If I am not wrong, most of the Internet users are fascinated by the magic word “Web 2.0″ nowadays. After it exploded as a big boom in the market, main focus of Internet marketing has been shifted towards it. Everybody started to believe that if you don’t base all of your marketing effort on it, your business is bound to fail. That’s why most of the businesses whether it is big or small are adding additional effort to reach the demand of Web 2.0.
Before you get over involved in all the hype of Web 2.0, lets take a look at it. What does Web 2.0 actually mean?
Web 2.0 is just not a single entity with specifically defined shape and boundary. It is a combination of principles and practices tied together to create a whole concept. It has developed a new trend in World Wide Web and web applications to encourage interactivity among users. This concept has led to the evolution of new activities like social networking, social bookmarking, community building, blogging, collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, etc. It eventually refers to a new version of World Wide Web altogether.
Web 2.0 basically encourages more user participation in terms of user inputs, feedbacks, and interactions. It emphasize on community building and information sharing between the like-minded people.
So, any website that features a blog or a forum or anything like that and encourages for direct user inputs, falls under Web 2.0 category. A Web 2.0 website’s success is measured by direct participation of its users. If you have more user participation you are more successful.
But, What Does Web 2.0 Mean To Serious Entrepreneurs?
According to the concept and its usage, Web 2.0 means interactive traffic.
The widespread concept is - the more you interact on Web 2.0 websites the more your website get exposed to potential new customers. And the more potential customers visit to your website, the more chance you make sales.
Web 2.0 creates the opportunity of getting more incoming links from high page ranking websites to your website and as a result of that you get higher ranking and more visibility in major search engines.
So, the truth is - you can actually make more traffic to your website from all social networks and bookmarking websites.
A Big Question… How Much Worthy Is Web 2.0 Traffic To You?
Normally the people spend lots of time at Web2.0 websites looking for fun and entertainment. They come and visit this kind of websites mainly to socialize with like-minded people just for making friends, sharing thoughts, views, videos, audios and other entertaining and interesting materials. Although, if you manage to get a bunch of new visitors to your website, it is sure that they visit your website just because of curiosity and not to purchase anything.
If you think that getting into this kind of online communities and telling about your products and services provides you plenty of prospective customers to your website and making immediate sales of your products or services, then you are dreaming. This is not going to happen in any way. The problem is - you’ll get visitors and more visitors to your website but they are not in the buying mood.
Here, you need to carefully observe, how people interact with each other, how people establish their credibility and just follow their path. Here you need to invest lots of quality time and continuous effort to provide useful inputs and interesting information so that people begins to appreciate your work. Most importantly all of your inputs must not be directly related to your product information. You can’t directly advertise your product here. The only place you mention your business and website URL is your signature at the bottom.
Therefore, it is clear that your sole objective in the Web 2.0 websites is to create long-term relationship with the like-minded people in your community. You need to win their trust and establish your credibility so that they can believe in you and understand that you are someone who is capable of offering some kind of solution to your community.
Even then your Web 2.0 traffic is not going to covert in the same rate that you get from your other online marketing efforts.
Is Web 2.0 Traffic Meaningless?
It depends on your business situation. If
- Your business is well established and profitable
- It is capable of getting targeted flow of continuous traffic to your website
- Your sales letter is well optimized to convert your incoming traffic into maximum sales
- A group of sales force (affiliates) continuously creating sales for you
- A group of reputed joint venture partners making it even bigger
Only then you should consider getting into Web 2.0 marketing. It will establish your business and product or service as a brand in front of hundreds of thousands of people on hugely popular Web2.0 websites. And this is the main reward a marketer is looking for from his Web 2.0 marketing effort.
And if your business is in the starting phase or your business is not getting that much of success, then it is better to concentrate on traditional aggressive marketing methods to secure your living first.
Before you invest a lot of time in Web2.0 marketing, you must concentrate on following activities:
Find Your Niche Market
Do a necessary research on what is your niche market? And make sure that people of your niche market actually want to buy your product or service.
Make Sure Your Business Provide Unique Solution To Your Niche Market
Make sure your product and service is able to provide unique and value-added solution to your customers.
Give Your Website A Professional Look
Make sure your website, it’s structure and design are capable of keeping your traffic stay at your website. Your website must be easy to read. Keep the look of your website consistent. Make sure your website loads quickly. It should be easy to navigate. Provide privacy statement and contact information clearly. More over you should offer a secure online money acceptance system so that impulsive buyer can purchase your product instantly on your website.
Make Your Sales Letter To Accomplish Sales
A sales letter should be written in such a manner that it could accomplish your goal. Your goal is to grab attention of your visitors, create interest in them about your product, build their desire and force them to take action. To achieve your goal you need to provide value to your customers. If you are value driven your success is inevitable.
Make Sure Your Website Is Search Engine Optimized
Make sure your website is well optimized. Search engine optimized website gets better ranking and visibility in major search engines. Still search engines are the best resources to provide you free flow of targeted traffic to your website. If you want to learn SEO, here is the best resource - Mastering SEO. You can opt for one of the leading Professional SEO Tools that can help you optimize your website. If your business is large enough and you don’t have that much time, then a Professional SEO Service will be a best choice. The bottom line is - Apply whatever method is suitable for you but you must optimize your website. It is the fundamental task.
Use Pay Per Click Marketing
Use most targeted keywords in your Pay Per Click Marketing. It is one of the best low priced marketing techniques that could bring result almost instantly and that’s why would be more justified. It’ll provide you lots of targeted prospective customers to your website.
Use Targeted Ezine-Ad Or Newsletter Ad
Targeted Ezine Ad is one of the most powerful techniques for getting exceptionally quick and better results in terms of profit from your advertising effort. Newsletter Ads is most profitable. As it is targeted, you are publishing your ad to a group of people, who need your kind of products or services. If you can select targeted newsletters, you will find a huge list of prospects just waiting for your offer. Here is a list of Targeted Newsletters from which you can select few and start promoting your business.
Use Article Marketing
Article marketing is another aggressive marketing method that provides you immense visibility in major search engines, newsletter and article directories. This marketing method has huge benefits. People in no time will start to consider yourself as an expert in your field. There is several article submission software. You can easily select one of them from the list of leading Article Submission Software. Article marketing services are other options. Here are few major Article Submission Services that submit your articles on your behalf to the thousands of publishers. As a result, most of your articles will end up published on hundreds of websites worldwide and you reap the rewards in terms of traffic and sales.
Make Partnership With Successful Marketers
Partner with other successful marketers and make joint ventures with them. Joint venture is instant moneymaking and total risk free promotional technique for any business online. If you want to know more about joint venture then have a look at this article - How to use one of the finest techniques of online promotion - “Joint Venture”?
Set Up Your Own Affiliate Program
A successful joint venture deal or partnering with other marketers needs setting up an efficient affiliate program. If you are serious of having your business rocking then implementation of affiliate program is a must. If yo want to know more about setting up affiliate program then read this post - How to setup your own affiliate program? There are several ways of setting up an affiliate program. You can opt for an affiliate script that can be installed at your web host. Here is the list of leading Affiliate-Tracking Software from which you can select one. Or you can opt for an affiliate tracking service. They will do your entire affiliate-tracking task on your behalf for a minimum monthly rate. You can select one of them from this leading Affiliate Tracking Services.
Conclusion
Once your business is well established and making continuous flow of money in your pocket and you’ve maximized all the proven ways of driving qualified traffic to your website - then - only then you should turn your attention to Web 2.0. Until then, Web2.0 might be glittering but it will not provide anything that is real gold.
What is your opinion? Please feel free to share your valuable thought on this post.
