Getting traffic is hard. Whether you pay for it or work for it, driving traffic is the biggest challenge you face online.
So, when you do get traffic, you shouldn’t waste it – right?
Most of the people who visit your site will turn around and leave without checking your site, subscribing, or buying your products. Many of them will never come back.
That’s not a criticism of your site or business model – it happens to everyone. It’s just a fact of life.
But that doesn’t mean you have to accept it. If you can get more people to return to your site, you’ll increase your revenue. If you can increase your traffic (without spending more money or effort) you can lower your costs.
Achieve both of these goals, and you’ll get more for less. So, how do you do it?
Let’s start with increasing your traffic.
Social media is a huge traffic driver when your content goes viral. Viral traffic means your readers promote the content to their friends, who read it and share it with their friends, and so on.
Simply adding social “share” and “like” buttons is not enough to make your content go viral. Most people ignore them. And when they do notice them, they’re too lazy to click.
So how do you get people to share your page? By taking the most valuable part of your content and locking it away! If your readers want to see the hidden gems, they have to share your page with their friends on one of the social networks.
Now let’s talk about getting people back to your site. You need a way to reach out to people, grab their attention, and bring them back. Email is the most effective channel.
In fact, you probably already have an email opt-in form on your site. What percentage of your readers sign up?
For most bloggers, it’s a small number indeed – less than one percent. You can increase that number by giving people a clear incentive to opt-in. Once more, the most effective way to do this is by locking content.
