How To Get Free Traffic (Part 2)

So in our last lesson, we already looked at what free web traffic is all about, its advantages, and some of the ways you can get free website traffic.

However, in this lesson, we will dive a little bit deeper into other free web traffic sources.

A.  Web 2.0 platforms

According to Wikipedia, “Web 2.0 (also known as Participative (or Participatory) and Social Web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatible with other products, systems, and devices) for end users.”

Participation is the force that drives Web 2.0. Web 2.0 was made possible by platforms like blogging, social networks, free image and video uploading that allowed anyone to create and share content.

Web 2.0 websites are the second generation of websites on the Internet. These websites allow visitors to collaborate, contribute, and interact while Web 1.0 websites (the first generation of the Internet’s websites), can only view the content. The number of Web 2.0 websites has increased exponentially over the past 10 years. The way people communicate has been changed drastically by the internet.

Examples of Web 2.0 websites include all websites where users can contribute and collaborate on content.

However, we will only focus on the ones that are capable of driving free traffic to us. And some of them are:

1. Facebook Pages: Fan pages allow businesses, brands, and organizations to share their stories with the world and connect with others.
2. Flavors: Let’s you create a website for free in just minutes. You can use your photos, videos, and social media updates to create a cohesive web presence.
3. Flickr: This app helps you organize the many photos you have. It also allows you to share stories with your family and friends.
4. Flipboard Magazine: You can find, collect and share news that interests you at 
5. Goodreads: The world’s largest site for book recommendations and readers.
6. GrowthHackers– A community similar to Inbound.org for marketers to share growth hacking tips and resources.
7. Guides: Free publishing and hosting platform to share guides.
8. HubPages:  You can share your thoughts, advice, tips, and reviews with hundreds of other authors on e-space.
9. Inbound.org: Anyone with a Twitter account can register, post content and take part in discussions through comments.
10. InfographicLove:  Let’s you submit your infographics.
11. Instagram:  It’s a quick, beautiful, and fun way to share your life with family and friends.
12. Klinkk:  A blogging community that allows you to share and vote for your favorite links.
13. Medium:  Twitter co-founders founded this publishing platform. You can re-purpose your blog articles and use them here.
14. Quora:  A question-and-answer site where users can ask questions, get answers, and organize their own content.
15. RebelMouse:  A digital publishing platform that can be fully wired for social media.
16. Reddit– A social news and entertainment website that allows registered users to submit content as links or text posts.
17. Scoop.it:  Publishing by curation can help you build engaged audiences.
18. Scribd– Your personal digital library that gives you unlimited access to the largest collection of ebooks and written works in the world.
19. Tumblr:   This is a social networking and micro-blogging website.
20. Twitter– The most widely used and largest platform for micro-blogging.
21. Vimeo– A video-sharing website that allows users to upload, share, and view videos.
22. Youtube:  The largest video hosting platform and search engine.

B.   Email Marketing

Email marketing refers to the use of email to promote products and services, as well as build relationships with clients or customers. It is direct mail that is done electronically and not through the postal service.

Email marketing can be defined as any email sent by a company to customers, except for order confirmations or direct responses to questions.

To be able to perform email marketing, you will need an email list of subscribers.  To get an email list of subscribers, you will need an email marketing software that can collect and store emails and the names of subscribers. An example of such software is Mailchimp, GetResponse, etc.

Then you place these forms on your website and once someone subscribes to it, he or she gets added to your email list. When your email list grows, you can email new blog posts or products to them. This way, you will get free website traffic from your email list.

C.  Get Active on Social Media

We have already touched on social media in our last lesson and bit here as part of Web 2.0 websites. However, what I want to mention here is the strategy you can use to get active on social media.

Technology has grown to the stage where you can now automate some processes. And posting manually on social media every day can be a daunting task. Thankfully, there are applications we can use to automate some of these processes e.g. Buffer.

D.  Submit Your Content to Aggregator Sites

Content aggregators are sites that pull together media content, applications, or both from the internet for reuse or resale. It is a way to curate content. There are two types of content aggregators:

• People who collect news and other material from different sources to publish on their own websites
• People who syndicate content, gathering material and distributing it to their customers’ requirements

The process of content aggregation is the collection of materials in one location, such as:

• Blogs
• Newsletters
• Newspaper and magazine articles
• Social media posts

Although it is possible to manually aggregate content, in today’s data-driven environment, automated content aggregation with the help of software tools is more common.

Why should you use a content aggregator

A content aggregator tool is available for:

• You can get free traffic by submitting your website to it
• As part of a content strategy, you can improve your marketing efforts
• Power your business applications
• Your corporate intranet should be driven
• Customers will appreciate your ability to provide value
• Keep you informed about industry news

Examples of Content Aggregator websites are:

 Feedly: Feedly is one of the most popular news aggregator sites on the internet. You can create your own news stream with the latest content from your favorite publishers.

AllTop:  AllTop aggregates blog articles and news from some of the most popular sites like TechCrunch and Mashable, BBC, and CNN. It displays and curates content in real-time.

Flipboard:  Flipboard allows you to create your very own blog aggregator site. You can find a variety of topics there, including tech news, business news, and beauty news.  Flipboard can also be used as a local news source because it provides feeds for nearly all cities around the globe.

In conclusion

This is the end of this lesson. In the next lesson, we are going to learn how to do Search Engine Optimization in more detail.