

It does not matter what others say about you. You cannot control their actions or thoughts. Hence, there is no need of losing sleep over them.

Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

Every niche has a group of companies and individuals that get to the top. You should make it a habit of learning from their approaches and then emulate them.

It is advisable to study the failures and successes of entrepreneurs, no matter the industry or business they are in. However, you need to be careful not to compare yourself to others.

Remember you are on a mission to build a unique online business. Then, you should stick to your uniqueness. Respect the performance of other online entrepreneurs but do not envy them. You can never be the other people. Do things your way and you will achieve success.

Just Keep Going

You can also overcome the fear of failure by taking action. When fears, negative thoughts, and doubts fill your mind, you should stay focused on the right actions to take.

Fear is common when doing things for the first time. That is because when you are doing something new, you are leaving your comfort zone and getting into the unknown. Instead of retreating to the comfort zone, embrace fear and keep going.

There is a need to face fear head-on and keep on taking action. As a result, your comfort zone will expand and your fear will subside.

As an entrepreneur, you should use fear to fuel your motivation. It can be fear of mediocrity, fear of rejection, and fear of failure.

Focus On Solutions Not Problems

Remember your business exists to provide services or products that solve problems people have. If you want to succeed, then you should know how to embrace problems. This does not mean you focus on problems. Instead, you should focus on solutions.

Consider problems as opportunities to come up with solutions. If employees complain about a given challenge, an opportunity might be existing there. As more problems bile up, more opportunities become available.

Education and Research

As you know, knowledge is power. You can eliminate or minimise risks by utilising the experience and expertise of others. Before starting a business, you should educate yourself on different topics.

Learn expert tips and common mistakes you should avoid. Get to know the commonly overlooked business challenges.

During your research, you will discover that many entrepreneurs have faced fear before and they have overcome it. You should also learn the methods they used to overcome fear.

There are many online resources where you can learn some business knowledge to help you overcome obstacles. If you know of a successful entrepreneur, you should seek advice from him or her. Also, you can discuss challenges and brainstorm ideas together.

You can also seek a business mentor who can help you overcome fear. Consider joining networking groups with other online entrepreneurs. These are people who face the same challenges and fears as you.

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12 Productivity Hacks for Online Small Business Owners

Running a business is not an easy task. There is a need to be always ahead of your competitors. Even small tweaks to your operations can have a massive boost on your business. You need to manage your time well to stay productive.

These are some productive hacks for online small business owners that are easy and quick to implement.

Prioritise Tasks

The first thing to do is to prioritise your tasks. You can do this by creating lists of tasks to be done daily, weekly, and monthly.

After creating the list of tasks, you should prioritise them. This means organising them in order of most important or urgent to least important.

Include a list of critical tasks that must be done to move your business forward.

Delegate

If you have a team, you need to find what every member is good at and delegate. Determine the tasks to be delegated to your employees.

For instance, if you want to create content for your website, you should delegate it to your content writer. If you have employees who have a passion for writing, you can ask them to devote time for a few articles weekly.

Mute Device Notifications

It is time you do away with unnecessary distractions from your devices. The stream of chimes, flashing lights, and chirps can take your time and focus away from work. You can stop this by muting your notifications.

Studies have shown that stopping to check alerts on your phone can cost you a lot of time. Instead, create a schedule to check your messages and emails. Keep your devices out of sight. This prevents you from being tempted to use them frequently.

Take Real Breaks

Maybe you feel breaks are unnecessary luxuries. This explains why many business owners avoid them. Rather than taking time away from their computer and taking a break, they use their free time to read emails.

It is advisable to take a walk or get a cup of coffee. Although breaks seem frivolous, they provide a period of recuperation. As a result, you can get back to work with renewed energy and focus.

Meditate

Meditation can help take your productivity to another level. Start meditating when you wake up. This will help you clear your mind and bring the best out of you.

It helps you to become less stressed, more focused, and have a higher awareness. The awareness helps maximise productivity and minimise distractions.

Start Early

Create a habit of starting your work early. You can do a certain task before 8 AM. During this time, you should avoid receiving phone calls or emails. This is the time to focus on your to-do list.

You will find this to be a fail proof way of doing the most demanding tasks or those that require consistent attention. It does not matter unexpected interruptions that come your way, you can achieve your goals.

Write Down Your Goals

Writing down your goals can have a huge impact on your productivity. Make sure you write down your goals for each month. After this, you can break them down into small goals.

When you approach your work this way, you can free enough space and make your goals seem more achievable and less intimidating. Moreover, you can derive motivation to achieve your goals.

Create Templates

Make sure you have a template for everything you want to do. It is advisable to start creating templates as soon as you start your business. This means you will not need to create the same thing multiple times.

Also, templates make it easier for your employees to do their work with minimal supervision.

Avoid Social Media

Studies have revealed that social media is more distracting than phone and email. You may want to read a comment, but you end up wasting several minutes browsing aimlessly.

When you start to work, mute your social media notifications. Also, you can log out of your social media accounts to avoid being tempted to peek into the homepage.

Embrace Technology

Technology can help automate some tasks and free up your time. Some tasks like invoicing can be automated.

If you have certain repetitive tasks, technology must be having a solution to them. For instance, you can use software applications to manage your payroll and account reconciliation.

Avoid Multitasking

Many people have embraced multitasking. Unfortunately, multitasking can cause more harm than good. You should note that your brain is not configured to swiftly move from one task to another. Multitasking can make you more stressed out and less effective.

Have Essential Tools

Always plan ahead your work. This will ensure you have all the required tools to do the work efficiently and effectively.

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