Attracting new users and keeping old ones
This article will discuss how to attract users to your website or web service. Since the implementation of web products are commercial and non-commercial, we will not consider the issue of "money", but only try to evaluate the effectiveness of the use of a tool. In addition to attracting users, it is very important to keep existing ones. It is important to keep it at least because it is always cheaper than attracting new ones, and also because some of the funds you most likely spent earlier on attracting, and the loss of users is a net “minus” for your resource. This must be remembered first of all.
In addition, the above methods often serve as getting new loyal users, but they can also be an argument to visit your resource to regulars. It is for this reason that we will not divide the toolkit into categories of “attracts” or “retains”, and in each we touch it.
Despite the fact that we are talking about a blog, a web service or a news site, we must clearly remember that it should grow constant, whether it be articles, postings or audio-video-content. Users will not frequent static “pages”, and moreover they will not become part of a dead community. No one will sacrifice their most precious time on your resource just because you have spent huge amounts of money to create it. To fill the news site or blog, try to use as many photos, video and audio. Remember that most of us the visuals and eyes of the reader "cling" to pictures and video more than the annoying headlines "Urgent !!!" or "Important!". With the wide development of photo and video hosting, it has become easier to make such inserts - the monstrous consumption of traffic and processor time will be offered to you with these services, and absolutely free of charge!
Attendance of a resource is a valuable thing, of course, but most webmasters and advertisers are well aware of what needs to be done to “catch up” users with your resource: buying banner impressions, participating in traffic exchange networks, etc. But sites that lead crowds in this way can never guarantee that this is the target audience desired by any advertiser. As a rule, the target audience is delayed on the site for a long time, if it corresponds to the subject of interest to them and they are satisfied with your presentation style. But how to isolate from 20 thousand visitors exactly those who constantly spend their time here? Make it not so difficult. For example, if you own a blog, corporate or news site, then be sure to consider the possibility of exporting new content via RSS. In this case, you do not need to worry that the user will not return to your site by subscribing to your news feed. This is the biggest misconception. First, without making any efforts, the user will be with you always, as soon as he gets on the Internet, and the number of transitions when reading is very large. Secondly, do not think that your readers will not have enough competence to install an RSS reader - the most popular browsers, Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox, already have tools for aggregating RSS feeds, although, to admit, they are not the most convenient.
However, with the increasing availability of RSS, not all users are ready to use it. But remember that there is no such Internet user who does not know what e-mail is. Provide a daily or weekly digest to all subscribers, and they will definitely look at the light. To organize e-mail newsletters, it is best to use special services such as Subscribe.ru. The fact is that by registering your newsletter there, you will receive, in case of its popularity, additional subscribers thanks to the ratings and the catalog in this service. You can also carry out inexpensive, but very effective promotions. In addition, spam filters are very loyal to e-mail messages from these resources, because spammers are eliminated by the administration of the same Subscribe.ru manually before sending out or malicious distribution.
To increase the referrals in the RSS feed or e-mail newsletter, comment on your posts. After all, if the reader is “hooked to the quick” by your opinion, he will definitely visit the main site to leave his opinion there. Well, if a hot discussion flares up, the user will generate a huge number of page views for you, which you need to display ads that you probably have. To return the user again, make an e-mail alert for new comments.
Despite the fact that many users, especially those whom it is convenient to call "geeks", are not very loyal to all kinds of registrations, there are still ways to attract them to her in order to get very convenient user feedback. For example, you can offer only registered users to receive special content. For blogs, this can be a free distribution of programs, illustrations, photographs (hereinafter referred to as blog topics), and for news sites this can be an archive of analytics or exclusive interviews, or, for example, market reviews and industry statistics, corporate websites can upload their reports and special offers, discounts, thereby filtering access to it and getting direct access to customers and partners.
A very good effect, especially for narrow-themed websites or blogs, can have the creation of a social network with a blog-like theme, where users can become authors, find like-minded people and, in the end, simply become attached to your resource. Also, social networks will allow people to communicate on the platform you created. Your site will become a club of interest, and this is not so little, in fact.
As for the implementation of the social network itself, then there are no major investments here. For example, you can use the Ning.com service, which allows you to create a social network on your domain, the engine of which is located on the Ning server, taking over the load and the reflection of probable malicious attacks on your network.
Also, do not forget about the good old forums, which also generate good traffic from search engines.
There is another way to attract new visitors to your website, which is to create a popular community in LiveJournal, In Vkontakte, or on any other social platform that is probably close to your visitors.
Never be afraid to tell your users about competitors, as well as the users themselves about each other. The fact is that modern statistics systems and blog engines allow you to track where you came from, who put the link to you. Be sure to put in any case a link to the one who wrote about you, as well as to those sites where you want to be noticed. They will review their statistics and will definitely come to look at the site that gave them so much traffic and, if you like the author there, he will certainly “link” you on occasion. So you get new visitors from a potential audience who might not know about you ..
You should also remember that modern blogs have such a great tool like trackback. It works like this: you put a link to any post in this blog and a link to your site will certainly appear in the comments section of this blog, thus you will put yourself on the link from this blog. The more links to you from other sites, the more you are “appreciated” by search engines, the more often they will give out a link to your site in search results. This is a very valuable traffic, and most importantly the target !.
Another effective tool to attract new users and increase loyalty to existing ones is to hold contests with valuable prizes. Often, sites conducting contests such as “Bring 100 Users and Get iPod Nano” received a very good inflow of attendance and user base growth, because you indirectly motivate to tell all your friends, acquaintances, colleagues and relatives about you, and at the same time get the coveted player. The main thing that is worth remembering is not to be too annoying with the announcements of your contests so as not to get the opposite undesirable effect of irritation. Well, it’s necessary to give out prizes to the winners, and with as much fanfare as possible, photos and video filming - modern Internet users are great skeptics, and often just cynics! In informing them about the results of the competition can not be punctured ..
The real success of any community you create is the transition from online to offline. You can arrange a group trip to a cafe or a picnic. After all, here you give people the opportunity to get to know and really make friends, and your blog, social network will be the platform for preparing further meetings ... Do not forget that with such meetings, you are provided with an inflow of "recruits", because people bring friends and family themselves who will definitely join your community ..
Like without ads? She is omnipresent!
If the previous methods of attraction are not expensive, then there will have to spend. We will not dwell on offline advertising - there are a thousand and one ways to advertise your service, depends on how developed your imagination is, and therefore, let's move on to the online embodiment of advertising.
The most popular and effective way to attract the target audience is contextual advertising, as well as sponsorship of similar sites on your subject with placing your ad on the sponsored site, in its RSS feed and mailing list. Banner advertising, as a rule, works for the masses and leads to you very different people, among which the percentage of target users is not so high. It is worth more than the context ..
There are many ways to attract people to your site. They are expensive and completely free. Effective and not. Time consuming and almost lightning fast. However, the most important thing to remember is attracting visitors is easier than holding. For retention you need to show maximum ingenuity, to be original, and most importantly, interesting to your readers and users. It is also very important to remain positive and delight visitors, because they can find peace and simple human joy in you. Remember that technically we can speak “traffic” to people, but be sure to remember that they are first and foremost “people” with their dreams, ideas and fantasies, which you have the honor to realize or, at least one iota, bring them closer !.
Vyacheslav Baransky
Source: Royber PC
In addition, the above methods often serve as getting new loyal users, but they can also be an argument to visit your resource to regulars. It is for this reason that we will not divide the toolkit into categories of “attracts” or “retains”, and in each we touch it.
Update frequency
Despite the fact that we are talking about a blog, a web service or a news site, we must clearly remember that it should grow constant, whether it be articles, postings or audio-video-content. Users will not frequent static “pages”, and moreover they will not become part of a dead community. No one will sacrifice their most precious time on your resource just because you have spent huge amounts of money to create it. To fill the news site or blog, try to use as many photos, video and audio. Remember that most of us the visuals and eyes of the reader "cling" to pictures and video more than the annoying headlines "Urgent !!!" or "Important!". With the wide development of photo and video hosting, it has become easier to make such inserts - the monstrous consumption of traffic and processor time will be offered to you with these services, and absolutely free of charge!
Help the user get your content effortlessly.
Attendance of a resource is a valuable thing, of course, but most webmasters and advertisers are well aware of what needs to be done to “catch up” users with your resource: buying banner impressions, participating in traffic exchange networks, etc. But sites that lead crowds in this way can never guarantee that this is the target audience desired by any advertiser. As a rule, the target audience is delayed on the site for a long time, if it corresponds to the subject of interest to them and they are satisfied with your presentation style. But how to isolate from 20 thousand visitors exactly those who constantly spend their time here? Make it not so difficult. For example, if you own a blog, corporate or news site, then be sure to consider the possibility of exporting new content via RSS. In this case, you do not need to worry that the user will not return to your site by subscribing to your news feed. This is the biggest misconception. First, without making any efforts, the user will be with you always, as soon as he gets on the Internet, and the number of transitions when reading is very large. Secondly, do not think that your readers will not have enough competence to install an RSS reader - the most popular browsers, Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox, already have tools for aggregating RSS feeds, although, to admit, they are not the most convenient.
However, with the increasing availability of RSS, not all users are ready to use it. But remember that there is no such Internet user who does not know what e-mail is. Provide a daily or weekly digest to all subscribers, and they will definitely look at the light. To organize e-mail newsletters, it is best to use special services such as Subscribe.ru. The fact is that by registering your newsletter there, you will receive, in case of its popularity, additional subscribers thanks to the ratings and the catalog in this service. You can also carry out inexpensive, but very effective promotions. In addition, spam filters are very loyal to e-mail messages from these resources, because spammers are eliminated by the administration of the same Subscribe.ru manually before sending out or malicious distribution.
To increase the referrals in the RSS feed or e-mail newsletter, comment on your posts. After all, if the reader is “hooked to the quick” by your opinion, he will definitely visit the main site to leave his opinion there. Well, if a hot discussion flares up, the user will generate a huge number of page views for you, which you need to display ads that you probably have. To return the user again, make an e-mail alert for new comments.
Let users create a virtual identity on your site
Despite the fact that many users, especially those whom it is convenient to call "geeks", are not very loyal to all kinds of registrations, there are still ways to attract them to her in order to get very convenient user feedback. For example, you can offer only registered users to receive special content. For blogs, this can be a free distribution of programs, illustrations, photographs (hereinafter referred to as blog topics), and for news sites this can be an archive of analytics or exclusive interviews, or, for example, market reviews and industry statistics, corporate websites can upload their reports and special offers, discounts, thereby filtering access to it and getting direct access to customers and partners.
A very good effect, especially for narrow-themed websites or blogs, can have the creation of a social network with a blog-like theme, where users can become authors, find like-minded people and, in the end, simply become attached to your resource. Also, social networks will allow people to communicate on the platform you created. Your site will become a club of interest, and this is not so little, in fact.
As for the implementation of the social network itself, then there are no major investments here. For example, you can use the Ning.com service, which allows you to create a social network on your domain, the engine of which is located on the Ning server, taking over the load and the reflection of probable malicious attacks on your network.
Also, do not forget about the good old forums, which also generate good traffic from search engines.
There is another way to attract new visitors to your website, which is to create a popular community in LiveJournal, In Vkontakte, or on any other social platform that is probably close to your visitors.
Tell visitors about competitors and this will be rewarded.
Never be afraid to tell your users about competitors, as well as the users themselves about each other. The fact is that modern statistics systems and blog engines allow you to track where you came from, who put the link to you. Be sure to put in any case a link to the one who wrote about you, as well as to those sites where you want to be noticed. They will review their statistics and will definitely come to look at the site that gave them so much traffic and, if you like the author there, he will certainly “link” you on occasion. So you get new visitors from a potential audience who might not know about you ..
You should also remember that modern blogs have such a great tool like trackback. It works like this: you put a link to any post in this blog and a link to your site will certainly appear in the comments section of this blog, thus you will put yourself on the link from this blog. The more links to you from other sites, the more you are “appreciated” by search engines, the more often they will give out a link to your site in search results. This is a very valuable traffic, and most importantly the target !.
Please users, get acquainted with them ...
Another effective tool to attract new users and increase loyalty to existing ones is to hold contests with valuable prizes. Often, sites conducting contests such as “Bring 100 Users and Get iPod Nano” received a very good inflow of attendance and user base growth, because you indirectly motivate to tell all your friends, acquaintances, colleagues and relatives about you, and at the same time get the coveted player. The main thing that is worth remembering is not to be too annoying with the announcements of your contests so as not to get the opposite undesirable effect of irritation. Well, it’s necessary to give out prizes to the winners, and with as much fanfare as possible, photos and video filming - modern Internet users are great skeptics, and often just cynics! In informing them about the results of the competition can not be punctured ..
The real success of any community you create is the transition from online to offline. You can arrange a group trip to a cafe or a picnic. After all, here you give people the opportunity to get to know and really make friends, and your blog, social network will be the platform for preparing further meetings ... Do not forget that with such meetings, you are provided with an inflow of "recruits", because people bring friends and family themselves who will definitely join your community ..
And finally, Her Majesty advertising
Like without ads? She is omnipresent!
If the previous methods of attraction are not expensive, then there will have to spend. We will not dwell on offline advertising - there are a thousand and one ways to advertise your service, depends on how developed your imagination is, and therefore, let's move on to the online embodiment of advertising.
The most popular and effective way to attract the target audience is contextual advertising, as well as sponsorship of similar sites on your subject with placing your ad on the sponsored site, in its RSS feed and mailing list. Banner advertising, as a rule, works for the masses and leads to you very different people, among which the percentage of target users is not so high. It is worth more than the context ..
Total
There are many ways to attract people to your site. They are expensive and completely free. Effective and not. Time consuming and almost lightning fast. However, the most important thing to remember is attracting visitors is easier than holding. For retention you need to show maximum ingenuity, to be original, and most importantly, interesting to your readers and users. It is also very important to remain positive and delight visitors, because they can find peace and simple human joy in you. Remember that technically we can speak “traffic” to people, but be sure to remember that they are first and foremost “people” with their dreams, ideas and fantasies, which you have the honor to realize or, at least one iota, bring them closer !.
Vyacheslav Baransky
Source: Royber PC
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/25663/
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