There’s only three types of pages in this site.

It’s not going to win a usability award, ever, as a whole site. But there’s only three types of pages, that only want three types of action.

At any given point, you’ll either see a sales page, a blog post or sign-up page, and most people here will end up doing one of three things when they land here:

• Buy something
• Read or react to a blog post
• Sign up for the newsletter

Most of the time it’s one of the last two items.

How does this relate to you? What’s all this about thinking and sinking?

In offering a bit of assistance to various clients and colleagues with minor campaigns, I’ve noticed in them one tendency I used to have – making things too complicated.

My site may be a sprawling fixer-upper as a whole, but each page has three or less types of options you can choose from. So the conversion rate for new visitors is higher than normal.

By conversion rate, I mean the % of people who take one of my most desired actions. Which actions?

First, I want to deepen the trust between me and you. It’s always harder to work together if we don’t trust each other. That can entail anything from reading another blog post (to determine whether you trust my information) or interacting with me in the comments (that could help you decide if you want to do business with me).

Second, I’d like permission to follow up with you at some point, mostly with tips that are too juicy or involved to share in public, but also to offer you special discounts on my services and products.

Third, I wouldn’t hate it if you bought something on a whim. I’d rather we get to know each other first, but I get how sometimes, you just don’t have time for the courtship and just want to get on with it. Maybe we can get to know each other later. Maybe you’ll just drive by. Either is cool.

What I don’t want, is for you to have to think about how to go about the process.

See, that’s the problem I was talking about in the title. It’s not that I don’t want thinking people at my site — I prefer to work with intelligent people.

What I mean is, you shouldn’t have to figure out how to do the things I’d like you to do.

Because what happens when you open Firefox, Chrome (or IE for the 8 people using it, still love you) and come to a page that you can’t figure out?

You leave.

If you walk into a store to buy groceries and see petals falling from the ceiling, hear harps playing, and see waltzing couples, if you stay it will be out of curiosity, not to buy groceries. Confused prospects leave. So there’s no longer a customer.

And that conversion rate sinks to Zero.

This goes for EVERYTHING if you’re trying to get one particular action, such as a sale or subscription, a click, a vote, a response to a blog post, or a retweet.

Yes, it’s different on a blog, where you want many options, and you want them to take a leisurely stroll around, deciding if they can trust your information or want to do business with you.

But if you want a person to do one thing – don’t make them think. Give them less than three options – only one if you can swing it.

You want someone to click a link?

Link directly to the link they should click.

You want someone to buy something?

Link to the product, directly, with clear instructions on how to buy, and no distractions.

You want someone to sign up for your newsletter?

Send them to a page where there’s no other option but sign up or leave.

Building a relationship first? It’s okay to have more than one option on a page during the courtship – but when you’re ready to close the deal, eliminate distractions that interfere with the buying process.

Try reducing the options on your site for a week. You may find that sales increase so much, you don’t even need more traffic.

But I’ll still be right here if you do.

It’s quite simple really.

It’s the easiest promotional secret ever and it’s staring you right in the face. There’s one tiny thing you could be doing differently that would bring you tenfold the results in sales, subscribers, clients or customers for exactly the same effort or amount of money that you’re expending now.

I call it Magnifying Your Audience.

Before I tell you what process goes with that moniker, let’s look at how many of us, even those of us who are experienced, promote our blogs, articles, videos and documents in social media.

We create content.

We proliferate it among the people we already know – current customers, even peers.

We send copies through our current social media outlets – groups we’re members of in LinkedIn, groups we love on Facebook, our profiles, and on Twitter. If we have staff members, we make sure they duplicate our efforts.

We may prod our friends to help distribute our work or call in favors. We could call out to them using great tools like Livefyre, or organize their efforts using Triberr.

We usually get a response that’s similar to the last response we got — or if we created something incredible, we see a temporary boost. Maybe we’ll do a little advertising.

Then we create the next piece of content, hoping that as our community slowly grows, and as we connect to new people on social media, in person, and via referrals, we’ll have a slow, upward climb to an audience that will one day be huge.

It’s essential to understand that there’s actually nothing wrong with this method on its face.

The problem comes in under two particular circumstances:

1. When you repeat the process the same way each time, or,
2. When you vary it but among a mis-targeted audience.

Why?

In the first scenario, when you simply go through the same steps of promoting each time, you may be talking to the same group each time. That’s great if that’s an active group that’s made up of focused people who are constantly growing, changing and constantly promoting you.

But that’s rarely the case. Usually it goes to the same group of peers as yesterday, who may share your content if they remember or see it in time, but most likely will only do so about 10% of the time. And that’s fine.

Everyone is busy and has their priorities. You can’t expect people to spend all their time talking about you.

But if you’re always talking to the same, unchanging group that isn’t bringing new people to your content, it may be time to shake things up a bit. Don’t forget what you were doing when you first got excited about networking with people on and offline – you met new people, helped them, met their friends, got introduced to new groups of people.

You publicized yourself among groups of people who didn’t know you yet, and were likely to be interested in your products and services.

As you continue to promote to people already in your audience who haven’t bought, shared or subscribed, think of new audiences. Maybe even better audiences.

You get the picture.

The second item is much more in line with my point though. I’ve been guilty of it myself. We humans have a tendency to stick to things that are familiar and safe. And if I publish blog posts and share them with my current peers, many of them will think I’m as brilliant as I think they are and in turn, share them with their audiences.

And I adore them for it. It means so much to me when my peers approve of what I’m doing.

But if my peer group stagnates and I’m not meeting new people, so will the reach of my audience, if I’m only promoting to my peers. It’s great when people are willing to put you in front of their audience. But you also have to using methods that put you directly in touch with the people you want in your audience as well.

You can’t just count on the so-called influencers either – they’re not always the ones who spark viral growth.

The easiest way to get out of such a rut is to ask yourself this question: “What kind of person thinks the work I’m doing is like some kind of magic trick?”

Your parents, yeah, probably, but you want to cast a wider net – you want to think groups of people, who will buy what you’re selling in droves.

Keep asking that until the answer you get is a group that’s in your target audience. Then go find THEM online.

What do you do once you know where they are? Well. I guess that’s the next blog post, right there.

A strange thing happened today.

Besides spending most of the day thinking I was insane due to a fever and a pre-migraine, I mean. Fun times.

The other really strange thing that happened today was that I got a note from a seller on Amazon. Oh wait, I forgot the back story.

You see, I am an Amazon whore.

A few years back when I had to spend 23 hours a day in bed recovering from a back injury, I got everything delivered. It was then that I fell madly, deeply and permanently in love with Amazon. And since some people sell their items through Amazon, I fell vicariously in love with them too.

This odd revelation is relevant because I have ordered a LOT of things from Amazon, and from Amazon sellers, many, many, many times. For several months in 2007, I got deliveries almost daily.

(Boyfriend’s money. You understand.)

So when I say that it was strange that I got an order from an Amazon seller, this is from the perspective of someone who

1- has ordered from people through Amazon a LOT, and
2- had a special folder, pop-up notification, and sound associated with any email that even had the word Amazon in it.

In all the emails I’ve gotten from them in all those years, I don’t remember getting a note from a seller unless something was wrong. Especially not a follow-up on an order.

Now, despite the fact that I am an Amazon trollop, I rarely create a review on Amazon, and when I do, it’s for one of two reasons. I’m promoting doing it in relation to an activity to promote myself, or I have had an extreme reaction to something. If something is great or awful, I’ll do a review. Not a lukewarm kind of gal – if things are just okay, I tend to keep my mouth shut.

And what do you think one of the suggestions in this follow up email asked me to do?

That’s right, write a review. Which makes me realize that I just lied. I’ll write a review if something thrills me UNLESS it’s something that I don’t want the whole world to know about me. In this case, since it’s just you and me here, I’ll tell you — it’s about a wig I bought.

The wig is fabulous. In it I can go from bad hair day to vixen in 41 seconds. It took some adjusting but when I finally got in on straight, well. In the words of my good friend Jill Foster, I look “Hawt.”

And since it’s not that different from my normal hair style, even my niece mistook it for my actual hair this weekend.

So. Am I going to review it? Darn right I am. Because the people who made the wig that makes me so happy, asked me to do it.

And the moral of the story is?

Ask people to do things that even seem obvious. Obviously, if I liked the experience I had with the product I bought, I’d review it, right? You would think. But as I just explained with a personal example, people are crazy, and so are the reasons we do or don’t do things.

Yet you can sometimes overcome our crazy just by asking us to do something. Want more people to comment on your blog posts?

Ask them.

Not just at the end of the post. Pick five peers and say, I need a comment on this blog post if you have time today. Don’t forget to give before you receive, regardless of whether you think reciprocation will occur. And the thing you do needs to be genuine support, with no grudges allowed. My test is that it’s something I’d feel I’m doing the world a service by doing, whether or not it’s ever recognized.

I’ll share a post in Facebook whether or not the other person will do the same for me in my estimation, because I think it’s a great post that people who have friended me will enjoy.

Now if someone does the same for me? I take a page out of Lisa Byrne‘s book and spend hours paying attention to what they do as ell.

To get back to the point, ask people to take action. You probably are on the big things, but break that down more and think of where you expect an action but can’t take it for granted. Are you asking people to subscribe to your newsletter? Are you asking newsletter subscribers to be on the lookout for the next offer? Are you asking new customers to buy one more thing?

Really think about it….

What do you want your customers and clients to do? And have you asked them to do it?

This free presentation, called One Very Simple Way to Use Facebook for Business goes over one simple 7 step process for finding out whether Facebook for Business will work for you. You can find out in 15 minutes a day for a week. I also have a free video and an article about this process coming up for anyone who is a free member of this site.

As always premium Free Traffic Tip & Traffic Reality members will get it first, as well as a few extras.

Networking! by amydpp, on Flickr

So you missed What’s Next DC? Or you were there but missed something?

You sad sack, you.

I only say that because we’re in the same boat, and that’s what I said to myself. I was there as a floating expert (more on the irony of someone who sometimes can barely walk being called a “floating” expert later- LOL!). And I almost stabbed myself when I missed Rand Fishkin’s presentation.

But I’m also here to rescue you from possible shame and embarassment in front of your friends, because after going over the following resources, you’ll be able to front like you did. There’s no future in frontin’, but that’s another blog post isn’t it?

I started out the day intending to blog my reactions to the presentations, but so many people already did such a good job doing that. So instead, I’m going to link to those, and give you the inside scoop later on:

• being a floating expert,
• talking to Debbie Weil,
• the fantastic networking at What’s Next DC,
• the IRL connections,
• How Twitter Changed One Speaker’s Life,
• and more….

We’ll come back to all that in the days that follow, on my various social media, corporate web visibility, and online company owner blogs, as well as here.

For now, here’s a quick round up of What’s Next DC blog posts I found. And below are my brief reactions to my favorite presentations.

More Resources

You can also see my Quick Resources Overview of What’s Next DC at my corporate web promotion services blog, Leveraged Promotion.

The Network Solutions sponsored TwitterChat I was talking about last week is today at 1 pm Eastern/New York time, and will last until 2:30 pm or until we get to as many questions as possible.

Highlights:

1. The event is completely free. .

No charge, really.

2. All you have to do is click here to register for Keep Them Coming! How to Increase Traffic to your Website.

(Both web traffic and SEO will be discussed.)

Update: Two prizes are being given to registered attendees.

One will be a free prize from me. The other is a surprise. One is a random registered attendee, the other is to the registered attendee with the best question.

3. Every person who registers, even if they can’t attend at the last minute, is getting a special freebie to help with their Web Traffic.

And no, it’s not 366 Traffic Methods.

4. Free tips on search engine optimization

Answering questions like “Why is SEO critical to increasing web traffic?”

5. Free tips on web traffic

Key information, such as: “Top 10 tips on how to increase web traffic”

6. You get to send me questions through the moderator.

I won’t be answering any questions about naked pictures, or accepting marriage proposals. Stay on Topic, People!

If you’re a Twitter Chat newbie, there are some tips on the post about the Women Grow Business Inbound Marketing Twitter Chat from April.

You don’t need  a free Twitter account to attend, but that sure makes it a lot more fun.

One more thing. I have a bet going with someone that I can get 100 people to register and attend.

So if you know people on Twitter or Facebook who you think would enjoy this free session or help save them money in their business, retweet this message or share it on Facebook. You can even email it your subscribers, or republish this whole post on your blog.

I’ll owe you one retweet or Facebook share that you cash in tomorrow morning, if

1. you’re one of the first 12 people, and
2. you respond to this message with your Twitter handle  so I can make arrangements with you.

In the previous post about Money Funnels, I connected lists and traffic.

In the preceding audio post, I showed one way that they work together – you can leverage targeted traffic to continue to bring you new people that will sign up to your list.

Now I want to go one level deeper and show you the connection between lists and traffic in your business.

Whether you own a bakery, an affiliate marketing business, or a high traffic blog that depends solely on advertising for revenue, your contact list is the lifeblood of your ongoing success. The reason? It is through your opt-in contact list that you are freed from the shackles of constantly generating new business to survive.

The reason that so many marketers and successful business owners will tell you that your money is in your list is that once you have a list of contacts, especially past buyers, you can market to them again and again, as long as you have their permission. Since previous buyers are much more likely to buy again, and they are 90% cheaper to market to, you have a low cost audience that you can make sales from again and again.

This doesn’t mean you can get your list to a certain size and stop looking for new visitors. Indeed, the key to having a flourishing business is to have a balance between new business and old business.

You see, as your present contact list ages, the people on it will change. They will have different experiences, be at different places in their lives, financially or otherwise, and their needs change as well. For example, let’s say you make and sell boxes to businesses.

Over the next year, some of the new businesses will fail and close, which will affect your business. Other older businesses will expand or be acquired, leading to more business. Still others may change their packaging from boxes to bags. Then there are the new businesses being formed every day which need your services.

For all those reasons and more, your list has to continue to grow and evolve.

How does that happen? New traffic.

The job of your new traffic is to generate new leads that will hopefully sign up to be contacted repeatedly, make an initial purchase, then become repeat clients. New business should be where your growth comes from, not your foundation.

Why not?

Well, let’s say you had the same small business. But instead of creating a list of people who need to place new orders for boxes each month, every time you needed a new lead, you used 9 times the resources to create new business. Of course, that money has to come from somewhere. No matter what kind of profit you are turning, if you have to spend nine times as much on generating new leads, you’re spending a lot more money, more than you have to, indeed.

Not only that, you have less money for staff, to take home, for other expenses like computer equipment and office space. The fewer resources and higher the expenses, the slower your growth.

And since you don’t have the revenue stream of repeat business here, you’re also attempting to run your business with no idea of how much you’ll make the following month.

That’s not a business. That’s a really expensive hobby.

You need both lists and traffic to run a successful business, online or off.

In the previous article, we talked about how you can use the model of incentivized following in social media to create a contest that can help you gain publicity and leads for your business. Here are a few tips specific to running the contest.

1. Set up clear, easy rules for entry and giving away the prize. Keep it as simple as you can – the more rules there are, the fewer entries you’ll get. Do just enough to prevent someone from cheating.

2. Dedicate a page to describing the prize in as tempting a way as you can, almost like an information/sales letter. Then at the end let your readers know they could win this item and how to enter. Publicize that page when promoting the contest.

3. Eliminate as many negative experiences as possible – as we mentioned in the contest traffic tip, some may not enter because they think talking about this in their status updates may be spam, or at least irritating. 

Of course, some people have the kind of audience that won’t care, but give the others an alternative way to respond. Perhaps they can send you a link to where they saved your contest page in Delicious via DM for you to verify.

4. Give reasonable odds to win. If you have an audience of 20,000, limiting the contest to the first 100 entries can condition your group to respond fast, pay more attention, and see more value in participating the next time around. Fewer people enter contests that they see as a shot in the dark. Think about what you did with your last Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes letter.

5. Give a second prize to everyone who doesn’t win. Sometimes I don’t even announce that there’s a second prize until after they’ve entered, or even after the contest is over, in the interest of under-promising and over-delivering.

6. Publicize the contest on Twitter, Facebook, your blog, or whatever venue you chose, while it’s happening, but don’t make it the ONLY thing you ever talk about. Try adding it to your bio, or mentioning it just twice a day, when you sign on and off.

7. Announce and congratulate the winner in public and make sure they have no problem getting their prize.

Here’s a quick tip that I’ve used to my advantage many times.

In a nutshell, you go out and find companies that give you publicity in the when you write about them. It works best if you’re writing because you sincerely love them, and if that publicity is either in the form of a link or will be presented before a captive audience.

Here’s how to do it.

1 – Find the top companies that have some kind of parallel relationship to your site. A parallel relationship would be one that is in the same topic neighborhood but not competing.

I write about search and Google, but since I no longer do SEO, this is a good example.

2- Find the subset of those sites that link to sites that write about them.

You’re looking for something as simple as trackback, and evidence that trackback links are published. An even better indicator is an “In the News” clips column that includes blogs, or a specific section like the Media Coverage section at kyte.tv.

3- Write passionately about a service or product from that company.

You want to do this in a way that demonstrates how your audience can benefit, not just your own happy experience.

Your aim is to share something that talks about how great the other site is, like a review. Feel free to be critical, but remember that harsh feedback probably isn’t going to be republished by the bigger site. (This is part of why it works best if you’re sincerely enthusiastic or passionate.)

4- Promote the wicked hell out of your write-up.

Remember that the purpose of this promotion is to draw attention to yourself and get publicity from the folks you’re writing about. Best case scenario, you’ll get links from lots of people, and the publicity from the company in question will bring you a second round of links.

So you’ll want to guestimate what the response time is for the site in question – some popular one-man shops need a few days to notice you, sites run by corporations may need a week, active bloggers will likely spot you within 48 hours.

Why?

Because if they don’t notice you, you gotta nudge them. It also helps to find the least-used vehicle. For example, if you wanted to get in touch with me, email is a mistake. I have 7 accounts, and only one of them do I answer on my own.

But if you tweeted me or left a polite comment? You’d probably hear back from me that day. Remember that if you’re the one who wants a favor, it’s up to you to be as little of an inconvenience as possible.

5- Thank Everyone.

Very important missed step: once the big company talks about you talking about them, thank profusely. Thank people who commented, passed along, re-tweeted, help you network your way to the contact, the person who wrote the article, the department that responded to your praise, everyone.

The people who pay attention and take action are THE most valuable contacts in our new interactive web world.

Extra tip:

One smart company to write about if you’re a blogger is FeedBurner, because you can get republished in their Publisher Buzz section. True, Feedburner itself is not related to your site, but tens if not hundreds of thousands of blogger use their free service, and the topics of those blogs are as diverse as they come.

I don’t know if it’s still true because I can’t find the original link, but they use to track blog posts tagged feedburnerhowto at del.icio.us. (Something like this, if you could verify that last part, would count as something you could tag as feedburnerhowto, if you were the first to do it.)

Personally, I sincerely love FeedBurner despite their occasional problems. And the folks I know over there have always been really nice to me – in particular Traci Halipern. Shout out to my peeps at FeedBurner! Can you folks let me know if you’re still doing this?

If I’m not mistaken, I haven’t written a Traffic Method since January. Let’s continue, shall we?

Everyone knows that their messages, from marketing and advertising messages to mission statements and mantras, should be memorable. But few are the brands that take this to the nth level, making their memorable message viral as well.

So how do you do that? It’s easy.

Make it so memorable that everyone who see it is compelled to share it.

Like Bonnie says “let’s give them something to talk about.” You want to do something SO bold that other people will want to tell more people about it.

You want to say something SO unique that it makes folks do a double take.

You want to make an ad so funny that people who see it can’t wait to tell their friends.

The photo I took above is from a sign at a Kinko’s store. If you can’t quite make that out it says:

Thank you for staring at this banner. Your stares are subliminally making other customers want to buy a banner from us.

The first thing I did was jab my poor fiancee in the ribs and tell him to read the banner. (Sweetie, if you’re reading this, I promise to stop jabbing you. Promise!)

He laughed and we talked about a banner he wants to put up at the Austin Convention Center where the Toros play.

(< tangent >He has four courtside seats for the season, so if you’re ever in town during basketball season, look me up. There’s only two ways to watch live basketball. From those corporate box seats and courtside. Do it at least once in your life if you have even a slight interest in hoops. < /tangent >)

I had no clue that Kinkos even sold banners. It makes sense now that I think of it, but that just wasn’t where I would go. Now, I know, and I’ve told all my friends about the banner. And some of you will tell your friends about this blog post. And so on.

And really, the banner isn’t THAT remarkable. Note that in the picture, it was behind another banner. So, realize, you don’t even have to do this perfectly for it to work.

You’ve got some crazy idea rattling around in that brain of yours to get people to talk about your product. Go ahead and do it.

PS- I love you Kinkos. You’ll never be FedEx Office to me…. does anyone know, by the way, why Fed Ex is trying to fix something that isn’t broken? How much is this huge mistake going to cost, by the way?

The comment people make the most about me is that I write in a way that makes it seems like I’m only writing to you, just you, and no one else in the world. I am really flattered by this comment, and I think it’s because I pick, at random, some person that I know, a colleague, a client, a subscriber I’ve had contact with online or off, and write my posts to them.

Normally I won’t tell anyone this. I’ll just write directly to that person. If they’re a beginner, I will write the post that day to their level of web expertise. If they have a site about document translation, I’ll tailor what I was writing to what they do.

But though I’m quite proud of my ability to do this, that’s not the topic of today’s tip.

Today’s tip is all about learning to find what it is you do that makes people feel special. This isn’t a new idea — I once wrote about making your clients into your fans, in a post where I said:

If your blog is a viral marketing machine, it builds you a fan base that collects your work, instead of clients who buy your products.

I said.

If your blog is a viral marketing machine, it builds you a fan base that collects your “work”, instead of clients who buy your products. When you have a fan base, you become someone’s hobby or passion.

People could care less about some company selling some stuff.

Fans have died for their hobbies and passions.

Making your visitors, subscribers, prospects and clients feel how special they are to you goes beyond just making them into fans, though this is integral to that process. And it doesn’t have to be about doing one extra thing that no one else does. It can be a group of simple things that reflect the fact that you care. It doesn’t have to be a big deal either, or terribly original.

I sometimes call my past clients to say hi. No business talk, just keeping in touch. Occasionally I’ll ring a colleague to ask advice about a problem.

Though I’ve exported most of my email functions to our customer service folks, they still confirm each order manually. Sometimes when the volume is high we can’t personalize the mesages as much as we’d like, but they still address each person by their name. And I still confirm some orders personally when I can. For big orders, I will call them on the phone.

This is in addition to the automatic email delivery. Doesn’t always get through. When I call not everyone will pick up the phone or call me back. For many people, the whole point of the internet is to be impersonal.

But some people like it. So, we keep doing it.

We often publish testimonials, critiques, and even comments and trackback with a link back to the person’s site in our newsletter. When they’re submitted via testimonial phone lines or forms, we publish them all, no matter what the comment was. In Facebook when I friend a new person, especially if they are new to Facebook, I make a post to their wall.

When someone’s birthday comes up, Facebook reminds me. I’m horrible with dates, but love birthdays. That helps me remember to send a short personal greeting to people I know on their birthday.

I often bundle consultations with my products and remind people to cash them in around a month later. Then we talk on the phone, or if the other person prefers, we email back and forth for a few weeks.

These are all very small things that other people don’t do. It used to be quite common for people to follow up automated email and online delivery with manual follow-up. Not so much any more. Not so cost-effective, and doesn’t always get through the email filters. But we still do it because when they do get through, people like it. They feel how much we care about helping them. They realize that we really mean it when we say we’ll do Anything within our expertise to help their business when they hire us.

And they remember.

And they come back.

Why? It’s simple. Would you buy a book about learning a web technology central to your business from someone who accelerates their relationship with you, or someone whose relationship with you ends when you buy something? Would you like to be able to ask questions after you order from someone you’ve grown to trust, or an anoymous person?

It depends on the item. Romance novels or poetry books don’t typically need support. You’ll get them, you’ll like them or you won’t.

Business knowledge you want from someone who’ll call you up and explain a concept in another analogy if you don’t quite get it the first time. You want someone who can refer you to another expert or help you themselves if you get stuck, or decide to outsource the legwork.

It isn’t all roses and sunshine. Sometimes people try to take advantage. Sometimes people abuse my staff, and I come down on them, hard. But 99.9% of the time, I can confidently say that, without exception, I have the best clients in the world, and I mean each and every one of them. They are the most delightful people and it make it a pleasure to be in this business.

My subscribers are wonderfully caring, interactive people. I go the extra mile for them whenever I can, even if they never buy a thing. They spread the word about me and I owe them everything. All of my repeat commenters are so gracious and helpful and polite that if virtual hugs are ever invented, those are the first people I’m seeking out. All of the colleagues I have that I’ve ever spoken to on the phone have at some point offered to bend over backwards to help me, long before I ever needed or asked for it.

Maybe it’s the giving I strive to do, coming back to me tenfold. Or I could just naturally attract wonderful people. But this isn’t about me. It’s about you.

You could be having this joyful experience, and also making someone else’s life filled with joy. It’s not hard, and people will remember you for it.

Take a quiet 15 minutes, turn off your phone, exit your email, get out a pen and a pad of paper and think about what has made you feel special as a customer and who does this. Write it down and think about why it made you feel like you are important.

Take another 15 minutes and think of how you can create similiar happy interaction at your site.

Can you answer comments more or faster?

Can you make a light-hearted post each day?

Is there something you can do at your site that will give your clients a five minute vacation?

Could you blog more often?

Have you thanked anyone lately?

Make an extra effort to make other people feel good. In a short, free movie I saw online today, an advisor impressed upon a company that they should make happy memories with their clients (Video sighting was thanks to Dave Webb – that takes you to his Facebook page – add him if you enjoy the video, he always has gems.). It’s a remarkable example of how you can create this happy interaction. Watch this film about the Simple Truths of Service to see more examples of how you can make people feel special.

When you do, people will talk about you, and their friends will come visit. The original people will come back as well. In that way you’ll have created both first-time and repeat traffic to your site.