Speed Dating: 7 Users You Should Meet -- Part III
Well, I’ve promised to introduce you to the seven users you should meet in 2010 if you hope to expand beyond the reach of your primary web site. So far, you’ve met Ms. Cut-to-the-Chase, The Informer (Part I), Mr. I. Need-Validation and Wally Joiner (Part II). Now it’s time to meet the final three.
Mrs. Old School
She has her interests, but is not that comfortable with RSS readers, Twitter or even Facebook for that matter. She doesn't post comments, but likes to read them. She prefers to surf a small group of sites that she’s familiar with. And if she likes what she sees, she might sign up for an e-mail newsletter. That’s because subscribing is simple (an e-mail address), it doesn’t require learning a new tool (rss reader, twitter, facebook), and it can be read at her leisure with a cup of coffee.
Nothing new here, but offering your content via e-mail newsletter is a simple way to convert a visitor who “pulls” your content into one that you “push” your content to.
According to 2009 State of Small Business Online Marketing Survey: Respondents were asked which marketing vehicles they used most. The top four categories were: social media, e-mail newsletters, search engine marketing and webinars/podcasts.
Now, if you don’t have an e-mail newsletter tool, no worries. All you need is an RSS feed. You can run it through Feedburner, which gives you a convenient “subscribe by e-mail” link that that allows your vistitors to receive your RSS feed in newsletter form in their inbox (see image above). Just don’t describe the link as "RSS via e-mail", call it something that will resonate with the type of user who prefers that format, like "subscribe to e-mail newsletter."
Lady GoGo
As the name implies, she's on the go. She’s a mobile user. To reach her you can try a couple different routes, but Twitter's a good one, because not only can you reach a large mobile audience, but you can fine-tune your broadcast via hashtags to flag your posts for relevant audiences.
But Twitter requires three pieces to your strategy – 1) a robust supply of tweets your target audience finds relevant, 2) prompting visitors to follow your Twitter account and 3) encouraging followers to re-tweet your posts.
If you want your entire RSS feed to be Tweeted, there are tools that allow you to set your RSS feed to automatically post to your Twitter account. I prefer to choose what blog posts are Tweeted, therefore I don't use this, but you might want to.
Client No. 7 No it's not Eliot Spitzer. The final user you should meet is pretty straightforward. He’s the guy who consumes content that is related to, but not necessarily a duplicate, of yours. If he’s an avid golfer who patronizes local courses, your weather forecast may be of great interest to him. If he shops for new digital books, your Kindle covers could be just what he needs. But how do you get your links on these related sites? Well, you ask. See this list of 5 tactics for link building that could get your site noticed by the audiences that relate to yours.
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