You can drive traffic to your website or blog. You can be proactive by providing links to your website or blog, so that others on the Internet can find them.

I once thought that if I build it, they will come. All I had to do was create a website or blog, and they would find me, and look through my information. All I had to do was hang my shingle on the shack, and people would beat down the door for what I offered. After all, wasn’t it Google’s job to put me first page and get me business?

Boy was I ever wrong when I first started. I didn’t know about any sandbox. I didn’t know about social media. I didn’t know that I could be proactive with my website. This lasted only for a short period of time. Then I “Got Educated”! There is a saying…”I once was blind, but now I see”. I started to see my website and blog in a new light.

The truth about your website and blog is this, you can direct traffic and attention to it. You can share links from your website or blog with others; and they will visit them. And if you can make these people your loyal fans, they will visit them all the more.

This series of blog posts will focus on the new user to the process. A friend called me up on the weekend and asked how one would go about driving more traffic to one’s website. She is new to the world of creating online visibility as a business. So these next posts are dedicated to her and all those who are still struggling to understand the process of driving traffic on the Internet.

One of the best tools I have discovered for driving traffic to a website or blog is Twitter. You can post a link on Twitter that will take people to your website or blog; when they click on the link. The process is very simple. You have 140 characters to get your message across. It is kind of like text messaging.

One of the great things with using Twitter is that you can use a link shortener that will take that long link to your website or blog and shorten it, so you can have more room to type text. Once the long link is shortened, I can then type text to explain why they should click on the link. It’s all short and sweet. There is no rambling on and on. I like this.

Let’s look at the process. I will use a link from Mashable.com to demonstrate the process. It could easily be a link to your website or blog. The first screenshot below shows some text followed by the web address or URL.

Twitter text and link before shortening

Notice that you can see the full web address or URL. There is not much room to add anything else, one might think. The web address may take you over the 140 character limit. If the link was not shortened, part of it would be cut off and the link would be unusable. When the link is shortened, it takes up less space and it is functional. Notice the number 78! This is the number of characters remaining once the link is shortened.

Here is what the link looks like when it is shortened:

Twitter with text and link shortened.

Notice that when the link is shortened, there is less characters taken up. This can give you extra room to write more text. In this case, I had 78 more characters, if I wanted to use them.

So now, you have a message, called a tweet, with a link that can be clicked on. This link will take them to a website. As you post these tweets onto Twitter, others will see them and they will click on them. This is a simple way to drive traffic to your website or blog.

Now your Twitter should be used for other things than posting links. Only posting links is boring. This will cause you to lose your audience. You need to post interesting comments and engage people in conversations. I will talk about this later. For now, you have a means now to help people find your website or blog.

There are other applications that you can use to post to Twitter. I use Hootsuite and Tweetdeck to get my tweets onto Twitter. This also will be for another time.

What I want you to focus on now is that you can drive traffic to your website or blog. You can be proactive. So if you have a website or blog, think about signing up for Twitter. When you sign up, try to get a Twitter username that reflects your name or business name.

If you have any questions to this point, use my  Contact page to send me a message.

If you need social media training, consulting or a social media speaker, call me today at 902-956-2600 or use the Contact page to get started. I am available on Skype: jeff.brown.alpha”