Every month of the year has a holiday. And every holiday is an excuse to get in touch with the people around you — why shouldn’t that include your customers and clients?
Whether it’s a funny video, a sale, a contest, or a quick email with warm holiday wishes, holidays are a fine reason as any to follow-up with the audience that has requested information from you.
It doesn’t have to be a big deal, but don’t opt for just the boring “Happy Whatever Day!” message every time either. Give something away, hold an event, give an award – whatever you do, make it a memorable experience as often as you can.
Perhaps the only time you use your computer is to read your email, search for something on the Web, read the news, or see pictures and other updates from friends and family.
It would make sense then, if you don’t really “get” how the web is supposed to help you sell more of your products and services.
Somewhere in a town far away (unless you live near Prince George’s County, Maryland), I’m getting ready to transport these Christmas gifts to my cousin’s Christmas celebration.
This other part of me, though, is thinking about the New Year already, and what you need to know about the coming year.
This past year, I’ve noticed that the people who are the most resistant to social media are the folks who claim that they can’t measure their return on investment, either because the returns on investment aren’t measurable, or, more likely, because they don’t know how to measure it.
By the time this is published, it will indeed be my birthday on the East coast, where I’m currently located.
And I definitely wanted to take some time out to celebrate that, so I’m planning on not working at all tomorrow. Yay me!
What does that have to do with you? At some point in one of these videos I tell you exactly what you can do on my birthday to make me smile.
Okay, seriously though, what this has to do with you is that every year, on my birthday, I’ve sent out a special newsletter, blog post, birthday gift to all my pals, something.
I’m sure you remember our last traffic tip, where we learned how to use slideshows to attract visitors to your site. If you’re stopping by for the first time, it may help to read that tip first.
What we’re doing now is taking that tip and with a few slightly more technical tweaks, take it to the next level. That next level is slidecasting.
What’s Slidecasting?
If you want to be technical, it’s podcasting but with a slideshow instead of a regular video. Since a podcast is an RSS feed with enclosures or attachments (most commonly audio), technically a slide with audio doesn’t qualify. But we’re going to go with the general use of the term, which is an audio-enabled slideshow.
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.
Why don’t I consider leaving comments a traffic method?
Because commenting isn’t meant to generate traffic, it’s more of a by-product.
And yes, there are some things we can use to generate traffic, even though that isn’t their purpose, but only when it’s ethical.
Leaving comments for traffic alone isn’t ethical.
You’re trying to take something from a community that worked hard to get it, instead of getting credit for sharing something with a community that you belong to, and reciprocating when it’s given to you – these are two different things.
I wish there was a plug-in that let me keep people from leaving links until after a certain number of comments, and to turn their links off if they stopped participating.
Andy told me on his ultimate dofollow list about Lucia’s plug-in, which paid commenting may force me to turn to this evening.
I build traffic systems to increase the profitibility of your website. You can implement them yourself with one of our how-to manuals, below, or you can email us at support@asktinu.com for a free consultation, to evaluate your site for a custom solution.
Morgan and Cindy Lighter
Cindy is our organizational whiz. Morgan is the author of our most popular column, Tool Time Fridays.
Every month of the year has a holiday. And every holiday is an excuse to get in touch with the people around you — why shouldn’t that include your customers and clients?
Somewhere in a town far away (unless you live near Prince George’s County, Maryland), I’m getting ready to transport these Christmas gifts to my cousin’s Christmas celebration.
I’m sure you remember our last traffic tip, where we learned 
