Do you know that for every email that you send to your list, there is a chance that some of your subscribers will pass it to their friends or acquaintances?

Well, it’s very easy for them to pass your email. They only need to use the forward function in their email account or software, enter their friends or acquaintances’ email addresses, and then click the send button.

And if your email that they’ve passed around contains a link to your lead-capture page or the email address of your autoresponder, then you might get a couple of new subscribers.

Of course, whether or not people will pass your email depends on many factors, such as the interestingness of your email content, etc. But regardless of those factors, you can try to increase the chance of people passing your email by encouraging them to do so.

It’s very easy to do and it won’t cost you any money or much time to implement. Just add a postscript (P.S.) in every email newsletter that you send, that says something like this:

If you found this newsletter to be useful, feel free to forward this email to your friends or acquaintances. And let them know that they can subscribe to my newsletter at http://www.blahblahblah.com or by sending a blank email to subscribe@blahblahblah.com. They’ll thank you for it and so will I.

I know that this sounds too simple, but don’t let its simplicity fools you. I’ve seen people passing around other people’s email in the net, and I believe that this “passing behavior” is quite common among internet users.

And by the way, if you want to use the postscript example above, feel free to copy, paste and modify it to suit your own needs.

Tags: Marketing Viral: Viral: Word of Mouth: WOM: Buzz Marketing

Many people out there said that “content is king” when it comes to web traffic generation. Even though, IMHO, content is not the only king, I tend to agree with them. If done properly, content can attract free, long term, targeted traffic to your website.

Here’re three ways on how content can attract free, long term, targeted traffic to your website:

1. Content attracts free search engine traffic

It has been well-known that the search engines love content. The more content you have in your website, the more keywords you can rank for, and thus the more traffic you can get from the search engines.

However, not every content can do well in the search engines. The search engines have sets of rules (also known as algorithms) to rank websites in their indexes and some of these rules go beyond content (off-page factors). You need to “optimize your site” to meet these rules if you want to rank well in the search engines.

The problem, though, is that there are differing opinions about these rules and it seems that no one can give exact answers about them. Also, these rules often change, which makes them quite difficult to be followed.

That’s why I usually only do little optimization, sometimes as little as putting one keyword in the title tag and getting links. I stopped paying attention to the details because they wasted my time more then they gave me results.

2. Content attracts links from other websites

There are two benefits of having incoming links pointing to your site. First, you can get direct traffic from people who click through the links. And second, incoming links can increase your search engine ranking. In general, the search engines count incoming links as votes to your website.

Now how can content attract links to your website? Well, there are various scenarios on how content can attract links to your websites. But since I only have limited space and time here, let me just tell you the two popular scenarios.

First, you can write articles with link in your resource box and submit them to article directories and relevant websites that accept article submission. Many web publishers out there have a “content deficit” problem, and they’re hungry for your content. You can get your links spread out fast around the Internet by using this method.

Second, if your website contains “linkworthy” content, then other webmasters might voluntarily link to your content or website. However, this is a passive method, and you may not want to rely on this method and wait for someone to link to you.

3. Content attracts viral traffic

Viral marketing works by encouraging other people to transmit your marketing message to the others. If done properly, it can spread your marketing message around the Internet just like a contagious virus spreads around a society.

There are various motivations that can encourage other people to spread your marketing message. One of them is the “desire to obtain material possession.” You’ve probably seen the tactic of giving people incentive to spread a marketing message.

However, not all people are moved by the “desire to obtain material possession.” Many people are moved by mere excitement or other non-selfish motivations.

This is where content can attract viral traffic. If your content (that is part of your website or contains link to your website), is extremely useful, informative, or just downright funny as hell that people will say “Wow!” when they see it, then people might spread or tell others about your content.

You can also try to increase the viral effect of your content by making it easy for people to spread or tell others about your content, for example by providing an email link to your site’s visitors to email their friends or acquaintances about your content.

Tags: Business: Marketing: Web Marketing: Increase Website Traffic