It is probably every blogger’s dream to wake up one day and have a massive amount of referral traffic from a known brand. The thought process is this ; Generating traffic somehow solidifies credibility. A large audience suddenly means more than a small audience because bigger is better (uh…right?)….
Personally, I think that it is grace by the man above that keeps what we think we want from happening too fast. Here’s why-
- What are you doing with the traffic you already have?- A spike in traffic on a poorly planned website is just a bandwidth suck. If you haven’t taken measures to get them to do something else once they get there, then you are probably going to watch the traffic return to previous levels. And if you have a new website, you probably don’t know what moves them.
- Have you tested your current multi-channel integration strategies yet?- Another problem is even when you do have a “plan” in place on your website, the plan may not have had a chance to mature. Which means that optimization is poor and the majority of that traffic will be wasted. Once again, unless you are content with them purely visiting your space, you need to have other channels to capture them and turn them into leads.
- Do you have an on page plan? In most cases, it takes more than one page of content to push the visitor into committing. How developed is your content? More importantly, are you showing them the right content for them to commit? Do you even know what the “right” content is?
- Are your outpost funnels optimized to display one worldview for your company? – Is your message the same across Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms? Can your audience tell someone in a sentence what you are stand for? And more importantly, can you?
The reason why I even mention this is because I am working with a band that has a breakout hit on the charts right now. You would think that this is a good thing (and it is) with a small caveat…
The pop hit came at a time when they didn’t have their marketing funnels in line or their social media set up. In fact, the social media that they have set up isn’t cohesive..they have 2 facebook fan pages that go to two different tours that they are currently on, without a link to their website. Their web page doesn’t highlight exactly what is hot at the moment. They have no vehicle for furthering engagement elsewhere.
Which means, myself and their team is having to backtrack and figure out on the fly what is going to be the best way to build up their following quickly before it peaks and the hit starts to fade.
So, you think you want more traffic. And you think that more traffic will somehow make things better for you. But the reality is that until you get all your ducks in a row and know what you are intending to do with the traffic, perhaps you should figure out what your existing traffic wants….so when the tidal wave comes, you will be prepared to know how to handle it.
image attribution-http://www.flickr.com/photos/ejazasi/253032421/
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