3 "Different" Ways To Drive Traffic In 2010!

In this article I'm going to talk about 3 "different" ways of driving traffic in 2010! - These are the ways that most people won't think of, some would say they are the "outside the box" type of traffic generation methods, but I think they should be utilized more!

Many people choose to believe that there are only a few certain ways of generating traffic such as:

1) Article Marketing (The lame way!)

2) PPC - (The expensive way)

3) Solo Ads - (Risky!)

4) Videos - (Just youtube)

5) SEO - (Hard work, not always best option)

Above I've literally listed 5 ways to drive traffic off the top of my head which aren't unheard of, in fact they are the traffic generation that everyone seems to talk about! - How many Google Adwords guides have you seen before? How many courses on PPC have you seen? How many guides about article domination, and driving 1000's of views with articles have you seen, the list goes on...

Sure these are ways that CAN drive quality traffic if you master them, but PPC is expensive if you get it wrong, Article Marketing is time consuming and doesn't pay off if you get it wrong, Solo Ads can be highly effective but they are a sure way to lose money quickly if you get them wrong, SEO - It can be good, but if you target a phrase with a lot of competition then It could take months to rank, and what's stopping someone with a high authoirty blog or website blowing you out of the water compeltely?

Sure, I've made some assumptions and possibilities that are the RISK's that we take when it comes to running an online business, and even though the 3 traffic generation strategies I'm going to talk about may not COMPLETE your traffic generation all together, they could be a great way to add 1000's of subscribers to your list over the course of a year, or add key money to your bottom line! - If something did happen such as your SEO rank completely vanishing, or your CPC with Adwords going through the roof then these are way's that can act as your BACK UP which may just stop you going broke/failing...

Shal we begin? Here we go...

Traffic Strategy 1 - The Facebook "LIKE" Button

Recently you might have noticed that the Facebook "like" button is appearing a lot more on blogs/articles and there's a good reason for this! - You see, facebook is an incredible way to send content like an Article "VIRAL"! - If you manage to get 1000 people to view your article and ask people at the end of the article to click the "LIKE" button if they enjoyed it then this could easily send your article viral! - If 100 people were to click this button it would show up on their profiles - Most people on facebook now have on average 140 friends, so instantly your article could potentially be exposed to 14,000 people.

It's a great way to exposure your content to more people so it's no wonder that you're seeing more and more blogs with the Facebook "Like" button installed!

This being said, it's essential that YOU install the facebook "like" button on any blogs / websites you own. This does not have to be used only on Articles, it can also be used for videos, ebooks, training courses etc etc...If you have a video posted on your blog, or your website you should place the "like" button below it! - It's EVEN a good idea to put a facebook "like" button on your squeeze page beneath a simple video, if you've got a compelling squeeze page video it could give you extra traffic/subscribers if people hit the like button!

Traffic Strategy 2 - Article Marketing (The Effective Way)

Okay, you're probably thinking Article Marketing is not something new and unique, it's not something different either however what I'm going to talk about here is not your STANDARD Article Marketing, it's WAY more effective than that! But first I just want to specify what a lot of people think they should do when it comes to driving traffic using Article Marketing...

A lot of people will write an article and simply give it to a few article directories! - There's EZA of course, it's the one that we all know, but there's also ArticlesBase, GoArticles, IdeaMarketers, Isnare and many more...but what exactly happens? Well, you can write a quality article which has good content, give it to 5 directories and get a bit of traffic sure... or you can take it a step further....you can do some "keyword research" and get it so that your article starts ranking in Google! - That way you'll get more traffic yeah? - Of course... it's organic traffic so it's goin to be useful, but really there's a much better way which I'm going to talk about now...

I don't know about yourself, but have you ever read an article which seems like the guy is just stuffing his main keyword phrase in so it can rank better in the SERPS. Sure, it's not technically "stuffed" but still, certain things don't quite read as good as if they weren't optimized for the search engines, and other articles which are half decent and placed on directories simply don't get that many views...after all I know myself that when I've posted an article to the directories I rarely stick around long enough to see what other people are talking about, it's just not something I do... so I have no doubts that other people don't do this either!

Solution?

Post your articles to places that actually want to read them, and OVER DELIVER! - Take your article writing to the next step and write an article which stands out from the rest! - I'm not trying to "show off" here, but look at this article...I'm barely half way through and it's already dishing out some detailed stuff right? This article is already 3-4 times the length that some articles I've seen on directories are.

Also...what else is good about this article? - Well, it's going out to people that actually want to read it. I know myself I'm quite happy to check peoples articles out on this website because I know that they are appealing directly to me because I'm interested in around 95% of the things that get talked about here! - Whereas on a directory there's articles on various topics so over 90% of them you won't even be interested in reading!

Find places that are targeted towards your article, so if you're interested in Internet Marketing, MLM, Online Businesses etc, post your article to places like Betternetworker.com, forums such as the Warrior Forum (Be careful of links/self promotion though as the moderators are pretty strict), Mashable.

Traffic Strategy 3 - Blog + Stumbleupon Ads

Another place that I highly recommend you place your article is on YOUR BLOG! - "But Wait...I don't even have a blog" - You say? - Well, you should and the reason I say this is NOT so that you can become the next "problogger" however, it's now a great way to get more traffic and build your business!

You should give you article to the sites I've mentioned in "Traffic Strategy 3" but also place it on your blog! The reason for this is that it's YOUR blog which means there's NO content guidelines! - Of course you shouldn't make your article spammy, or fill it with tons of links but it means you can properly utilize features like the facebook "Like" button! - If you haven't realized already all 3 strategies actually interlink with each other! :)

Once we have our HIGH QUALITY article up and running on our blog, the next thing we are going to do is head over to Stumbleupon Ads and create a campaign! - The great thing about stumbleupon is that you get people to view your page for as little as 0.05c! That's not just a click either, this page is actually going to appear infront of the reader which can be powerful! - So here's a little example of what could happen...

You purchase 1000 views which will set you back $50 - Sure you could purchase just 250, it's completely up to you, but lets just say 1000 because it's a nice round figure! - Well, you're instantly getting infront of those 1000 people! - They may enjoy your article so much that they go through your link and sign up to your list! (GREAT - Thats exactly what we want) - If they do exactly what you ask them to, then they'll also hit the "like" button! - This means that your article will be exposed to on average 140 more people (because thats on average how many friends people have on facebook)!

I won't go into the figures anymore but as you can see this could potentially go viral which would mean A LOT of views on your article compared to the standard "old skool" method of article marketing! - Doing article marketing this way could result in literally 1000's of views on your article which may end up growing your list by 100's or even 1000 new subscribers/prospects etc!

I think you'll all agree that this is an extremely powerful way compared to the old skool article directory submissions, agreed?

Conclusion

Is my article going to go VIRAL? - Who knows, but one thing I will ask is that if you enjoyed this article then please go ahead and share it on facebook by clicking the facebook icon on this page - It's quick and easy - do it now  :)

Also... try this method out for yourself, I'm confident that it'll be much more interesting, effective and less stressful that writing up 100's of boring articles and posting them out to 100 unheard of directories! - Just my thoughts anyway :)

Have a great day,

Mark Sherris

Author Bio

Mark Sherris is a SEO Consultant from the UK, his website: www.MarkSherris.com