Internet Marketing University is in session again and as usual has great content. It’s priced for a recession-friendly price of free and they have the big names in the industry. I love it. Today I listened to Todd Defren (@tdefren) of Shift Communications speak about my favorite topic: online PR.
One of the best ways to be sure you’re converting in your online marketing efforts is to get traffic from the right audience. That means finding the right audience. The people who have the problems you can solve. Your community. They are the types who will read your content, come to your webinars, read and/or comment on your blog and buy from you.
What Tools are you Using to find people who you should be following online?
Here are some tools that I like:
Backtype – You can search for people and follow them to see where they comment. If I’m looking for PR people who might be interested in my Online PR Book then I’d put in names like Lee Odden or David Meerman Scott. I’d see what blogs they frequent and comment on and in essence get to know their communities. In essence I’m seeing their online rolodex.
Top Twitter folks by location and other categories
I also like TweetReach because I can put in a hash tag like #PR and on the right hand side it shows me the people who are writing with that hash tag. It shows the numbers of times they’ve used the hash tag. I can easily see who is active in this way and follow them. You can also search for your name, your competitors name, etc.
Check your stats
Check your Google Analytics or other stats for the top referring web sites. Then look at how long people from various sources stay on your site.
Google sends me the most traffic but it’s not the crowd that is most engaged by my site. It’s not the worst though – Twitter is in the top 10 but I can see by looking at time spent, that people who come to my site from Twitter tend to stay on my site for seconds. Another referring site has people who are on my site for over 4 minutes on average. Where should I focus? On the second source of traffic.
Now I’ll go to TweetReach and see who’s tweeting about that source of traffic in my analytics. Then I’ll go to Backtype and see where the person comments and get to know the online community they’re a part of. I’ll make that my community too.
Here’s why: I’d like my book to go to the right audience. If I get it wrong I face criticism or it’s spam. Get it right and the person loves my book and it answers all sorts of questions they had. I’m the expert. And of course, like anyone else, I like the group best who likes me most.
You need to do the same. Find the community where you can fit and find people who will appreciate you once they get to know you better. And while you’re at it, please become part of my community. Online PR Book on Facebook or on Twitter at @OnlinePRBook. Reserve your copy of OnlinePR Book at http://happyabout.info/killer-press-release.php
 | Press Releases are Referral Engines! Learn How to get business leads and traffic with the Killer Online Press Releases book & DVD combo |
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